DNC Day 3: Abortion behind the scenes, center stage

Oprah Winfrey linked civil rights movement to the fight for abortion rights

(Antiabortion protestors demonstrate outside the arena on Wednesday. Though that was only a few people, a much larger protest march was focused on the situation in Gaza)

Feminists discussed reproductive rights at a mixer held by the National Organization for Women on Wednesday at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. 

I had pleasant conversations in which I relayed details about my book and the interviews with Mary Jean Collins and Patricia Ireland. The first was vital in building chapters in the Midwest, and the second led the organization in the 1990s. 

One of the more interesting people I met was Anji Gandhi, an assistant prosecutor from Jefferson City, Missouri. One of the amicus briefs filed in Moyle v. United States dealt with how the abortion bans had complicated the jobs of district attorneys and their staff. 

Gandhi told me another aspect of criminal justice that hadn’t been mentioned in that filing. When a woman needs an abortion after rape, the fetus then becomes evidence against the accused person. Before Dobbs, that was a lot easier to do. Now, the woman goes to another state to get an abortion, and prosecutors from Missouri have a more challenging time getting the evidence they need because it’s not within their jurisdiction. I plan on interviewing Gandhi for a later newsletter about this to explore it further. 

I also spoke with Christian F. Nunes, the organization's current president. As I wrote about yesterday, abortion politics has shifted how candidates pursue power in the general and primary contests. Before, they sought to get through the Democratic primary, convincing feminist leaders they would advance their cause, only to have the candidate downplay the issue in the general election because political operatives advised them it would lose votes. 

Nunes said that she felt some of the new abortion politics was expedient but that much of it was also sincere.

“You might have some who are doing that, but I think overall, we're going to see more people who are now understanding and more educated about abortion care and abortion access, who are also understanding the importance of letting women have bodily autonomy and have body sovereignty,” Nunes told me. 

I hope to speak to Nunes more about her plans for how the national organizations will support grassroots activism, particularly in Texas and the South. 

Outside the United Center, where the speeches were held, antiabortion protestors held signs comparing abortion to murder and saying gay sex was evil. 

At the convention, former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and current President Alexis McGill Johnson implored the attendees to support abortion rights. I attached their speeches below, courtesy of the Austin American-Statesman and PBS Newshour. 

The main program began with a speech from Bill Clinton that spoke generally about Trump and his political philosophy, which Clinton characterized as self-centered. Other prominent leaders, including Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Josh Shapiro, and Wes Moore, followed him. 

Of the remaining people who took that stage, Oprah Winfrey’s speech most directly addressed abortion rights. 

“The women and men who don’t want us going back to a time of desperation, shame, and stone-cold fear, they are the new freedom fighters, and make no mistake, they are the best of America,” Winfrey said. 

I’m going to tell a story that connects the two movements. As the Supreme Court considered the Dobbs case in 2022, I planned a trip to Jackson, Mississippi, to write about an abortion rights protest organized by two reproductive justice organizations. Its speaker and organizer, Michelle Colon, alluded to Sojourner Truth in her address to the crowd. 

I wrote a newsletter about the protest and how there was agreement among white women and black women about abortion rights in the state, but how white women feared being stigmatized for openly supporting it in socially conservative communities. My goal was to show how their coming together could change the politics in the state to support women’s issues and the Democratic Party’s platform, which generally supports poor people, at least in rhetoric. 

There was evidence that movement was happening after the Dobbs decision came down. Mississippi political bosses had to figure out a way to drive apart white women and black women so there wouldn’t be a viable threat to their power. 

Around that time, there was a scholarly breakthrough in the Emmett Till case. In Mississippi in 1955, Till had been brutally lynched after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, accused him of whistling at her. Police suspected her husband. His death and the shocking photographs of his open-casket funeral galvanized the civil rights movement. 

It’s the most researched cold case in black history. Virtually every detail of it was known, every piece of evidence had been found, and most of what we knew had been written about in countless books and displayed at the National Museum of African American History. 

That summer, a researcher unearthed the arrest warrant for Bryant. It was found in a file at a courthouse. Somehow, that vital evidence had eluded every researcher–some of them among the most talented in the world–before that moment. Interviews with Bryant then came out, in which she detailed her memory of Emmett Till. It was inflammatory and angered the black community. White women in Mississippi felt defensive. 

What do I think happened? 

Some old political boss, likely approaching 90, was around when Emmett Till was murdered. He knew Bryant, her husband, and everyone in town, including the cops. Some officers probably approached him with the arrest warrant. He said don’t bother her. He took the arrest warrant and kept it hidden away. And then the moment came to share it. So, he placed it where someone would find it to trigger the political reaction he wanted. 

Though racism is implicitly supported there, it is no longer the most explosive issue. White supremacists in the state have primarily kept power through being antiabortion. My guess is the goal was to drive black and white women apart by bringing up Emmett Till and then creating natural distrust. A winning political coalition couldn’t be built that way. There would be political segregation. 

So yes, the two movements intersect. The same people who were against integration are also against a woman’s right to choose. That’s why I am all for empowering and supporting our local activists and trusting them to come up with solutions and not simply follow orders from someone not facing that reality. They’re the ones who are on the frontlines against people like this. 

It’s these types of people we’ll deal with when we move to the next phase–the painstaking shifting of abortion attitudes in states like Mississippi, Texas, Idaho, and Indiana. It’ll be dangerous. People may die. But, like those who traveled on buses throughout the South, it’s something we’ll do. It’s something we must do. 

I’ll have more on the final night of the convention. Stay tuned.