Abortion rights and the 1992 elections

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During January, the women's rights movement celebrated what many fear will be the final anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. • The Court has now decided to rule on the Pennsylvania anti-abortion law, which challenges Roe v. Wade by adding a range of restrictions on a women's right to private choice. As a result, reproductive rights organizations have had to refine their strategy for keeping the rights we do have intact.

Several groups have enunciated a perspective that makes the 1992 elections the centerpiece of their strategy. This perspective was explained with all its justifications by Elizabeth Toledo at a January meeting sponsored by San Francisco chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Toledo is the chapter President.

Her argument went like this: Roe v. Vade will be overturned 1. And even It 11 isn't overturned, it has been so badly compromised already that the right to abortion must be reconquered. The courts offer no redress for women, and therefore, women must get a bill that would guarantee the right to abortion through the U.S. Congress. In order to get Congress to pass such a bill the composition of Congress has to change. More pro-choice candidates have to be elected.

She said that women also have to be prepared to compromise on the bill, perhaps accepting a version that does not guarantee the rights of young women to abortion. All other tactics, such as mass demonstrations (like NOW's projected April 5 March on Washington), are subordinate to this electoral strategy.

Besides laying out this perspective, Toledo justified NOW's joining with Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the ACLU in arguing for the Supreme Court to take the Pennsylvania case on the grounds that if the court were to rule against Roe v. Wade prior to the election, the pro-choice majority would be galvanized into voting out anti-choice candidates. Abortion would be the central election issue in 1992.

The problem with this perspective is that it ignores the dismal electoral experience of the women's movement-and of the labor movement as well. In both cases, an electoral strategy similar to the one espoused by Toledo and other NOW leaders has led to defeats.

It wasn't always so. For example, early efforts to win the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution used a variety of tactics, including mass demonstrations and a giant publicity campaign to convince the people of the social justice of the cause for legal equality. These activities were so effective that they won an unprecedented two-year extension from Congress for ratification.

After the extension was granted, however, the movement decided to switch to an electoral strategy. Movement resourceshuman and financial—were used to elect "pro-ERA" candidates to state legislatures