Meet Sara Paretsky

How did you first become aware of reproductive rights?

I grew up in the ’50s, in Kansas, so we didn’t really talk about it.  But there used to be this TV show, Run for Your Life, starring Ben Gazzara.  I remember an episode with a young woman, about 16 or 17 years old, who had an illegal abortion.  This was in 1968 or ’69.  The doctor turned out to be an evil person, who, I think, Ben Gazzara killed.  It may seem silly, now, but this was my introduction to abortion. 

It came at time when young women were first taking the pill in large numbers, and I was becoming sexually active myself.  That scene made it possible for me to talk to women my age about abortion.  And in my milieu, my upbringing, you never talked abortion to anyone.

That’s one reason I feel so vehement today, especially with abstinence-only programs handing out so much misinformation.  It puts young people back where we were 40 years ago, when this was so taboo, when you were swayed by the strongest voice speaking, instead of by the facts.

Later, I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago.  The Jane Network [a secret, women-run abortion service that flourished in the Midwest before abortion was made legal] was operating then.  I was never part of it, but women I knew did work in it.  At that point, I became an active advocate and was trained as a lobbyist to try to overthrow the Illinois laws limiting birth control and access to abortion.  Then came Roe and we disbanded, thinking our job was done.  Little did we know what lay ahead.

In your book, the chapter on reproductive rights opens with the story of your roommate in New York City, who nearly died from a botched, coat-hanger abortion, just as abortion was becoming legal in New York.  How did that experience shape your views on reproductive rights?

That was 1970.  I had found, through a friend of a friend, a room in an apartment to share with this woman who was just about to start at the Columbia University School of Journalism through a minority program.  When she found that she was pregnant, even though abortion was going to be legalized soon — I think July 1, that summer — she was afraid that if she showed up at school pregnant, every negative stereotype about single black women would be held against her throughout the program. 

I offered to go with her, but she chose to go alone, and I don’t blame her — we didn’t know each other.  But when she wasn’t home by 11 p.m., I started to worry.  I called around and I found her at, I think, Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital.  She had passed out on the sidewalk, hemorrhaging, and some Good Samaritan had sent her to the hospital in a cab.

She was treated so horribly by the hospital staff — like dirt, like everything she was afraid of about school.  And I think she was right — if she had been pregnant in the middle of the journalism program, if she had waited for abortion to be legal, she would have been into her second trimester, and would have had to take extra time off.  Based on how she was treated in the hospital, I don’t think she would have been treated fairly at school.

The experience made me much more committed to reproductive rights.  I know it’s not popular to say you’re for abortion, and of course I’d prefer that people only got pregnant by choice.  No one decides this besides the woman, with the help and support of her medical practitioner.  No one else has a vote on this as far as I’m concerned.  And it seems to me that what is at the heart of the issue is this:  Are women adults, or are we children who can’t think or reason or make moral choices?

That was the 1970s.  Thirty-five years later, has the meaning of reproductive rights changed for you?

In the early ’70s, as young people, we felt an enormous amount of optimism when looking at women’s lives and the lives of people of color and the issues that the country faced, so much optimism in being able to make change for good.  I think I was taken by surprise — I shouldn’t have been, but I was too naïve — at the real virulence behind the attacks on women.  Race is still a very serious problem in this country, but the dialogue is muted.  Somehow it’s still “OK” to attack women publicly.

Maybe it’s because I’m a grandmother now; my granddaughter is 12.  I want her to have a life in which, as much as possible, all doors are open to her, so she can move forward without fear.  But with the sadism toward women in film today and the rage toward people who question those stereotypes, it’s like saying, “No, we’re gonna keep you in these boxes.”

What does Roe mean to you?

Roe to me stands for providing the protections of the 14th Amendment to women as well as to men, to say that we are full citizens, that we all full human beings.  It’s back to what I was saying before, “Are women adults, or are we children who cannot make moral decisions?”  Roe says yes we can.

What does Planned Parenthood mean to you?

Planned Parenthood is an amazing organization.  I think Planned Parenthood stands for helping people make the best choices for themselves and their lives around the issues of pregnancy and childbirth.  To me, it doesn’t stand for abortion or even contraception — although it matters very much to me that Planned Parenthood supports these things.

Fay Clayton was the lawyer who did pro-bono work for the National Organization for Women v. Scheidler case [which involved using a federal racketeering law to protect reproductive health clinics from unlawful blockades and violent protests].  When, after years and years of stalling and obstacles, we finally got a court date, the federal bench put the case in the northern district of Illinois, which has a very conservative jury pool —mostly blue collar, Catholic.  When Fay was researching that area, what she found was that in this very Catholic, blue collar part of the country, 70 percent of the population had a very high image of Planned Parenthood — that it was a reliable place to get information about your body and reproduction.  That’s not all that Planned Parenthood is about, but it’s a significant chunk of what it’s about.  And it makes me really happy to support an organization that has that value at its core.

Final thoughts?

One of the things that we sometimes talk about — my friends and I — is trying hard not to be cautious about labeling ourselves as feminists or speaking publicly about our support for reproductive rights.  The public discourse has been shanghaied by a small but effective group of bandits who have made men and women who feel strongly about reproductive rights feel cautious.  We set ourselves a challenge, not to be aggressive and confrontational, but to make our position known.  That’s how we make a difference.