Hope and dancing bears at Roe 35th anniversary celebration

I couldn’t help notice a different feel in the air at the Minnesota Choice Coalition’s celebration of the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Oh, on the surface it was what you’d expect from a fancy dinner at International Market Square, at least one being held in honor of legalized abortion. People drank wine and sported the buttons for their preferred Senate candidates. There were plenty of Mike Ciresi supporters and Al Franken supporters, and possibly a few Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer folks. (Norm Coleman supporters were unsurprisingly underrepresented.)  And there were all the booths with all the buttons one would expect to see — “Keep Your Laws Off My Uterus,” “If I Can’t Be Trusted With a Choice, How Can I Be Trusted With a Child?” — the usual fare.

No, on the surface there was nothing different about this year’s event. And yet there it was, a sort of steady thrum that filled the air. If you closed your eyes, you could feel the difference. It felt just a little like hope.Roe v. Wade was decided 35 years ago next Tuesday, and it’s been under attack for at least that long. From the day that Justice Harry Blackmun penned the majority opinion, anti-abortion forces have been working hard to undermine it, if not destroy it. And they’ve had no small degree of success. There are no abortion providers in 87 percent of American counties and three entire states. In Minnesota, 95 percent of counties have no abortion clinics within their borders. Add to this the recent Gonzales v. Carhart ruling, which outlawed abortions performed by intact dilation and extraction, and you could forgive pro-choice advocates for being down.

But the 2006 elections brought a bit of hope for the first time in more than a decade. Both nationally and here in Minnesota, more pro-choice politicians were elected. And this fall will bring a strong opportunity to elect a pro-choice president for the first time in eight years. These developments have raised the hope that maybe, just maybe, pro-choice advocates are finally on offense again.

‘Working hard for choice’

That doesn’t mean that the activists gathered here are sanguine. Jessica Valenti, the author of “Full Frontal Feminism” and editor of Femnisting is tonight’s emcee, and she states flatly, “Since Roe was won in 1973, women and men have been working to fight for choice.” She cites the dispiriting stats on abortion availability as reasons to fight.

And Dr. Carrie Ann Terrell of the University of Minnesota’s Women’s Health Center, said that abortion clinic workers were still facing threats, attacks and even death. “Despite our successes,” she said, “we still suffer at the hands of extremists.”

But despite the nods to imperfection, the evening was dominated by good cheer and a convivial atmosphere, which was buoyed by the address of the keynote speaker, former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders.

Elders, of course, was defenestrated from the Clinton administration after supporting sex education. During her tenure, she was asked if children should be taught about masturbation as part of sex education. Elders, characteristically blunt, replied, “I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.” For this grave sin, Elders was cast out of the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, 99.99 percent of America’s post-pubescent youth managed to discover masturbation all on their own. The system works. It just doesn’t work well.

‘Many women would rather die than remain pregnant’

Elders spoke passionately of her time as a doctor in pre-Roe Little Rock, Ark. “Many women would rather die than remain pregnant,” she said, speaking of a time when 17 percent of deaths in pregnancy were related to complications from abortion. “Prior to Roe v. Wade, the most common cause of death in pregnancy was botched abortion. And black women were five times more likely to die” of complications from illegal abortions, Elders said. 

Elders, who today is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas, also called for increased funding for reproductive health and education. “I have never known a woman who needed an abortion who wasn’t already pregnant,” Elders said. “But what the politicians in the federal government have done is aborted common sense.”

“Instead of supporting contraception, they say we’re going to have abstinence until marriage when the mean age of marriage is 27 years old,” said Elders. “We refuse to educate the most valuable resource we have, our children. All we’ve done is set them up for getting what we say we don’t want.” Mocking people who argue against distributing condoms in school because “condoms can break,” Elders said witheringly, “Condoms will break, but the vows of abstinence will break easier.”

“We’ve got to do better at making sure all women have access [to reproductive health care],” Elders said, and she said that a lack of access fell disproportionately on “the young, the uneducated and women of color.”

‘Dancing with a bear’

Elders also said she supported “comprehensive health education in schools from kindergarten to 12th grade.” She added, “The best contraception in the world is an educated woman.”

Elders added it was a mistake to view sex as something evil. She said that sex was important for procreation and that it was important to use protection, but that “the most important piece about sex, is it’s about pleasure — 99.9 percent of sex is about pleasure.” Elders added, “We are sexual beings.”

And Elders reminded the audience that she might have had a point about teaching teens about masturbation.

“I may have been fired for talking about masturbation,” she said, “but it won’t make you go blind, won’t make you go crazy, won’t give you a disease, and you know you’re always having sex with someone who loves you” –  a line that brought down the house.

Elders ended with a message of hope, relating a story that a minister had told her.

” ‘You’re dancing with a bear,’ he told me, ‘And when you dance with a bear, you can’t get tired and sit down. You’ve gotta wait ’til the bear gets tired,’ ” Elders said. She then told the crowd, “You’re dancing with a bear, but he’s getting a little tired.”