Does knowing the story of the people involved change how you think about the case? Did you learn anything new, anything that shifted your understanding or perspective? Those were the central questions of the Well-Read Citizen Book Club’s July discussion. The room included people on both sides of one of the most divisive topics in American politics, one framed either as the right to life or the right to choose.
The book club’s July read, The Family Roe, is no short tome, but reads like a novel of intertwining narratives that begins in Acadiana, Louisiana, a highly religious low country community where being pregnant outside of wedlock was hush-hush, and where mothers became much older sisters if they found themselves in the family way outside of wedlock. It’s what happened to a girl named Norma McCorvey, her mother, and grandmother. Most people know of McCorvey, but under the pseudonym Jane Roe. A 1973 United States Supreme Court case in her name has drawn lightning ever since.
In the fifty years between the book’s inception and the case, McCorvey’s three daughters grew up. Curiosity about their lives drove journalist Joshua Prager to pen the award-winning book, which tells the stories of McCorvey’s family, as well as those of Mildred Fay Jefferson, a prominent anti-abortion activist and the first Black American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Jefferson never had children, nor did she practice her specialty—surgery.
Prager also brings to life the two lawyers who argued on McCorvey and other women’s behalf, including prominent OB-GYNs who innovated procedures to make D&E and D&Cs, two of the surgical procedures used in abortions (and for miscarriages), safer than most other surgeries. One was murdered. He draws readers into the world of anti-abortion activists, including the founder of Operation Rescue, Randall Terry, as well as the woman who converted McCorvey to Christianity, the pastor who baptized her, and the priest who received McCorvey into the Catholic Church.
Prager’s book may not change minds, but it does provide a largely neutral, objective recounting of the people central to making abortion a cultural and political shibboleth for progressives and conservatives. It also acknowledges the nuance and complexity that most Americans consider when evaluating the health and roles of women in balance with the concept of personhood of fetuses.
Perhaps what’s more important is that our League hosts conversations on topics and issues with the goals of bringing people from different camps together. Discussions like these ask us to respect differences and cultivate understanding for counter perspectives.
In 2023, the LWVMC column noted that its platform hasn’t strayed much from where it was in 1972, just before the Roe v. Wade decision, but the Republican and Democratic party platforms have. You can read that here: bit.ly/41amsfb
What that column highlights is how much harder it's become to raise topics like women’s health or reproductive health - a matter that touches everyone - without the response polarizing us further.
The LWVMC continues to advocate for and support women’s health. Last week’s column raised the key issue that too few women can afford basic hygiene products for menstruation. It’s not a partisan issue. Church World Service, which inspired the LWVMC Reproductive Health Committee, regularly requests products that help women attend school, go to work, and fulfill their commitments at home. This week, we reiterate our invitation to contribute to period packs for FISH Food Pantry to distribute.
The pantry needs about 50 such packs each month. Packs cost about $10-12 for supplies and some volunteers to help divide the bulk products into individual packets.
You can make your donation here: https://lwvmontcoin.org/content.aspx?page_id=305&club_id=386632&item_id=13415. And you can join the LWVMC, its Well-Read Citizen Book Club—which is reading Lisa Genova’s Still Alice, a novel about a woman’s early onset Alzheimer’s disease, for its August 13 discussion—or its other committees, which provides multiple ways to increase unity in our community.