A New Generation Offers New Hope for Abortion Rights

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Nov 12, 2022

And in Montana, voters rejected a measure that would have criminalized health care providers who do not make every effort to save the life of an infant “born during an attempted abortion” or after labor or Caesarean section.

Those stunning departures from conservative expectations followed an earlier surprise in Kansas, where voters in August decided overwhelmingly to reject a proposed amendment to remove protections for reproductive rights from the state’s constitution.

Some will see this apparent trend as a backhanded vindication of Justice Samuel Alito’s reasoning in Dobbs that abortion rights should be left up to the states. Yet, as critics, such as I, have argued, that states’ rights approach creates a confusing crazy-quilt patchwork of reproductive rights, an injustice to rights of women — rights too fundamental in my view to be dependent solely on which state you happen to be in.

That was the situation before Roe, the 1973 decision that infuriated abortion opponents enough to fuel the rise of a “right to life” movement and “Christian right” that since the 1970s has become one of the most effective and powerful organizing engines in the Republican Party.

Many have wondered ever since whether a similarly effective organizational engine might rise on the left if Roe was overturned. Maybe we’re seeing the answer now and it appears to be coming largely from generations too young to remember the days before Roe.

As one who remembers the days before Roe and what I saw as a terrible injustice to the right of women to have autonomy over their own bodies, I have long wondered how long it would take for younger voters, who usually have the lowest voter turnout, to wake up to this issue.

That day appears to have come. Abortion was the single-most important issue for a quarter of all voters in the midterms, according to Kaiser Health News, and for a third of women under age 50. NBC News exit polls placed the importance of abortion even higher, with 32% of voters saying inflation was their top voting issue and abortion ranking second at 27%.

As my own elders used to say, you don’t really appreciate something until you don’t have it any more.

Young folks should understand that message more forcefully after the Dobbs decision. They also should understand that rights, once won, must be watchfully protected. Otherwise, down the road, you can find yourselves fighting for the same rights all over again.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)