Defend a woman's right to choose

KATE MICHELMAN

"With each child," the Midrash teaches, "the world begins anew." It is an eloquent summary of an enduring Jewish tradition, and it sums up a reason that I am pro-choice. From work in the field, I have learned how difficult it is for children to thrive when their mothers cannot control the timing and spacing of their pregnancies.

Now, the nation seeks to take that control away. Making pregnancy a public mandate rather than a cherished choice would be catastrophic for all involved. It is not fair. It is not right. And it is not religious.

Those who choose abortion do so because they do not believe they can give a child what it needs and deserves. That is a moral choice. For many women, it is a religious choice.

Respect for women's lives and judgment is a profound and timeless Jewish tradition. On Friday nights, a proverb is chanted in many Jewish homes: "A woman of valor," it asks, "who can find? ... She opens her mouth with wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue."

And yet the far Right - in the name of religion, no less - would tell that woman to keep her mouth quiet and to leave her lessons untaught when the subject is that which she knows better than any other: bearing a child.

President George W. Bush has became the first president in American history to sign a criminal ban on abortion procedures. It contains no exception even for cases in which a woman's health is in jeopardy.

That was only Bush's latest move. He has tried to undermine contraception. He has stripped foreign family-planning organizations of desperately needed U.S. funds.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the leadership of both houses of Congress is avowedly anti-choice. Since 1995, Congress has voted 152 times on matters affecting a woman's right to choose. The pro-choice view has prevailed in only 26 of those votes.

Our challenge lies at the foundation of a free society: We must win the hearts and minds of the American people. If we do not act, especially within the political arena, our values will not be reflected in society's values.

After his historic participation in the March at Selma, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "My feet were praying." We need to pray with our feet once more. We need to get pro-choice Americans to act and vote on their pro-choice values.

On April 25, 2004, we will bring 1 million women to the national mall to demonstrate for a woman's right to choose during the March to Save Women's Lives: Protect Freedom of Choice in Washington, D.C. On that day, we will send an unmistakable signal to our political leaders that we will not sit silently by as they take our fundamental right to privacy away.

This March will mark the highlight of my nearly 20-year tenure with NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League). I cannot imagine a more fitting note on which to retire.

In 1992, as the Supreme Court stood at the precipice of overturning Roe v. Wade, only one vote away, Justice Blackmun wrote: "All that remained between the promise of Roe and the darkness ... was a single, flickering flame. ... I fear for the darkness as four justices anxiously await the single vote necessary to extinguish the light."

Today, an ominous cover of darkness lurks in the distance - as the Religious Right stands closer than ever before to its goal of banning abortion - we must gather up the sparks and bear the light.

As president of NARAL, I deal with many myths. But there is no myth more pervasive or false than the assumption that America is divided between religious people who oppose a woman's right to choose and secularists who support it.

To be pro-choice is about more than keeping religion out of politics and government out of private life. To be pro-choice is to espouse a particular and positive view of women and childbearing.

So many worlds are now at risk. The flame is flickering, and like Justice Blackmun, I fear for the darkness. Together, let's gather up the sparks and brighten women's and children's lives. This is our cause. It is moral. And we must prevail.

Kate Michelman is the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

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