Roe v. Wade turns 30
By Angela Caputo
Assistant Editor

More than 150 pro-choice activists gathered at the Dirksen Federal Plaza Jan. 22 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

With two Supreme Court Justices rumored to be considering retirement, activists on both sides of the issue agree that a replacement would most likely tip the scale in favor of an anti-abortion decision.

Pro-choice activists said it is urgent that people rally around protecting abortion rights of American women, because of a political climate where conservatives dominate the congressional and executive offices.

“We are just one appointee away from overturning Roe vs. Wade,” said U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, (D-Ill.) 9th Congressional District.

If a justice were to retire, a pro-life President George W. Bush is expected to appoint a candidate with an anti-abortion leaning.

According to the Pro-Life Action League, many Chicago anti-abortion activists were in Washington D.C. at the March for Life rally, therefore not organizing a counter demonstration. Bush demonstrated his support for the anti-abortion movement by addressing demonstrators present in the capitol city.

A 53 percent majority of Americans consider Roe v. Wade to have been a “good thing” for the country, according to a Gallup Poll based on a survey of 1,002 randomly selected American adults. Only 30 percent consider it a “bad thing,” while 17 percent are uncertain.

Kimberly Tejchma, 22, a film major attended the rally and is among the American demographic in support of abortion rights. “I feel strongly about keeping choices open,” she said. “And not just about abortion. The government shouldn’t make any decision about my body.”

More than a dozen of the demonstrators were men who said that the issue of abortion must be more than just a women’s issue because pregnancy is also the responsibility of males.

“I believe that my own rights are at stake as well,” said James Austin, 23, a political science major at DePaul University. He said that abortion is not only a women’s issue although he thinks it is ultimately up to women to make an abortion decision.

Pro-choice activists at the rally said that they are surprised that the abortion debate rages on despite the Supreme Court decision which legalized it 30 years ago.

“We thought years ago that this decision would be settled. We now realize that this is a long battle,” said Blair Hull, a board member of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, a national non-profit public policy organization, and a U.S. senatorial candidate running in the 2004 election.

Approximately 62 percent of abortions performed in the United States were in women 24 years old or younger, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit reproductive health research and policy analysis organization, and Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health.

“These are the people most affected by abortion issues and are the people who take the right most for granted,” said Catherine Caporusso immediate past president of the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Tejchma said she couldn’t imagine that the decision ever would be reversed.

“If Roe vs. Wade was overturned, I think people would come out of the woodwork [to oppose it],” said Tejchma.

Dee Manny, 70, President of McHenry County Citizens for Choice said it is critical that young adults help to keep abortion legal because she said she saw how access to legal abortions women to “control their destiny.”

“Someone has got to pick up the torch and carry it into the next generation,” Manny said.