The Feminist Promise

by Christine Stansell

  61. The EEOC was able to intervene because AT&T was effectively doing business with the government and had asked for a rate increase from the Federal Communications Commission in 1970. See Herr, Women, Power and AT&T, pp. 146–48, 156.

  62. On the upshot of Lorena Weeks’s victory, see Feminist Chronicles, ed. Carabillo et al., pp. 58–59; Rabb, in Robertson, Girls in the Balcony. Frank’s case ended when the Supreme Court refused to hear Ivy Club’s appeal. Frank v. Ivy Club, A. 2d 1142 (N.J. Superior Ct. App. Div. 1988); 576 A. 2d 241 (N.J. 1990).

  63. Robertson, Girls in the Balcony, pp. 141–48, 199. See also Judith Coburn, “Women Take the New York Times to Court,” New Times, October 2, 1978, pp. 20–27.

  64. Wade interview, Women in Journalism Oral History Project, p. 68.

  65. Ibid., p. 191.

  66. Robertson, Girls in the Balcony, pp. 86, 181, 190. Professor Orley Ashenfelter of the economics department at Princeton did the statistical analysis.

  67. Shanahan interview 9, Women in Journalism Oral Project, pp. 164–65; Wade interview, ibid., p. 201; Robertson, Girls in the Balcony, p. 156.

  68. Robertson, Girls in the Balcony, pp. 185–86; Finding Aid, New York Times Women’s Caucus Papers, 1969–1986, Schlesinger Library. On Rabb, see Strebeigh, Equal, pp. 164 ff.

  69. Wade interview, Women in Journalism Oral History Project, p. 235.

  70. The named plaintiffs were Betsy Wade (copy editor), Eileen Shanahan (Washington correspondent), Louise Carini (accounting), Grace Glueck (art critic), Joan Cook (reporter, women’s section), Nancy Davis (classified advertisements), and Andrea Skinner (clerk in fashion section). On Carini, see Robertson, Girls in the Balcony, pp. 169–72.

  71. Shanahan interview 9, Women in Journalism Oral History Project, p. 179.

  72. Coburn, “The Times Avoids Trial,” New Times, October 30, 1978, p. 7. The large monetary settlements women won in discrimination suits against Newsweek and Reader’s Digest were the exceptions. See “Newsweek Charged with Sex Bias by 50,” New York Times, May 17, 1972, p. 34; “Time Inc. and State Agree on Job Policy for Women,” New York Times, February 7, 1971; Shanahan interview 9, Women in Journalism Oral History Project, p. 179.

  73. Quoted in Wandersee, On the Move, p. 110; unidentified newcomer in Robertson, Girls in the Balcony, p. 212; Coburn, “Women Take the New York Times to Court.” Outside the legal route, Media Women, which sponsored the invasion of Ladies’ Home Journal, adapted the women’s liberation tactic of exposure, public embarrassment, and denunciation to publish reports on the treatment of female employees inside news organizations and publishing houses. See Media Women’s Association, Rooms with No View: A Woman’s Guide to the Man’s World of the Media, ed. Ethel Strainchamps (New York, 1974).

  74. Channels in Detroit and Pittsburgh were among those targeted by NOW, which agreed to change programming and employment practices.

  75. “The Hen-Pecked House,” New York Times, August 12, 1970; Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism, pp. 263–64.

  76. Feminist Chronicles, 1953–1993, ed. Carabillo et al., p. 62.

  77. Post and Siegel, “Legislative Constitutionalism and Section Five Power,” p. 1985.

  78. Kerber, No Constitutional Right, pp. 169–70, 194; Biographical Note, Dorothy Kenyon Papers, Sophia Smith Library, http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss35_main.html; Hartmann, The Other Feminists, pp. 53–56. NOW’s legal committee, chaired by Marguerite Rawalt, was also set up to appeal cases, but NOW’s financial resources were much slimmer than the ACLU’s.

  79. John D. Johnston, Jr., and Charles L. Knapp, “Sex Discrimination by Law: A Study in Judicial Perspective,” New York University Law Review 46 (1971), pp. 675–76.

  80. Ginsburg, “Remarks for the Celebration of 75 Years of Women’s Enrollment at Columbia Law School, October 19, 2002,” Columbia Law Review 102, pp. 1441–48.

  81. Ginsburg, in Kerber, No Constitutional Right, p. 202. An account of the Hoyt case is in chapter 4.

  82. Ginsburg, in ibid., p. 204. Murray quoted in ibid., p. 190.

  83. Cowan, “Women’s Rights Through Litigation,” p. 389.

  84. See Nan D. Hunter’s analysis of the judges’ correspondence in Justice Blackmun’s recently opened papers in “Twenty-First Century Equal Protection: Making Law in an Interregnum,” Georgetown Journal of Gender and Law 12 (2006), pp. 141–69. See also Jane Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago, 1986), p. 49; Strebeigh, Equal, chapters 2–3.

  85. Feigen, Not One of the Boys, pp. 79–89; Brief of American Civil Liberties Union, Amicus Curiae; Oral Argument of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on behalf of Amicus Curiae, Frontiero v. Richardson, p. 855. Ginsburg’s oral argument can be heard on www.oyez.org/cases/19701979/1972/1972_71_1694/argument/. Although there was almost no women’s history to draw on, Ginsburg used the History of Woman Suffrage and took her Sojourner Truth quotes from Flexner’s Century of Struggle.

  86. Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677. At this writing the intermediate standard of scrutiny still falls short of the strict scrutiny given to the drawing of racial differences in statutes, although in practice the Court has generally invalidated statutes that discriminate on the basis of sex.

  87. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act provided that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions constituted unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII but it did not guarantee maternity leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 protected a worker’s job security should she take maternity leave or time to care for a sick family member but it did not provide for compensation. Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “Maternity Leave in the United States” (2007), www.iwpr.org/pdf/parentalleaveA131.pdf.

  88. For another assessment of feminism’s problems in the 1970s, see Alice Echols, Shaky Ground: The ’60s and Its Aftershocks (New York, 2002).

  CHAPTER TEN: POLITICS AND THE FEMALE BODY

  1. Cisler, “Abortion Law Repeal (Sort of): A Warning to Women,” Notes from the Second Year (1969), reprinted in Dear Sisters, ed. Baxandall and Gordon, p. 141. “The recent movement in the United States for liberalization of state abortion laws encompasses a great variety of issues and has made for strange bedfellows.” Moore, “Abortion and Public Policy,” p. 420.

  2. The Trustees of the AMA recommended in 1970 that abortion be treated as a private matter between doctor and patient. The position of the organization, however, was a compromise between liberals and conservatives (primarily Catholics), retaining the provisions of therapeutic abortion—that the procedure be performed in a hospital, and with consultation of two other physicians—but widening the reasons an abortion could be performed for other than medical reasons that accorded with a patient’s welfare and giving the physician considerable wiggle room. Garrow judges it essentially a pro-repeal position. Liberty and Sexuality, pp. 455–56. See also Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism, p. 290.

  3. For a list of items used to abort, see Cynthia Gorney, Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (New York, 1998). On rates, see Gordon, Moral Property of Women, pp. 15–16; Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (Berkeley, Calif., 1997), chapter 1, pp. 132–37, 209–14, and passim. Reagan points out that middle-class women had higher abortion rates than did working-class women, but the latter group “had a greater number of abortions because they were pregnant more often.” Ibid., p. 136 (emphasis in orginal).

  4. “Hardship cases” is the phrase of Garrett Hardin, used ironically. See “Abortion—or Compulsory Pregnancy?,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 30 (May 1968), p. 246.

  5. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, chapter 1.

  6. Hardin, quoted in ibid., p. 293. Hardin elaborated his views in “The History and Future of Birth Control,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (Autumn 1966), pp. 1–18; see also “Abortion—or Compulsory Pregnancy?”

  7. For an overview, see Alice S. Rossi and Bhavani Sitaraman, “Abortion in Context:
Historical Trends and Future Changes,” Family Planning Perspectives 20 (November–December 1988), pp. 273–81, 301; William B. Ober, M.D., “We Should Legalize Abortion,” Saturday Evening Post, October 8, 1966. Abortion in a Changing World: Proceedings of an International Conference Convened in Hot Springs, Virginia … 1968 by the Association for the Study of Abortion (New York, 1970), is a two-volume compilation of essays.

  8. Support came from unexpected quarters. For example, a survey of Mississippi physicians, a heavily white group not known for their liberalism by virtue of their race and residence, after the Roe decision showed very strong support for legalization. Typically, support was strongest for abortion when a woman’s life was at risk or in cases of rape, incest, or deformity, and tapered off thereafter, to just over a third when it was an issue of “financial strain on parents.” See Paul T. Murray and Herman Jew, “Mississippi Physicians’ Attitudes Toward the Supreme Court Abortion Decision,” Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association 15 (July 1974), pp. 291–94.

  On eugenics, see Connelly, Fatal Misconception, chapter 4; on the pill in Puerto Rico, see Gordon, Moral Property of Women, p. 287.

  9. Brenda Hyson, “New York City Passed New Abortion Law,” Black Panther, July 4, 1970; Gordon, Moral Property of Women, p. 290; Loretta J. Ross, “African-American Women and Abortion,” in Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle 1950–2000 (Berkeley, Calif., 1998), ed. Rickie Solinger, p. 180.

  10. Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York, 1979). Flo Kennedy, Color Me Flo, pp. 143–48, sums up the black feminist case against the genocide charge. For an example of a local group that defied the black power position, see Polatnick, “Diversity in Women’s Liberation Ideology,” p. 704; see also Myra McPherson, “MDs File Abortion Lawsuit,” Washington Post, September 30, 1969, p. B1. On Chisholm, see Ross, “African-American Women and Abortion,” in Abortion Wars, ed. Solinger, p. 183.

  Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote of giving a speech on sex equality and constitutional law in 1971 that did not mention the abortion cases then pending but nonetheless provoked a storm of questions from black men in the audience about abortion and genocide. “Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade,” North Carolina Law Review 65 (1984–85), pp. 376–77.

  I am indebted to Nicola Beisel for my understanding of mainstream black political support.

  11. Tillmon, in Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (New York, 2005), p. 215; Ross, “African-American Women and Abortion,” in Abortion Wars, ed. Solinger, pp. 181–84; Beal, “Double Jeopardy,” In Sisterhood Is Powerful, ed. Morgan, p. 349; Kennedy, Color Me Flo, pp. 143–48.

  12. National Catholic Welfare Conference, quoted in John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York, 2003), p. 235.

  13. Ibid., pp. 236–38.

  14. Ibid., p. 274; Marion Faux, Roe v. Wade: The Untold Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Decision That Made Abortion Legal (New York, 1988), p. 190.

  15. Roy Lucas, “Federal Constitutional Limitations on the Enforcement and Administration of State Abortion Statutes,” North Carolina Law Review 46 (1967–68), pp. 734, 741. Garrett Hardin pointed to this problem—a huge one—in “Abortion—or Compulsory Pregnancy?,” pp. 246–47. On the woman denied an abortion that was already approved, see Marion K. Sanders, “The Right Not to Be Born,” Harper’s, April 1970, pp. 92–99. On protecting physicians, see Eva R. Rubin, Abortion, Politics, and the Courts: Roe v. Wade and Its Aftermath (Greenwood, Conn., 1982), p. 26.

  16. Cook, quoted in 2000 in her obituary: Dennis Hevesi, “Constance E. Cook, 89; Wrote Abortion Law,” New York Times, January 24, 2009; McGreevey, Catholicism and American Freedom, pp. 274–76; Bill Kovach, “Final Approval of Abortion Bill Voted in Albany,” New York Times, April 11, 1970, pp. 1, 17.

  17. Faux, Roe v. Wade, pp. 188, 255–62; Melich, Republican War Against Women, p. 28; Brownmiller, In Our Time, pp. 132–33; Garrow, “Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade: An Historical Perspective,” Albany Law Review 62 (1999), pp. 833, 840; Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, pp. 384, 428–32; “Dr. Adriaan Frans Koome (1929–1978),” www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=2642H; “Marilyn Ward Recalls the Campaign to Reform Washington’s Abortion Law,” www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=2675; Hodgson, “The Twentieth-Century Gender Battle: Difficulties in Perception,” in Abortion Wars, ed. Solinger, pp. 300–301. Linda J. Greenhouse describes the challenges in New York that preceded legalization in “Constitutional Question: Is There a Right to Abortion?,” New York Times, January 25, 1970.

  18. See, for example, “The New Feminism/3,” Guardian, April 19, 1969, p. 11; Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism, p. 92.

  19. Faux, Roe v. Wade, pp. 192–93.

  20. Davis, Moving the Mountain, p. 165; Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism, p. 284. On Jane, see Garrow, Liberty and Equality, p. 361; Laura Kaplan, “Beyond Safe and Legal: The Lessons of Jane,” in Abortion Wars, ed. Solinger, pp. 33–41. On the technology, see Brownmiller, In Our Time, p. 106; Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime, pp. 224–27. Providers abandoned the old D&C method, performed with a surgical instrument, for vacuum aspiration, a simple procedure for first-trimester pregnancy that a paramedic could perform.

  21. Susan Brownmiller, “Everywoman’s Abortions: ‘The Oppressor Is Man,’ ” Village Voice, March 27, 1969; “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, February 22, 1969, pp. 28–29. The unsigned piece was written by Ellen Willis, the magazine’s rock critic, a Redstockings member who was at both evenings. The famous Redstockings protest was preceded by a now-forgotten action at a state hearing on reform on February 13. See Alfred Miele, “Gals Squeal for Repeal, Abort State Hearing,” New York Daily News, February 14, 1969.

  22. Roy Lucas’s foundational legal strategy described the client group in this way. Lucas, “Federal Constitutional Limitations,” pp. 730–78.

  23. “The New Feminism/3.”

  24. Hardin, “Abortion—or Compulsory Pregnancy?”; ibid., “The History and Future of Birth Control.”

  25. Brownmiller, “Everywoman’s Abortions”; Dr. Michael Baggish, in Kesselman, “Women Versus Connecticut,” in Abortion Wars, ed. Solinger, p. 57.

  26. The phrase “a woman’s right to choose” first appeared in the major East Coast papers in 1969. See Myra McPherson, “MDs File Abortion Lawsuit,” Washington Post, September 30, 1969, p. B1. In 1972, Women’s Abortion Action Coalition used the slogan to call for a march protesting the attempted rollback of the New York state bill: “Abortion Must Be a Woman’s Right to Choose,” New York Times, May 14, 1972, p. E5.

  27. Elizabeth Boyer, in Davis, Moving the Mountain, p. 67. The dissidents founded the Women’s Equity Action League.

  28. In Moore, “Abortion and Public Policy,” p. 419.

  29. Faux, Roe v. Wade, pp. 196–97.

  30. “AMA Abortion Position Legalized,” American Medical News, July 6 1970; “33,000 Doctors Speak Out on Abortion,” Modern Medicine, May 4, 1973, p. 31. The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology voiced no objections; its concern was with Roe’s ambiguity about the cutoff point for late abortions, and with the possibility that freestanding clinics might not be safe enough and hospitals might better be the prescribed venue. See Robert E. Hall, M.D., “The Supreme Court Decision on Abortion,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 116, no. 1 (May 1, 1973), pp. 1–8.

  31. Linda Charlton, “Women March Down Fifth in Equality Drive,” New York Times, August 27, 1970, p. l.

  32. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, pp. 426–27, 444–47. Bensing later remarried and as Sandra Bensing Cano became active in antiabortion politics, repudiating her part in Doe v. Bolton and claiming that her lawyer and family coerced her into an abortion. See Cano et al. amici brief in Gonzales v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914.

  33. Sarah Weddington, A Question of Choice (New York, 1992), pp. 51–53.

  34. Faux, Roe v. Wade, pp. 11–16, giv
es an excellent account of the first contacts between the lawyers and McCorvey. McCorvey, like Sandra Bensing, became active in the antiabortion movement. See www.leaderu.com/norma/; Weddington’s restrained account of McCorvey’s circumstances is in A Question of Choice, pp. 51–53; she notes that lawyer/client privilege prohibits her sharing confidential information. McCorvey’s account differs substantially.

  35. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, pp. 400–407; Faux, Roe v. Wade, p. 167. The initial challenge also included a physician plaintiff charged with providing an illegal abortion in Texas.

  36. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, p. 453.

  37. Nancy Stearns, “Roe v. Wade: Our Struggle Continues,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal 1 (1988–90), pp. 4–5; Rubin, Abortion, Politics, and the Courts, pp. 46–53.

  38. Hill, in Kesselman, “Women Versus Connecticut,” in Abortion Wars, ed. Solinger, p. 50.

  39. Stearns, “Roe v. Wade: Our Struggle Continues”; Rubin, Abortion, Politics, and the Courts, pp. 45–46; Kesselman, “Women Versus Connecticut,” in Abortion Wars, ed. Solinger, pp. 53–54, 60–61.

  40. A South Carolinian by birth, Lucas took the train to Washington in 1964 to hear Solicitor General Archibald Cox argue the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act in two cases from Atlanta and Birmingham before the Supreme Court. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, pp. 335–37.

  41. Lucas, “Federal Constitutional Limitations,” p. 756. Pilpel defended women from the Connecticut Birth Control League arrested in 1939 under an 1879 statute for distributing contraceptives at a clinic the organization established. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, pp. 67–69, 71, 334–39. On Lucas, see obituary, “Roy Lucas, 61, Legal Theorist Who Helped Shape Roe Suit,” New York Times, November 7, 2003.