This summer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) took 17 minutes to explain what it means to be a progressive to the audience Netroots Nation – a conference of thousands of likeminded activists – and not once did she say “abortion.”
As the crowd escalated into near-Beatlemania through screams and applause that seemed to echo off the ‘Elizabeth Warren for president’ signs waving through the air, her speech promised that her fight was “a fight over economics, a fight over privilege, a fight over power. But deep down it is a fight over values.”
She named a bevy of long-range and deeply controversial goals she said progressives are willing to fight for: financial regulation, living wages, preserving entitlements, equality legislation, and immigration reform.
It was the perfect moment to offer a full-throated vision of justice for women, one that recognizes that unfettered access to abortion is a cause for celebration as a matter of human dignity. That women must be in charge of their own health, humanity, and have power over their own lives – even if and especially when they are already pregnant.
But that is not what Warren did. Instead, the closest she came was when she began to close out her speech with an insistence “that corporations are not people, that women have the right to their bodies, that we will overturn Hobby Lobby.”
From a strategists’ perspective, she got the messaging perfect: Birth control is a mainstream value and not specific to the progressive movement. About half of the country disapproved of the Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations can assert religious beliefs and force their employees to pay upwards of $1,000 more per year for contraception (while paying full premiums into their insurance plans, no discrimination discount available). More than two in three women voters oppose allowing employers to opt out of the birth control benefit. Between the ages of 15 and 44 more than 99 percent of sexually experienced women have used at least one contraceptive method. Birth control is basic medical care and if five men on the Supreme Court don’t accept it, most women in this country do – progressive or not.
But more fundamentally, access to abortion — while harder to tackle politically — very much can and should be part of Warren’s cannon of progressive populist issues.
Progressivism affirms the role government can play as a force for good in people’s lives, especially in giving everyone a shot to prosper. Forcing women to complete pregnancies they do not want or that would threaten their health does not help them to flourish, no matter what the smiling pictures of babies supplied by the anti-abortion rights movement would lead you to believe.
Pregnancy and abortion are bread-and-butter, mainstream economic issues. Nearly one in three women will have an abortion by the age of 45. Whether abortion is considered or not, completing a pregnancy and having a child, including an additional child, can dramatically change a woman’s employability, financial status, and ability to provide for herself and her family. This is a distinction that voters get, and progressives should hammer home: A new poll commissioned by the National Institute for Reproductive Health shows that 62 percent of voters in Pennsylvania think laws that make it harder to access abortion can have a negative impact on a woman’s financial stability.
What’s more, bodily autonomy is a human right — that includes sexuality and the sheer joy of sexual pleasure, which shouldn’t be the exclusive province of men. Nor should it be extended only to women with the economic resources to buy their way out of a national reproductive health care crisis wrought by restrictions upon abortion. Yes, birth control can be effective, but even perfect access to contraception could never end the need for abortion. Women should be able to have sex, end pregnancies if they want to, and have control over their own futures. These are progressive values.
As a bloc that champions the moral obligation society has to support the have-nots, progressives have a special role to play in ending abortion funding restrictions. Make no mistake: abortion funding bans are as insidious as headline-grabbing laws that ban abortions, close clinics, and force needless obstacles upon patients and providers.
Abortion funding bans do not change the minds of women who have decided abortion is best for them. Rather, they tell women with fewer resources, especially women of color, that their decisions don’t count and their futures will be dictated and enforced by others. By targeting those who can least afford to bear children, abortion funding bans have the power to turn cycles of poverty into tornadoes that tear through generations. This is not what a progressive vision of America looks like.
Making change requires that progressive leaders talk about expanding abortion rights eagerly, often, and as an interlocking effort with other economic, racial, and social justice initiatives. This is not something that is implied by defending access to contraception. Nor is it something that can be ushered in effectively through code phrases like “protecting the right to choose” or “defending women’s rights.”
In Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Katha Pollitt argues that abortion is good for society. Progressive political leaders should take a page from this book. They must say the “abortion” word out loud and with pride, because it is a common practice no one should be ashamed of and because wide availability to abortion strengthens women’s lives and the opportunities available to them. To the extent this is a culture war – a stigmatizing term designed to turn discussions to other ‘serious’ economic issues, i.e., the economic struggles facing everyone but people who have sex – it is a culture war of the most important kind: meaningful opportunity for all.
Abortion is something progressive leaders must be willing to say. To paraphrase Sen. Elizabeth Warren, it should be something progressives are willing to fight for and win.
Ironically enough, a September piece in The Daily Beast suggested that the Democratic Party is struggling with infighting between a progressive “Elizabeth Warren wing” and an “establishment” wing represented by organizations like EMILY’s List, which explicitly aims to elect pro-choice women candidates. (EMILY’s List endorsed Warren.)
“Obviously it is important to have women’s voices in the room when policy decisions are being made, and we have a substantial way to go on that, but in a Democratic primary, the biggest debate is going to be between the Elizabeth Warren wing and the establishment wing,” Robert Borosage, founder and president of Campaign for America’s Future told The Daily Beast. “And their screen doesn’t take those distinctions into account. They are explicit about that, that they aren’t on the progressive side.”
This is a false frame, one that pits the universe of economic issues faced by people who can’t become pregnant against the universe of economic issues faced by people who can.
It’s also inaccurate. Women may get talked quite a bit during elections, but they are hardly the establishment in the elected leadership of the Democratic Party. Women in both parties hold less than one of five seats in Congress!
David Freedlander, the article’s author, made the especially fuzzy claim that “the Democratic Party has largely coalesced around issues of abortion rights.” If by coalesced we mean the practice of each year authorizing a budget with abortion funding restrictions with nary a peep of protest (a practice in direct conflict with a party platform that explicitly affirms abortion rights “regardless of ability to pay”), then okay.
Because of messages like these, because of policy failures like these, and even more because of the greater moral leadership provided by Warren and the progressive movement she represents, it is critical that leaders like her embrace the A-word, and it is critical for the Netroots-style base to give them robust applause for doing so, even if other issues are what most drive them.
A brief response to some likely criticisms of this piece from those who consider themselves supporters of reproductive rights: Yes, Warren is pro-choice. No, the Hobby Lobby case wasn’t about abortion. Neither is giving “women … the right to their bodies” an embrace of a stigmatized word and procedure. It’s not strategically stupid to talk about abortion from the left on the brink of a critical election. We are always on the brink of a critical election. Even those most electorally minded should consider that half of respondents to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released October 19 say their views are closer to Democrats on the issue of abortion; only a third say that for Republicans.
And about that donkey in the room: Yes, it sounds like Warren is beginning to change her posture toward the repeated calls that she run for president to present a progressive alternative to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In fact, asking more from her now is the best thing supporters of reproductive rights could do for both theoretical candidacies. Whether it’s asking Warren to run or asking her to become an abortion champion, you don’t get what you don’t ask for – and she might be able to nudge Clinton away from her stigmatizing mantra of “safe, legal, and rare.”
As a rock star within the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as a whole, Warren has been traveling the country stumping for Democratic candidates. It may well be the case that she says the word “abortion” during those visits, especially when standing beside candidates such as Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), who has made support for abortion rights a centerpiece of his campaign.
Let’s hope a full-throated embrace of abortion makes it into her next national speech.
Erin Matson is an organizer and writer. She has served as an editor at large for RH Reality Check and a vice president of the National Organization for Women.
