The acknowledgement arrived yesterday, and sure enough, only Mirele’s name was listed. Why does it bother me? It is an organization I think does good and important work; why should it matter that I have tried for several years to tell them that it is a joint gift? Are they simply administratively insensitive or does it reflect a deeper issue?
I’ll name names later but first the rest of the story. It goes back to my first year working as university chaplain. In 1968-69, I was still a seminary student, working half time on campus. In retrospect, I was naïve about the real issues of unwanted pregnancy. I doubt I had given it very much thought at all. Until I was approached by 3 young women whose friend had just died in a back alley abortion. It focused my mind, informed my convictions, and became a commitment for 40 years. Simply put, this was a death caused by immoral and unethical laws regarding the rights of women to choose. Soon thereafter I studied about what the Jewish tradition had to say, what American laws had to say, learned about the surprising [and then hidden] facts of unwanted pregnancies and the challenging options then open to women, and then learned of a group of clergy committed to redressing this issue. So even before the NY State law changed and then Roe v Wade, I found myself counseling college students on their choices, and speaking out about the injustice of our laws as they then existed and their incompatibility with the Tradition I was being trained to represent.
Over the next years, the needs shifted away from the need for clergy counseling to a challenge to demonstrate how one can elevate a national debate with dignity. For several of those years I was joined by a gutsy and intellectually gifted Roman Catholic priest who decried the hijacking of genuine human and religious concerns by a politically motivated minority. We modeled how one can engage, differ, and be informed by one another and how to protect the choices women should have as theirs. Over the years, I gave papers and spoke in a wide variety of settings.
I have to confess that over time, I, like so many others began to relegate abortion and rights to choose to the back burner. There were skirmishes all over, but, it seemed that the basis issue was resolved. My commitment never wavered; my passionate advocacy did.
Until the last few years. What the current state of the Supreme Court and the regrettable right wing tilt of government have brought us to is not simply the erosion of the parameters of the rights to choose but the elimination of it. And this is happening with all too few voices being raised in outrage. Why?
Several reasons: first, younger women have never known that back alley history. They don’t know the fear that closed and limited options impose on women and everyone else in their lives.
Second, the acceptance of voluntary single parenthood as a viable life choice among all social and economic groups has eliminated the erstwhile stigma which accrued to those of a previous era. It has also blinded us. There continues to be real socio-economic injustice. It is one thing for an upper middle class professional to opt for single motherhood and quite another for a lower income, uninsured, teenager to have no viable choices.
Thirdly, the problematic erosion of church-state distinctions means that there is more acceptance to enacting laws reflecting a particular religious perspective. It seems that our articulated pluralism would guarantee the rights of all, but the intimidation by those with particular perspectives has allowed the erosion of the rights of some.
Fourth, and this brings me to where the story begins, the groups most articulate about this challenge are allowing themselves to be viewed exclusively as “women’s groups.” In other words, a limited issue matter only of interest to women. This, I fear, is self limiting and self defeating.
Back to the beginning.
For the last several years, Mirele has received phone solicitations from NARAL. If I would answer the phone, I would ask who was calling and the response [each year] was “one of the women’s groups she supports.” When I would push for more specifics, it would emerge that it was NARAL. I would respond that I had been committed to this issue since 1968, and would appreciate if their records would at least show that our annual gift was from both of us and should have both of our names. This year, I even asked to speak to someone authorized to change the records who assured me that the record has been changed and henceforth, both of us would appear in the record of contributors. Admittedly our gift is a small one and this detail is a token one compared to the larger issue it addresses but it had symbolic meaning to me.
Yesterday, the acknowledgement of our gift came and sure enough, my name was nowhere to be found. It was addressed solely to “Ms. Goldsmith.” Now it is true that Mirele does believe that this is a cause worth supporting but why does NARAL dismiss my commitment. After several years, one wonders: is it blindness on their part to those of us who care but who happen not to be women? If so, it is a very troubling political blind spot? Is it an administrative lacuna which seems irremediable? If so, it makes one wonder what else isn’t well managed? Could there be another reason I am missing? In any case, it certainly makes me doubt that this group is adequately equipped to lead the regrettable and inevitable struggle ahead of us – an issue that reflects the values of us all and the rights of us all, that of guaranteeing a women’s right to choose whether or not to continue an unwanted pregnancy.
0 comments:
Post a Comment