Feminism and Reproductive Rights

Feminism and Reproductive Rights

Journalist Gloria SteinemA journalist who became one of the leading feminist voices of the 1970s, Steinem was the founder of Ms. magazine, a supporter of women’s reproductive choice, and one of the leading proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment. described herself as an unlikely convert to feminism. Assigned to cover a feminist rally in 1969, Steinem explained that something inside her “clicked” when she recognized commonalities she shared with the women she interviewed. Steinem recognized that while she had supported civil rights and spoken out against the Vietnam War, years of internalizing negative images of women led her to uncritically accept gendered stereotypes that had been applied to feminists. “I had believed that women couldn’t get along with one another, even while my own trusted friends were women,” Steinem explained. “It is truly amazing how long we can go on accepting myths that oppose our own lives.” Steinem explained how she suddenly realized that stereotypes against feminists served many of the same purpose of sexist jokes and labels that often presented women as caricatures rather than real people. Many of these stereotypes permitted a woman’s value to be defined by male perceptions of sexual attraction, which marginalized the ideas and contributions of women. By 1972, Steinem was the publisher of Ms., a new kind of women’s magazine that gave voice to many of the same frustrations she had felt.

Steinem’s magazine was immediately successful during the socially active prime of the women’s movement. Ms. also came under heavy criticism by women who hoped it would be more radical and those who felt that the magazine did not adequately represent the experiences of all women. For example, a special issue dedicated to negative self-images of women toward their bodies came under fire after the editors selected a slender white woman for the cover. Readers protested that this cover furthered the kinds of images that judged all women against a single standard of beauty. The editors had actually considered using a larger or nonwhite model, but reconsidered due to fears that the issue’s theme of “negative body image” would only reinforce notions that larger and nonwhite women were not beautiful.

The editors also struggled with issues of whether or not to accept advertisements for beauty products and household cleaners—the leading source of income for most other magazines targeted toward women. Always a source of controversy, the articles made Ms. unique from other women’s magazines even if many of the ads were the same. Writers submitted a variety of articles that brought new perspectives to traditional women’s issues. They also demonstrated how national political issues and international affairs affected women’s lives. Lampooned by male journalists who predicted Ms. would “run out of things to say” in six months, the magazine was a commercial success until the conservative tenor of the 1980s led to lower readership. As revenues declined, the editors became divided regarding the desirability of publishing more popular articles on fashion and celebrities that might attract younger readers.

One of the lasting consequences of Steinem’s magazine was the popularization of the title “Ms.” as an alternative to the titles of “Miss” and “Mrs.” Given the difficulties married women faced when they went in search of work and the assumption that unmarried women would immediately quit their positions on marriage, it is not surprising that many women in the 1970s embraced the marriage-neutral label. The issue of gender neutrality was one of the many topics discussed when the United Nations sponsored the first World Conference on Women in Mexico City during the summer of 1975. Delegates hailing from 130 different nations helped to draft the World Plan of Action, a document that set goals and standards regarding access to education, employment, political participation, and supported greater access to family planning. The World Plan of Action was ratified by dozens of nations but never considered by the US government. President Jimmy Carter responded by appointing a federal commission to study the matter further. One of the results of the commission was the National Women’s Conference, which was held in Houston in November 1977. More than 20,000 women participated in the conference, producing National Plans of Action that was likewise ignored by the government.

The American conference showed that women faced obvious gender discrimination when they sought bank loans. Married women were often required to secure their husband’s approval (but never vice versa), and home lenders refused to consider a married woman’s income in making loan decisions. Most lenders considered female income as supplemental and subject to change at a moment’s notice. This even applied to female veterans applying for Veterans Affairs (VA) home loans. After a lengthy campaign by feminists and consumer activists, Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity ActA federal law against using factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, and under some circumstances age in making decisions regarding the extension of credit. The law ended the common practice whereby lenders refused to loan money to married women independently of their husbands or considered only the husband’s income when extending credit to a family. in 1974. This law prohibited creditors from using gender along with race, religion, and national origins as factors in making their decisions. While many lenders were still hesitant to market loans to women and minority groups, a growing number of banks began to recognize that minorities and women were part of an underserved market and quickly changed their business practices to comply with the law. As interest rates increased and fewer and fewer consumers were seeking credit, many lenders actively sought the business of the rapidly increasing numbers of career women—both married and single. Some lenders even sought to market loans and other financial products directly to women, producing advertisements that ran in women’s magazines that featured images of empowered and independent women.

Women also utilized their consumer power to demand changes at colleges and universities. The number of women in higher education surpassed that of men in the 1970s, yet women still represented a small percentage of faculty and the administration. The Higher Education Act of 1972 amended Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As a result, the new law is often simply called Title IXThe common name for a 1972 amendment to Title IX (section nine) of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The amendment prohibits the denial of participation in or benefits of any educational program receiving federal funds.. Title IX banned gender discrimination in any educational program or activity that received federal funding. Although the most visible aspect of Title IX has been the requirement of equal opportunities for participation in college athletics, the most significant outcome of the law is likely the vast increase in the numbers of women in professional, medical, and graduate programs. By 2011, women attended law and dental school in roughly equal numbers as men and represented a rapidly growing percentage of faculty and administrators in colleges and universities.

The new law was a product of the experiences of the bill’s leading sponsors: Oregon congresswoman Edith GreenAn educator and congresswoman from Oregon who authored and successfully guided several major bills regarding women’s rights and education through. Congress. Among these laws were the Equal Pay Act, Title IX, and the Higher Education Act of 1965, which became the basis for popular education programs such as federally subsidized student loans. and Hawaii congresswoman Patsy Takemoto MinkA long-serving congresswoman from Hawaii, Mink was also the first nonwhite woman elected to Congress. She was instrumental in passing a number of laws regarding education, as well as the Title IX Amendment, which now bears her name.. Green was the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and had influenced nearly every bill regarding education over the past two decades. Mink was a Japanese American who became the first nonwhite woman in Congress in 1965 and likewise secured a reputation as a leader of her party. Prior to her election by the people of Hawaii, Mink had experienced discrimination as an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska and challenged the racially segregated housing policies of that school. Mink graduated at the top of her class only to find that dozens of her applications to medical schools had been blocked because of her gender.

Leading women of color held a prominent role in the National Women’s Conference in Houston, but rank-and-file minority women continued to experience discrimination within the movement. Women of color responded by seeking balance between promoting and criticizing the predominantly white feminist movement. At the same time, they challenged white women to really consider what they meant when they spoke of liberation and equality. In 1977, the Combahee River CollectiveAn African American feminist group formed in Boston that chose their name to commemorate a series of Union army raids that were planned by Harriet Tubman and others. The raids disrupted plantations and freed slaves in coastal South Carolina during the Civil War. In 1977, the groups issued a statement describing the oppression of women as a synthesis of interlocking forms of oppression that encompassed gender but also race, sexual orientation, and other factors., a Boston-based African American feminist organization, issued the “Black Feminist Statement.” The women of the Combahee River Collective described the ways that race and gender combined to oppress black women in ways that made their struggle for equality unique from other women. The result of their message was that more and more feminists came to understand that that liberation required a multiplicity of voices.

Figure 12.14

Hawaii congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink was one of the leaders behind Title IX, a law that forbid gender discrimination in colleges and other educational institutions.

The feminist movement became more respectful of diversity than the larger society in the 1970s as feminists actively sought the perspectives women that reflected unique experiences based on race, sexual orientation, social class, religion, and ethnicity. The women of the Combahee River Collective labeled this multiplicity of voices “identity politics” and taught that women’s liberation could not be achieved by a movement that followed a top-down approach, discounted the perspectives of minorities, sought to minimize the participation of lesbians, or failed to consider the agency of women who held a variety of conservative religious views. Combahee was accompanied by meetings of Latino women and other groups, each agreeing that feminists must embrace a collective of movements rather than one message that was meant to apply to all women.

Differences of opinion regarding abortion and reproductive rights did not emerge suddenly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For many Americans, however, it may have appeared that the issue had only recently surfaced given the reluctance of Americans in previous generations to discuss the issue publicly. Responses to surveys are always troublesome measures if relied on completely. However, statistics derived from surveys can be helpful in tracking changes in public opinion. For example, 26 percent of respondents in a 1965 survey opposed abortion, even if childbirth represented a threat to the health of the mother. Only 8 percent of respondents felt this way in 1970. Similar surveys indicate that only half of the nation viewed premarital sex as immoral by the early 1970s, whereas three fourths of Americans opposed the practice a decade prior. Other surveys demonstrate that premarital sex and abortion were common prior to the 1970s, even if both had been largely confined to the unspoken fringe beyond polite society.

Because abortion was illegal prior to 1973, women desiring to terminate their pregnancies sometimes physically harmed themselves to induce a miscarriage. Others sought the services of unlicensed practitioners whose methods were often equally harmful. Wealthy women could afford to secure the services of a small number of experienced physicians who were willing to perform safe abortions outside of the law for the right price. The majority of women who sought to end their pregnancies, however, were those who lacked such resources. By the early 1970s, those who sought to legalize abortion were publicizing the tragedy of “back-alley” abortions that often harmed or even killed the pregnant woman.

Opponents of abortion were not unmoved by these tragedies. From their perspective, however, an abortion was not merely a medical procedure that terminated a pregnancy. Opponents of abortion believed that a fetus, even at an early stage of development, was a human life whose rights were equal to the mother. A key indicator of where one stood on the abortion debate was whether one chose to use the term fetus or child when discussing their beliefs on the subject. A second feature that was unique to the debate surrounding abortion at this time was the level of public participation. In contrast to previous decades when the subject was seldom discussed publicly, the debate surrounding abortion entered American life as never before as the Supreme Court considered its conditional legalization in 1973.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. WadeA controversial Supreme Court decision in January 1973 that invalidated a state law in Texas and legalized abortion throughout the United States under certain circumstances. legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. The court’s ruling, however, was far from the final word on the subject as attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade through local restrictions or a direct challenge to the Supreme Court decision itself remains a leading priority among many evangelicals. Given the sensitivities regarding the issue and concerns for both the privacy of women and the rights of unborn children, abortion remains a controversial subject and most politicians try to avoid public discussion of the issue. Scientific advances promoting new ways to conceive children also remain controversial, although the promise of in vitro fertilization for married couples that cannot conceive through natural childbirth has become widely accepted. In 1978 when the first “test tube” baby was born, many feared that natural childbirth would become outdated. This same technology has remained a source of controversy, however, when the conception process has been utilized by unmarried women or same-sex couples.