Roe V. Wade - 35 years

Louise Melling: This is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade is the United States Supreme Court decision that for the first time ever recognized that the constitution protects our right to decide to end a pregnancy as well as our right to continue a pregnancy. Matt Coles: Roe v. Wade is the case that really solidified the individual constitutional right to autonomy, the right that says that there are some aspects of a person's life that the government really can't interfere with. Louise Melling: Roe v. Wade and the protection of reproductive rights is important as a sign that reproductive rights is a civil liberty but it's an incredibly important decision for all of our civil liberties. The decision rests on the right of privacy. It's important to women's equality and it's important to notions of fairness that are important for woman, they're important for families, they're important for our freedom to participate in society regardless of where we were born, regardless of the color of our skin, and regardless of our *** identity. Matt Coles: Roe takes a concept of individual liberty that was very conventional and moves it past the conventional into something that very much focuses on individuals and empowers individuals. The constitution had already said basically that you have the right to think what you want, to have your own views of the world. What Roe did is to say and you have the right to live your life that way, without government interference. You have the right to decide what you think is good, what makes for a good life and to live it. Lenora Lapidus: The Women's Rights Project deals with all forms of discrimination against women and equality for women. And the reproductive freedom enshrined in Roe v. Wade of course is central to all of women's equality. All of the work that we do builds on the ability of women to control their reproductive lives and be full participants in society. Judy Rabinovitz: There's another way to look at Roe. Roe was decided on privacy grounds and when I think about it that way it's harder to say well what's the direct connection between that and immigrant's rights? But more fundamentally Roe was a case about equal protection and about women, people based on their gender still having the rights to full participation. And they couldn't have that kind of full-they can't, we can't. We can't have that right to full participation without being able to control our reproductive rights. If you look at it as an equal protection case then you can see the connections much more with immigrants because that's one of the basic things that we're fighting for in terms of immigrants. To recognize that your citizenship status isn't a basis for denying you equal protection of the laws. Dennis Parker: Roe v. Wade has an impact on the work of the Racial Justice Program sometimes in ways that wouldn't be expected. Much of the work of the Racial Justice Program deals with opportunity, an opportunity to get an adequate education, an opportunity to enjoy full involvement in civic life. And in many ways the decision in Roe had an impact on the ability, particularly of women of color to get that kind of full participation. Jamil Dakwar: When talking about human rights it's really about certain bedrock, fundamental principles like equality, like a right to dignity and enjoyment of rights by all people including women. And that is one of the reasons when we talk about full participation in society and fulfillment of the person and realizing those rights, this is in the context of Roe is what is this all about is really making women realize their fundamental human rights under U.S. Constitution but more broadly under the international framework which has developed over the last 60 years. Matt Coles: Roe v. wade is essential to maintaining life in the United States as we have come to know it. People's memories are very short. Life in the United States was really different 40 years ago. There's the obvious things: there's backstreet abortions, but there's no contraception. There's telling people they can't get remarried, there's telling people that they can't raise their children certain ways. You take away Roe against Wade and we empower the states to go back to a pre-1960 United States. And if you don't think that's a threat just look around the state legislatures in a lot of this country. It's a real possibility and a real threat. Lenora Lapidus: If Roe v. Wade were overturned that would not only be a severe restriction on women's reproductive rights but would in fact curtail women's participation in society much more broadly. Its important women be able to make these kinds of decisions so that they can make other decisions in their lives such as employment, education. If women are once again returned to a time when their lives are controlled by their child-bearing that means that there are opportunities for the rest of their lives will be severely curtailed as well. Judy Rabinovitz: Women for ages have been treated as second class and Roe is essential in order for them not to be treated as second class. And what we're fighting for with immigrants is for them not to be treated as second class either. Louise Melling: I think there are two significant and we're going to see them play out in 2008 in the legislatures. One is the effort to truly ban abortion and to prompt the courts to reverse Roe v. Wade. That's obviously a huge threat because it's a ban but I think in the face of that ban people will be energized and people will act to protect their right. So I think the more pernicious threat is the threat that we have been seeing and that has been quite vibrant for over a decade which is to chip away, to pass laws to restrict access. To restrict access first and foremost for poor women, for teens, for other groups who are less powerful in society. And the question is will people notice and will people care before we've lost too much of the right. Matt Coles: What we have to be concerned about losing Roe against Wade and the changes that it's made we also have to recognize that the promise of Roe has hardly been realized. We're not in a society yet where people's intimate lives really are off limits to the government. For example, in most states in this country we still have sex education that teaches kids that the only kind of sex that's acceptable is sex after you're married, that you should be abstinent until you're married. And then says to kids and by the way if you're in a same sex relationship you can't get married. So they effective message is you can't have an intimate life, you can't have a *** life at all. It's a terrible message not only of a kind of bleak vision of the future but a terrible message about the values of certain people's lives and what they mean. I don't think we'll have fulfilled the promise of Roe until we get the state out of the business of telling people what are acceptable human relationships and what aren't. Dennis Parker: Going further in terms of extending the rights of Roe v. Wade I think it's important that the rights that Roe guarantees be made available to all people. There's always a distinction between the rights that are enjoyed by one group or the other. We know that people of color tend to have less access to medical care and therefore frequently have less of an opportunity to make choices that the majority citizens can. I think it's important that the choice that Roe guarantees be made available to all people, that there be more education, that there be more doctors and medical facilities available in places that are currently underserved. Judy Rabinovitz: We've come a long way certainly since the 1970s but women are still not fully equal in government, in employment, in educational facilities. We've increased a lot but we still have a ways to go. Louise Melling: Roe v. Wade really comes down to one basic question: What would it be like if you didn't have the freedom to make decisions about fundamental aspects of your life? That's what's at stake.