Perilous times

Norma McCorvey, Gloria Allred, 1973

Letter to the editor in today's NY Times:

To the Editor:

Re “Bracing for the Worst at a State’s Last Abortion Clinic” (Opinion guest essay, June 10):

Shannon Brewer says it all in two lines: “What really haunts me are the women I never see — the ones who can’t make it” and “abortion is absolutely a racial and economic justice issue.”

As one of the diminishing number of living survivors of pre-Roe abortions, I can promise you that the return to those dark days will mean that increasing numbers of women will die. And they won’t be the rich or even minimally well-off, who will always be able to access safe abortions, even at significant cost.

They will be poor, powerless and disproportionately women of color. Growing numbers will die from botched attempts to self-abort or at the hands of unsafe abortionists; others will sink under the burden of unwanted, unsupported children.

Sixty-plus years ago the man who raped me, a prominent businessman, handed me $100 to cover the kitchen-table abortion, which, against the odds, I survived. His money also funded the politicians who perpetuated the cycle of anti-women laws finally broken by Roe v. Wade.

The successors to those politicians, still mostly white and male, continue to deny us dignity, well-being and autonomy in the name of some lofty-sounding “protection of the unborn.” 

Hogwash. Unless we defend the protections that Roe offers and until we write new laws that protect women, not fetuses, heroines like Ms. Brewer will continue to mourn the women who don’t make it.

Fran Moreland Johns

San Francisco

The writer is the author of “Perilous Times: An Inside Look at Abortion Before — and After — Roe v. Wade.”