WASHINGTON — With the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks, women across the country have been protesting and calling for the court and lawmakers to act to protect the right to an abortion.
But for one California lawmaker, this fight is personal.
“I have experienced the fear, the stigma, the despair of being denied the care that you need,” Rep. Barbara Lee told a crowd gathered on the National Mall this month protesting to protect abortion rights. “I know what it’s like to be worried about your medical decision becoming criminalized! I know that fear.”
And she knows how women feel. When she was just a teenager, Lee had an abortion.
“I was terrified, naturally traumatized, but she took me to this clinic. And I’ll never forget that evening. It was late at night, and the rest is history,” Lee told Spectrum News of her visit to a back alley clinic in Juarez, Mexico, accompanied by one of her mother’s friends.
As a teen living in a pre-Roe world, Lee had to make a risky choice: to have a child, or to have an abortion.
“I made a personal decision, my mother and myself, to have an abortion, it was nobody’s business, it was a private decision,” said Lee, who has kept her abortion story silent until recently, when she felt she could no longer remain silent.
“These laws for the last few years that states such as Mississippi and Texas are passing really triggered a lot with me personally,” Lee explained. “I decided, which I’d never done before, to talk about abortion I had.”
Lee is not alone in sharing her story. Last year, Rep. Cori Bush, D-MO, Jackie Speier, D-CA, Pramila Jayapal, D-Wa, and Lee came forward to discuss their abortion experiences in an interview with Elle magazine. They were joined by Sen. Gary Peters, D-MI, who’s then wife had to have an abortion after their second pregnancy did not make it to term, and put her life in jeopardy.
“After I talked about it publicly, so many women and men came up to me right here in Congress to share their stories, and they are beginning to talk publicly about it. So I think it’s important that we empower people and help reduce the stigma,” Lee said.
The House had passed the Women’s Health Protection Act before it was dead on arrival in the 50-50 Senate. The bill could not gain the 60 votes necessary to avoid the filibuster, with all Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, voting against the motion for debate.
Lee said, unfortunately, she wasn’t surprised.
“We know the Senate, we know who they are. And we know that it was important to call the roll. I hope the public understands who’s on their side and who was not on their side. And I think that was a vote that had to be taken,” Lee said. “Of course, I was very… I won’t even say frustrated because we know the Senate, but it was just another step to show the public just how right wing and extremist some of these senators are.”
But Lee said the work is far from done. She is taking up the mantle to encourage women to fight for abortion rights, including her address to the crowd of abortion-rights supporters during that protest in Washington, sharing her story and rallying women to vote.
“We have to organize, to galvanize, and work toward electing at the state and local and federal level pro-reproductive, personal liberty, reproductive freedom candidates,” she told Spectrum News. “We have to raise money and we also have to help the states that are providing the access for people to travel from state to state. We have to raise money to help these unbelievably wonderful clinics and activists to keep them going.”
While the court seems poised to repeal what was believed to be a fundamental right to women in America over the last nearly 50 years, Lee still clings to hope.
“I’m thinking of the quote now: ‘The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I think we have to remember that in this moment.”