DNC Day 4: Party that forgot the past seeks to not go back to it

It would have helped had they thought this way before Roe was overturned.

Much of the day’s official events weren’t focused on reproductive rights, though I missed a women’s caucus after seeing Tuesday’s session earlier. There also weren’t any events in the city listed on the Democratic calendar at demlist.com. 

Antiabortion protestors outside the arena had far less inflammatory placards near the entrance for attendees. While yesterday’s antiabortion demonstrated characterized abortion as murder and gay sex as a sin, today’s antiabortion advocates took a tamer approach by saying abortion wasn’t healthcare and then another sign that said “equal protection for all” with a fetus on it. 

Several prominent celebrities have expressed support for reproductive rights, including Eva Longoria, who produced a documentary for Netflix about the issue and a dramatic podcast about the Roe v. Wade decision that starred Maya Hawke and William Macy. 

One speaker, Anya Cook, told her story on stage about how she couldn’t get a potentially life-saving abortion in Florida in 2022 because of its ban. They told her to go home until the situation got worse. She miscarried in a bathroom. By the time she returned to the hospital, she had lost nearly half of her blood. 

“I can't change the past, but we can choose a different future,” she said. 

In her speech, Kamala Harris emphasized reproductive rights, which capped off her acceptance of the Democratic nomination. 

Many women are not able to make those decisions. And let's be clear about how we got here. Donald Trump handpicked members of the United States Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom, and now he brags about it in his words, ‘I did it, and I'm proud to have done it.’” 

Well, I'll tell you, over the past two years, I've traveled across our country, and women have told me their stories. Husbands and fathers have shared their stories of women miscarrying in a parking lot, developing sepsis, losing the ability to ever again have children, all because doctors are afraid they may go to jail for caring for their patients. Couples just trying to grow their family cut off in the middle of IVF treatment. Children who have survived sexual assault potentially being forced to carry a pregnancy to church.

This is what's happening in our country because of Donald Trump. And understand he is not done. As a part of his agenda,. he and his allies will limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion, and enact a nationwide abortion ban, with or without Congress.  And get this.he plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women's miscarriages and abortions. Smply put, they are out of their minds. 

She continued after the audience jeered. 

They don't trust women. Well, we trust women, and when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom. reproductive freedom, as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. 

I understand the Democratic Party has presented itself as a champion of reproductive freedom since the Dobbs decision, but why weren’t they more prepared before it? As most of the feminist leaders I correspond with know, I researched this issue two years before the Supreme Court overturned Roe. They had been working on it for decades. Countless other intellectuals and activists, both men and women, sought to slow the chipping away and incremental loss of reproductive freedoms until federal protections were utterly lost. 

They never sought to repeal the Hyde Amendment. There was hedging on conscience clauses. They shied away from challenging parental consent laws, though they were more willing to challenge spousal consent. 

So when the rallying cry at the convention is “we’re not going back,” and I’ve spent five years researching pre- and post-Roe abortion history, the irony struck me that we did go back to a certain extent, but now it’s worse than before. 

Before Roe, criminal abortion sentences in America called for at most three years in prison. Doctors were willing to perform abortions in situations where exceptions were called for after hospital boards approved them. They usually needed two psychiatrist evaluations if it was for mental health reasons, which are not permitted under most of the new bans. 

I remember a conversation I had with Sherri Chessen, where she relayed her experience in 1962 when she needed an abortion after taking Thalidomide accidentally after her husband brought it home from Europe. She had heard that the drug called deformities, and her doctor confirmed it. He arranged an abortion for her, but she thought to call the local newspaper in Arizona to tell them the dangers of the drug. Instead, they focused on abortion, which complicated matters, and then the doctors were unwilling to do it. She had to fly overseas to get abortion care after a media firestorm consumed her and her family in a situation where an abortion was needed. It’s, in part, what galvanized the second wave. 

Why wasn’t this history known and remembered by Democrats? Why is it still not known? Why do people say we won’t go back when they don’t even know what was before? 

This country has historical amnesia and illiteracy, and our progress is limited because of it. This week, I spoke with a woman who told me many young women don’t know what the ERA is. There are women I’ve taught at college who didn’t know abortion clinics were attacked in the 1980s. 

This isn’t crying over spilled milk. It’s an honest description of the state of our public. It’s holding leaders accountable for not being more than someone who checked a box. In the past few years, I’ve seen so many young people advertise themselves politically as reproductive rights champions simply to gain office. The extent of their advocacy is limited to an occasional post or tweet about how we should not permit men to make decisions about women’s bodies. That’s true of politicians of every race and religion. 

Now, I’m not going to spend this entire newsletter in recrimination. But I’m not someone who develops messaging. I write history and watch over the government as a journalist. I’m open about my pro-choice views, but that doesn’t mean my newsletter is meant to be advertisements for people seeking office, nor is it under the control of one, either.

Harris said we need to get past division in this election, but I don’t see any way around it if we’re being realistic. Half of the country doesn’t have faith in the electoral process, so if their candidate loses, I’m not sure how they’ll react. Whether Democrats win or lose, radicalism will take hold of the Republican electorate. There will be sectarianism. There will be antiabortion violence. Who will it target? Doctors? Pharmacists? Activists? Writers? 

I don’t think any of us have the solutions to problems that have been decades in the making and whose solution will take decades of effort with a radical adjustment in daily behavior on the part of most Americans. 

I will continue covering the ballot initiatives for the remaining three months of this election. I intend to travel to England and will report on its situation as threats exist to women there as well. You’ll have an honest approach where I tell you what I think and find out.