Abortion access in America is always under attack.

Expanding abortion access

In the past year, pro-choice activists have had to do a lot of work to make certain that women’s health remains on the front burner in American politicians’ minds.

Although abortion is still legal in America, more states are adding restrictions that make getting an abortion quite difficult. Every state has different rules pertaining to abortions and some states only have one clinic providing the procedure.

Attending rallies, volunteering, and writing and calling politicians are all spectacular ways to keep the pro-choice movement alive and abortion clinics open. But one activist, Maddy Rasmussen, is taking her pro-choice work a step forward.

Meet Maddy Rasmussen

Rasmussen, 18, created The Safe Place Project, a website that lists every abortion clinic in the United States. The site also features an interactive map and a list that highlights each state’s abortion restrictions.

Rasmussen came up with the concept of the site while working with Legal Voice, an organization that advocates for marginalized groups of women, and while doing a lot of personal research on the side.

Her work—inside and outside the organization—lead her to discover that the Internet didn’t have a comprehensive list of places where women can get abortions.

The Safe Place Project

Rasmussen got to work and launched her website—a specifically non-political virtual destination where people can get facts about abortion access.

“Some clinics are very open on their websites about their views towards abortion and some places don’t even explicitly advertise that they do abortion, but if you speak with them then they will tell you that they do,” Rasmussen says.

“I wanted to find the middle ground, showing patients where to access abortion but not making them feel like they were being bombarded with political jargon and bias.”

Restrictions

One of the most important aspects of Rasmussen’s site is its list of state-by-state restrictions. She came up with the site’s section after having a meeting with both of her mentors from Legal Voice and Cedar River Clinics. “Knowing where to access abortion is only one of the challenges patients have to face,” Rasmussen says.

“It can be potentially devastating for patients to travel for hundreds of miles to a clinic, which can be a reality for some people, to learn that they have to wait a 24 hours before the procedure and then have to scramble to find housing for the night, or several nights depending on the state.”

The future of abortion access

Rasmussen plans to continue updating and adding to her website project to ensure it stays timely and factual. She wants to update it at least once a quarter while she attends college in the fall. And she’s going to add more information to the site, too. For example, Rasmussen would like to add information about the type of abortion a clinic provides—a medication abortion, or surgical abortion, or both. She’d also like to add what gestation week the procedure goes up to.

We hope that more people will get as involved as Rasmussen in the fight to keep abortion access open and safe to women in America.

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ColumnThe Supreme Court did something great on Monday. By voting 5-3, SCOTUS’s abortion ruling put an end to states passing “clinic shutdown” laws. While these laws don’t make abortion illegal, they severely limit access to abortion facilities.

Perhaps you remember when Texas first passed its abortion access law. The law was supposedly written to protect the health of women who seek abortions. The law stated that abortion clinics would have to attain a surgical center requirement for doctors to be able to perform abortions. Most people agree that this law, and laws like it, are total bullshit. And thank goodness, the majority of Supreme Court judges agrees.

“There was no significant health-related problem that the new law helped to cure,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion. “We agree with the District Court that the surgical-center requirement, like the admitting-privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an undue burden on their constitutional right to do so.”

This abortion ruling is also quite remarkable because it shows that, in the future, even if the next Justice nominated predominately votes in a republican manner (aka he or she typically sides with pro-lifers) votes on abortion could still lean toward a pro-choice stance. And in addition to tearing down this Texas law, the ruling will most likely affect other states that have created similar laws.

“By clarifying exactly what the ‘undue burden’ test requires, I suspect the majority was hoping to dissuade states like Oklahoma from continuing to pass laws that so directly challenge the central premise of Roe v. Wade—that the Constitution protects a pregnant woman’s right to an abortion in a meaningful percentage of cases,” Steve Vladeck, CNN contributor and professor of law at American University Washington College of Law, says.

“In the process, the Court today has called into question everything from categorical bans on abortions to so-called ‘fetal heartbeat’ restrictions, and perhaps plenty of other laws in between.”

Do you know how great it is to hear some good news concerning politics? These past few weeks have been filled with such disheartening news: the SCOTUS decision concerning immigration; America’s inability to pass common-sense gun control laws; and most recently, the Brexit vote that proves nationalism is on the rise, or that people are too lazy to vote, or do their homework before voting.

While having an abortion isn’t an intense procedure, the hoops women jump through to have an abortion are often burdensome. And no woman should have to drive more than 20 miles to get this type of procedure. Easy-to-access, safe abortions should be the norm in America.

So, thanks for the refreshing ruling, SCOTUS. Now Americans can celebrate the Fourth of July with a little pride.

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The first 20 seconds of this bit is the best.

John Oliver has all the facts and funnies about how hard it is to get an abortion in some states. Watch the awesome video below.

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We already thought Bill Nye was a cool guy. But after watching the following video, we think he’s pretty much the best guy ever.

In the video below, Bill Nye says some amazing things about a woman’s right to have an abortion.

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Jezebel reports that Rick Brattin, Missouri state representative, recently “filed a bill proposing that a woman seeking an abortion be forced to get ‘written, notarized consent’ from the father. Except, he says, in the case of ‘legitimate rape.’”

I don’t know if I am going to cry, or puke. Probably both.

Mother Jones reports that the bill was first filed on December 3. Brattin – let’s call him “the Brat” from now on – explained his stance on “legitimate rape” to Molly Redden, Mother Jones reporter, by saying that a woman would have to prove she was raped in order to get an abortion sans consent. For example, the woman “couldn’t just go and say, ‘Oh yeah, I was raped,’ and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape.”

Toooootally understandable, bro.

Luckily, as Jezebel points out, the Brat’s bill won’t ever see the light of day (praise be). In 1976, the case Planned Parenthood v. Danforth made it unconstitutional for a female to have to obtain spousal consent before being allowed to get an abortion.

While I know that the bill is going nowhere, I’m still pretty darn grossed out that it was even filed. First off, I live in Missouri and it’s quite difficult to wrap my head around just how many men in the Midwest want to control women’s bodies. It’s, like, geeze, boys – chill with your uterus envy already. Also it’s just plain gross that women’s bodies are still politicized and that more than a handful of people think these types of bills are acceptable. Abortion is a woman’s decision – case closed.

And can we also say that for the record there is no such thing as legitimate rape. There are legitimate idiots, though, and the Brat is totally proof of that fact.

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ColumnThere is no shame in abortion. ABORTION. Say it with me. You don’t need to speak in hushed tones: your abortion stories, my abortion story – they’re the stories of our lives. And they’re as normal as normal can be.

According to Katha Pollitt, author of the wonderful and important new book, “PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights,” abortion is a social good. Pollitt, a longtime contributor to “The Nation” makes an excellent argument about why women need to stand up for reproductive rights not just by fighting in the streets and halls of congress – but in our everyday relationship to the abortions we’ve had or might have. We need to talk about our abortions with ease — and often.

Three in ten women will have had an abortion by the time they’re 45-years-old. That’s a lot of women – that’s you, or your mother, or your sister, or your friends. That’s  most of us.

Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the zealots of the anti-abortion movement have taken women and their bodies down a rabbit hole-like rightwing agenda built on so-called Christian values. The people leading this movement aren’t simply religious nuts; they’re deeply misogynistic in every possible way. Pollitt’s book shows that states where the status of women is lowest are also the ones where there are the most restrictions on abortion. Bottom line: the assault on abortion is an assault on women – on human rights. Full stop. These are the folks who don’t believe in birth control, that think women should not work, and are bound to perform their “wifely duties.” But we don’t often hear from them unless we attend their sermons or traffic their (truly scary) websites.

What we do hear about, almost every day, is the result of the work they’ve done over the last 40 years of careful public relations planning. They’ve patiently constructed a long-term agenda to chip away at reproductive rights. They employ radical ideas that most Americans disagree with, but they’ve been smart and strategic, and that’s why we should be scared – because right now —  they’re winning.

Here’s what not radical: talking about abortion without shame. But we’ve been worn down by decades of Operation Rescue talking points – and we sometimes end up inadvertently speaking their language. Even those of us who’ve had more than one abortion out of pure necessity – not being ready for a child, not wanting to have a child with a particular father, not wanting to be a single mother – sometimes speak of our abortions in terms of “good” and “bad.” “Good” abortions, in the parlance of those who believe abortion should remain “legal and rare” are those that are of medical necessity, rape or incest. “Bad” abortions are the ones we have because we chose to have sex, got pregnant and then decided that it wasn’t time to have a kid.

There are no good abortions and bad abortions. There are just abortions. Pollitt doesn’t want us to be defensive about our abortions simply because our opponents have managed to own the conversation. She wants us to reconvene the conversation on our own terms, as each of us share our abortion stories.

This isn’t to say that all abortions are free of emotion. Some friends have had abortions, and went on to have several children – and then had another abortion. Some people have one easy abortion, and then another problematic one, perhaps because of a complicated relationship problem. But the rhetoric of the anti-choicers – that all abortions are heavy, dark, difficult regret-laden errors in judgment, is patently false. They say it over and over again and this idea seeps into the culture so deeply that some women believe it to be true, and perhaps feel sadder about their abortions than they would have. If our movies and TV shows and our politicians tell us that abortion is sad, it’s no wonder some of us feel sadness when we have the procedure. That’s part of the strategy, of course.

My own abortions have not been terribly fraught, but that doesn’t mean I was flippant about them. I live in a blue state with a life of relative privilege – I didn’t have to worry about access for a moment, even though I encountered rosary-bead wearing, angry people with signs that said I was going to hell. Good luck with that, I thought — I’m Jewish so you’re really not scaring me. But those signs, and those people — culled from the same herd that don’t think there’s anything wrong with shooting doctors that provide abortions — those people are scary.

I was 20 when I had my first abortion, and even though I had support from my then-boyfriend, from my friends — I was still too ashamed to talk about it in any public way. Even though I wasn’t sad or regretful, because the idea of a baby was remote and abstract, I understood that a nice Jewish girl like me had made a huge mistake. And sure, getting accidentally pregnant is a mistake of sorts — but I’d been drilled with the idea that I should be embarrassed, ashamed. And even though I was defiantly pro-choice — and cut my first political teeth as a teenager on the abortion front — I carried shame. Even though I made signs and marched on Washington for reproductive rights, my own experience was somehow walled off and separate.

This is precisely why Pollitt tells us that we need to unequivocally take back the conversation.

Let’s not confuse the issue by calling abortion anything that it isn’t: it’s a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy. It’s not something that should cause a shame spiral. I don’t have numbers on this, but I’d argue that the vast majority of women have gone on to think of their abortions like dental procedures – something they’d rather not do, but must, in order to continue to live a healthy life.

Even recent indie films have treated abortion in hushed tones, and lead characters only became heroes by rejecting the option to terminate, or not even thinking about it in the first place. Since the 1990s, movies about pregnancy have been a far cry from the legal, safe abortion depicted in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” “Knocked Up” and “Juno” gave us seemingly modern women who basically didn’t even consider the idea of abortion as a possibility. Finally, this year we were delivered the brilliant “Obvious Child,” a film that treats a woman’s abortion story as it should be treated.

Since 2010, 205 anti-abortion laws have been passed across the country. It’s time for those of us who are proudly pro-choice to stop chasing the conversation that the anti-choice zealots are leading. The situation is dire, especially with a brand new crop of anti-choicers in charge of both houses of Congress as of Tuesday.

Sixty-one percent of women that have abortions are already mothers. That’s why I love Pollitt’s “pro-choice, pro-mother ” mantra. Motherhood is fetishized in our culture, but it is not valued, certainly not by the people who would take away our legal right to abortion. Once a fetus is “protected,” they quickly move on to their next clump of cells, calling it a “life”. Helping women to actually raise the children that they’re forced to bear is not on their agenda.

When it comes to access to abortion, all politics is local. This week, in the bloodbath of the midterm elections, choice was protected in some small ways, but it was also dealt serious blows in races all over the country. Wendy Davis lost her race in Texas. A personhood referendum was defeated for the third time in Colorado, yet they elected a pro-personhood senator in the same state. North Dakota also defeated a personhood amendment. Yet in Tennessee, one of the last Southern states to retain some access to abortion, the news is very bad.

Let’s keep abortion safe, legal, and out in the open. I don’t care much about whether it’s rare – that’s not the issue. Tell your abortion stories without shame, and ask your sisters, mothers, cousins, and Facebook friends to tell theirs.

Here are some great organizations working hard to protect your reproductive rights. Send them money and volunteer for them.

The Abortion Care Network

Center for Reproductive Rights

Planned Parenthood

Emily’s List

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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ColumnABC Family’s “The Fosters” tackles late-term abortion—and gets it right.

A recent episode of “The Fosters” featuring a character getting a late-term abortion has me rethinking my regular viewing habits—unless “Stick It”,  the classic Missy Peregrym/Jeff Bridges movie about a non-conformist gymnast is on, you’ll rarely find me watching ABC Family.

In case you’re not up to date with ABC Family’s show, “The Fosters“, here’s a little background. First: J-Lo is the producer. Second: The central characters are an interracial lesbian couple (Lena and Stef), Stef’s biological son from a previous marriage and several foster children.

In this episode, Lena is 20 weeks pregnant and dreaming about her new baby. She gets sick and ends up in the hospital where she learns she is suffering from pre-eclampsia and could die if she continues the pregnancy. Because Lena has been pregnant only 20 weeks, an early delivery isn’t possible.

Despite what anti-choice groups want you to believe, this is a very realistic picture of why a woman would need a late-term abortion. Notably, only about 1 percent of women who have abortions have one after 20 weeks.

Lena wasn’t in bed thinking, “You know, I thought I wanted a baby, but I have changed my mind. I wish I had thought this through.” And because this is “The Fosters” and not “Grey’s Anatomy”, the drama wasn’t that the baby was going to be born without a brain or that Lena would die in 30 seconds without an abortion—the drama was that this is a very real, very sad, situation that a family had to face.

As Erin Gloria Ryan points out, on “The Fosters”, nobody actually uses the word “abortion;” they stick to “lost the baby.” She makes a great point in writing that most families who terminate a wanted pregnancy do so in order to save the life of the mother probably don’t use the word, either.

And it’s true. How we talk about pregnancy is directly related to how we feel about being pregnant. If a friend of mine is pregnant and excited about it, I am not going to ask, “What are you going to name the fetus once it’s a baby?” While scientifically that makes sense to me if I stop to think about it, that’s not how humans think and that would never come out of my mouth. And if someone I love has to have an unwanted abortion, my instinct would be to say, “I’m so sorry you lost the baby,” not “I’m so sorry about your abortion.”

The words “abortion” and “choice” are so totally tied together in our society that it would be cruel to refer to ending a wanted pregnancy as an abortion, even if the medical procedure is the same. While Lena on “The Fosters”, and women every day, are forced to take this option, I can’t believe it really feels like much of a choice.

I can hear the profanity-laced, poorly-spelled tweets coming at me now: “If you think abortion is cruel, why are you for it?” I don’t think abortion is cruel. I think anti-choice groups have won the linguistic battle and put a hateful spin on a word that describes a medical procedure. So, we as a culture, have adapted our language.

I am pro-choice because pregnancy is personal. The language we use to talk about pregnancy and abortion—sometimes different with friends than when speaking about our legal rights—reflects that and our laws should, too.

It would be easy to applaud “The Fosters”, but then pause to criticize the writers’ choice to leave out the word abortion, and point out that despite the lesbians and stuff, this is still ABC Family. But I think it was a deliberate, and wise, choice to make a point about why late-term abortions need to be legal and accessible.

Women who need late-term abortions don’t need a legal battle on top of the emotional one, they don’t need laws that would force them to endure a waiting period, or to cross state or county lines for access to a life-saving procedure. They need to be relieved of worrying about legality so they are free to handle emotions that no sweeping legislation can possibly understand.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

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ColumnThe Supreme Court decides that Hobby Lobby is a person with values that matter. Women? Meh.

This week, the Supreme Court took a big step toward preventing women from easily accessing and paying for birth control.

In case you missed it, here’s what happened: Hobby Lobby and its cronies argued that having to cover the cost of specific forms of contraception, like the morning after pill, as part of its employee health insurance was the same as paying for abortion, which goes against the owners’ Christian beliefs.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in Burwell V. Hobby Lobby. According to The New York Times, 5 of the 9 Justices decided “Requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom.”

This decision, while a direct attack on abortion and access, is more than a right wing assault on Obamacare. It’s another move toward prioritizing corporations over humans—specifically lady humans.

What the ruling means is that corporations are being granted the same rights as people, which makes no sense at all. But, the precedent was set back in 2010 with the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case which promised free speech rights to  corporations—a case that was actually about campaign contribution limits, not free speech, but I digress.

To date, in addition to Hobby Lobby, there are 71 companies with owners that have said they don’t want to pay for birth control either. And not that it’s anyone’s business—especially an employer’s—why a woman might choose to take the pill, but for many, the decision has nothing to do with pregnancy prevention. About 1.5 million women use birth control to help with medical issues such as ovarian cancer, ovarian cysts, endometriosis and endometrial cancer, according to a 2011 study.

But, with the Hobby Lobby case, contraception coverage is just the tip of a giant discrimination iceberg.

Why the Hobby Lobby Case Is a HUGE Deal

This ruling is an extreme attack on women’s health coverage here in the U.S., and it will impact women in developing nations as well. And while the Hobby Lobby case is about access to healthcare and contraception, like the Citizens United Case before it, the language in the ruling represents a massive shift in how we value corporate responsibility versus individual freedom.

This week’s ruling has sweeping consequences, according to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who wrote a dissent chock full of staggeringly awesome quotes that earned her the social media title The Notorious RBG almost instantly). One consequence is that any company can declare a religion for itself and have at it.

How might that go? Justice Ginsburg has an idea. She wrote, “”Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.”

Okay, so don’t work for a company with a religious affiliation, and you won’t have these problems, right? In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg warned that the ruling would have wide repercussions and “untoward effects.” She wrote, “Although the court attempts to cabin its language to closely held corporations, its logic extends to corporations of any size, public or private.”

Can. Of. Worms. Or, as Ginsburg put it: “The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”

Oh, By the Way, Hobby Lobby Invests In the Abortion Pill

In case it’s not clear that, in reality, this is a financial issue and a power grab couched in morality, it turns out that Hobby Lobby (which does still cover Viagra and vasectomies) invests in the abortion pill, according to Mother Jones.

Oh, fancy that! Hypocrisy. Sweet, sweet hypocrisy.

Here’s what Mother Jones uncovered: “Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company’s owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).”

So Now What?

I would love to wrap this up with something positive, but this ruling is a shitshow. The best thing we can do is to keep supporting candidates that value women and basic human freedom. We also need to continue supporting Planned Parenthood (because as our insurance stops covering reproductive care we need a place to go) and supporting Mother Jones, a publication that consistently offers up spectacular reporting.

Most importantly, four months from now, we have to vote in the midterm elections. The candidates we elect have approval over Supreme Court Justice appointments, people that arguably have more power than the President and much longer shelf lives. Each Representative and each Senator has a vote that can help us or hurt us, so pay attention to local elections.

Donating is a great start (and donor numbers do send messages), but dollars don’t count as people—yet. So get offline and vote, unless you want the company you work for to do it for you.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

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Column“Obvious Child” is the best abortion rom-com since… Uh, hey, it’s an abortion rom-com! PS: This column is chock-full of spoilers.

Calendar item: “Wednesday 7:30 – Abortion movie with Emily.” As you can see, I have been eagerly anticipating going to see “Obvious Child” since I first heard rumblings about the existence of a movie featuring an abortion that didn’t come with a side of payback in the form of shame, death, regret or some other life-ruining consequence for the woman.

In brief, here’s the plot: 27-year-old Donna (Jenny Slate) gets cheated on, dumped, drunk and has a really fun looking sex-capade/dance party/bongo drum playing session that results in an unwanted pregnancy.

The problem with knowing you’re going to see an abortion movie is that you spend the whole time waiting for the abortion—kind of like when “127 Hours” came out and we all waited for that one scene.

It was an odd distraction to be eagerly awaiting the abortion moments: When will she find out? What will happen when she goes to Planned Parenthood? When will she tell people? Will she tell the guy? When will she go in for the abortion?

Waiting for those pivotal moments, it would have been easy to miss all that happened in between, and that would have been a shame because “Obvious Child” is much more than a movie about abortion. It is a movie about friendship and storytelling.

One of my favorite moments is when Donna’s best friend, Nellie (played by Gabby Hoffman), arrives at her apartment to find her a wasted crying mess and Donna makes a lesbian birthright joke and then tells her she doesn’t have to sleep in the room because she’s about to fart it up. These are your real friends, people.

Donna’s role as a stand-up comic is central to the plot and to understanding her as a character. Drawing her material from real life and holding nothing back (from what underpants really look like at the end of a long day to countless fart jokes), she leaves nothing on the table. This approach brings up a question I am constantly fascinated by: What stories are ours to tell? As a writer, I say all of them. Everything is material. As a comic, Donna feels the same way. But, this approach has its consequences.

Early in the movie, her boyfriend complains about her talking about their relationship on stage—before dumping her in the bathroom while checking his phone in one of the most honest 20-something breakup scenes ever. Honest because he leads into the conversation totally dishonestly, blaming her stand-up for the breakup when really it’s that he’s sleeping with a friend of hers, news he reveals after making her feel like it’s her fault.

What’s great about this scene, and Donna in particular, is that she says what we all want to say in the moment, not when she thinks of the perfect reply five minutes or five days later. We know that in some ways this is because she is in a movie, but we believe that the character is that quick and smart—and the kind of exhibitionist who will say anything about herself and anyone else to get a laugh. But that tendency to just put thing out there and say what most people won’t is also how she processes her world.

Her real friends understand that and like her for it, and we do too. Throughout the movie, we’re unsure about where the new guy, Max, will fall on the spectrum. He seems to appreciate her brand of wacky, but when we’re introduced to him, he comes off as a bit of a square.

When she finally tells him about the pregnancy and her appointment for the abortion (from the stage in a bar before he’s even taken his hat off and gotten comfortable), he has a fairly understandable reaction given that he has just received intensely personal news in a public setting. He leaves. But, unlike the shitty ex, he realizes that her stand-up is how she is processing what is happening. He’s on the team and good things happen next.

What “Obvious Child” also accomplishes is a commentary on how we think other people think about abortion if “we” are liberal, privileged urbanites. Donna isn’t sure how to talk to the woman at the clinic and then realizes it’s best to just say what you want.

She worries what her highly-accomplished mom will think. Mostly because when you tell your mom something, it becomes real in a different way. That conversation turns out to be a good way for the filmmaker Gillian Robespierre to remind us what happens when abortion is illegal without hitting us over the head. (We were promised a rom-com, not a documentary, after all!)

There’s also the moment when Donna asks Max if he is okay with her having an abortion—but not in a way that implies his opinion will change her mind—it’s more of a get-to-know-ya conversation a bit late in the game.

In some ways, for the pro-choice set, “Obvious Child” is like “The West Wing” for liberal politicos. It’s a reflection of the way we wish it was for everyone. If we don’t place too much pressure on “Obvious Child” to be more than one woman’s story about her abortion, we can appreciate that when women have access and support, abortion is part of life.

We’re left with an ideal rom-com ending. It’s sweet, it’s open-ended and it’s full of possibility.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

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ColumnMany of us take Roe v. Wade for granted, but what will we do when it’s overturned?

That’s right, I said, “when Roe v. Wade is overturned,” not “if.” To many, such a reversal seems impossible, but an examination of the current anti-choice climate shows it’s not as far-fetched as we may think.

In many places in this country, abortion is essentially illegal. Eighty-seven percent of all U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion provider. In rural areas, that figure rises to 97 percent.

Inaccessible abortion isn’t safe or legal—and geography isn’t the only barrier. There are consent laws, waiting periods, counselling centers masquerading as health clinics, a lack of trained medical professionals, and a whole slew of anti-choice protesters blocking clinics and, in some cases, bombing them.

So, not to get all future dystopia on you, but with all of the efforts to dismantle Planned Parenthood—literally and politically—in the last three years alone, women like me have to consider the reality that Roe v. Wade might not be there for us in the future.

A few weeks ago, I met Judith Arcana and got a reality check about the shifts in our current cultural conversation around abortion. While I know pro-choice has been playing defense these last few years, talking with her about the history of the movement both inspired and scared the shit out of me.

Judith was a Jane. She was one of the seven women arrested in Chicago for providing illegal, safe, and in many cases, free abortion services to thousands of women from 1969 – 1973. Judith was involved from ‘70 – ‘72. When Roe passed in ‘73, the case was dropped and the records were expunged.

My own first abortion debate went something like this: I was with a friend at her kitchen counter coloring; we were 10-ish and had figured out what abortion was thanks to the movie Dirty Dancing. My mom explained to me what the whole “Penny situation” was and I explained it to my friend. She said something like, “So she killed her baby?” And I said, “No. She had an abortion.” That pretty much sums up my current feelings.

For me, illegal abortions were something that happened in movies. The same is not true for the women like Judith who, through Jane, helped more than 10,000 women get safe abortions.

Getting to talk to a real live Jane was a dork-out moment. I first learned about the movement back in college. As a teenager, I imagined a band of activists sticking it to the man. So, when my friend mentioned that his aunt had been a Jane, I was almost as excited as I would have been to score a phone call with Patrick Swayze back in ‘87.

But, when I spoke with her, I learned that Judith didn’t set out to be an activist. Like many of the women in what is referred to as “the service,” she encountered Jane when she thought she might need an abortion herself. “I found Jane because the service was an open secret. In those days people thought and behaved very differently. It was ordinary business for one woman to say to another, ‘Whoa, I need an abortion.’ I had a friend who was a medical student so I called him and he passed on a number.”

While she didn’t end up needing an abortion, she connected with her first Jane and joined the service. “It was a time of tremendous change. I always thought I would be married with three kids and teach high school—follow a script that a nice lady was supposed to follow. I remember very clearly the first women’s meeting I went to in 1969. There were about 20 of us and when we began to talk, the thought in my mind was, ‘I don’t have to be married.’ It never occurred to me that getting married wasn’t like breathing. Talk about liberating. By the end of the evening I said, ‘I don’t have to wear makeup.’ It got deeper and heavier as time went on, but the impulse is the same… all these things I had assumed as given—like having skin.”

But, during these last four decades, culture has shifted. In my early 20s, feeling pressured to marry a man and having kids was was unthinkable—as unthinkable as approaching someone I barely know to find out where to get an abortion. Today, conversations about abortion don’t happen casually. The anti-choice movement has put so much fear and misinformation in the world that we, the pro-choicers, are on the defensive—and that shift, says Judith, makes 2013 even more frightening than 1970.

That hadn’t occurred to me. When first I imagined the Janes, I didn’t picture the open conversations that Judith describes. I assumed all of the women involved felt that they were constantly in danger. But I got that wrong.

“While I was working in the abortion service, I wasn’t afraid. We didn’t think we’d get busted,” says Judith. “In terms of fear, being in jail was scary, but I had not carried, prior to that time, a fear. If I had a fear—and there was no anti-choice movement, which is very important—it was that I and the other Janes would not be as good as we needed to be. We had the lives of other women in our hands. If there was something to be concerned about, that would be it, in part because we were illegal and in part because that’s just the case. Licensed professionals would have had the same concerns about never hurting anyone. But I would have said, ‘This is what matters; this is the hard part; this is crucial; this is intimate.’ I think a lot of Janes would answer the question the same way.”

The landscape leaves today’s activists much more to fear because,“They aren’t dealing with the police, but with anti-choice activists who literally kill people; who throw bombs in clinics. It’s far more dangerous today,” said Judith.

In her zine, “Keesha and Joanie and JANE”, Judith images a post-Roe world. The “Roeverturn,” she calls it (which I love). In the story, a group of young women struggle with the idea of how to recreate a Jane-like movement. It’s not a guide or a how-to, but a take on what conversations might look like among a collective of women working to right injustice. It’s personal and political—and also a fun read.

“We have to think of new ways to think of these new times, and it has to be done. Some of it will be illegal. Some will be political. One of the Janes in the movie [the 1995 documentary, Jane: An Abortion Service]  talks about the underground railroad and you know right away that there have always been frightening, nervous-making and terrifying things that needed to be done, and that women and men did them. More than half of the states are restricting Roe to irrelevance. But women can do what needs to be done.”

A recent Jezebel article details an anonymous author’s efforts to help U.S. women get abortions when they can’t find or afford legal access. It shows that we have already entered the world Judith has fictionalized. The comments section shows that lots and lots of women are thinking about the same things the Janes were thinking about: the safety of the women receiving help from this underground resource. And, reflecting Judith’s reminder that this is a whole new world, there are concerns for the author’s safety as well.

We must refuse to go back to the days when Jane was necessary; we have to say no to an internet-based version of the underground railroad. We have to fight back, county by county, before stories like the one in Jezebel become the norm.We have to regain all of the rights guaranteed to us by Roe v. Wade, the rights that are being stripped away piece by piece, the rights fought for by all the Janes who came before us.

Related on EcoSalon:

Three Mothers Embrace Abortion as a Woman’s Right

Having Sex This Week? You Might be Pregnant

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Don’t Get Pregnant

Image: Judith Arcana

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