Katha Pollitt Quotes
When New York State decriminalized abortion in 1970 and thousands of well-off women started traveling there to obtain safe abortions while their disadvantaged sisters continued to risk death at home, the inherent unfairness of a legal patchwork was thrown into bold relief
Before abortion was made legal in New York State, most rich women who wanted abortions went to one of the Scandinavian countries where abortions were legal and safe. Poorer or even middle class women could rarely afford that. Throughout history, abortion has been readily available to the rich and upper classes, but not to the others in society until medical, safe abortions were legalized in various nations.
Katha Pollitt, Poet, Essayist and Critic, “Abortion in American History”, The Atlantic, May 1997
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Although abortion was illegal and condemned by virtually all elements of American society, it was practiced in numbers far in excess of anything that occurred after abortion had become legal. The economic and social pressure for abortion was the major driver of abortion then and has probably almost always been so.
His point was that if the Federal right to abortion was overturned, the states would have different laws. California would almost certainly allow abortion so rich women could fly there to have their abortions. Poor women would use Cytotec—a drug that causes abortion.
Vice President Quayle had criticized her TV sitcom, Murphy Brown for having the principal character bear an illegitimate child.
Italian women have been relatively inactive in political affairs. It took issues like abortion and contraception to galvanize Italian women into political activism. 50,000 women marched in this demonstration. Even though Italy is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and the Vatican is a major opponent of birth control and abortion, both soon become legal in Catholic Italy despite the opposition of the Vatican.
This quotation is one of the best examples of political flip flopping and expedience. The quotation taken by itself is not unusual and is the same position as political candidates in Massachusetts have taken for years regardless of political party. Romney was then running for the Senate—a race that he lost. Later he ran for Governor on the same position and won. However in 2008, he decided to run for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. However, at that time, the Christian Religious Right had sufficient clout within the Republican party that no one with Romney’s position on abortion would be likely to win the nomination. So Romney reversed his position on abortion and when accused of flip-flopping for political expediency, claimed that he had had an epiphany regarding abortion. However as this quotation shows, he had always believed that the personal abortion views of candidates should NOT be brought into the campaign. However along with his epiphany on abortion itself, he conveniently now claimed every candidate should constantly declare in his campaigning his position on abortion. He also flip flopped on many other issues including repudiating the Obama Health Care reform which was modeled after the very successful program he had supported when Governor. He changed on so many issues that even the Christian Right Wing Fundamentalists, whose political positions he espoused did not always trust him, nor did most of the moderates and liberals whose views he used to claim when it was politically advantageous to do so.
Katha Pollitt is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her writing focuses on political and social issues from a left-leaning perspective, including abortion, racism, welfare reform, feminism, and poverty.
