When I read Micheal Winerip's New York Times article Where to Pass the Torch? I realized that this article was directed at me. I was born in 1973 and I have always known life in the U.S. post-Roe. And for most of my adult life, I have been hearing my mother's generation complain that my generation and those after me take abortion access for granted, that we don't appreciate it because we didn't have to fight to see it legalized.
We've had plenty to fight for all our lives, and we've never thought abortion access was a guarantee.
It has NOT been all roses and rainbows since 1973. The struggle for female bodily autonomy has continued, if not heightened over my lifetime. My earliest memory of anything remotely abortion-related was when I was 11 years old, on my way to the natural history museum in Houston and we had to drive through a giant anti-abortion rally in Hermann Park. I remember passing the angry adult faces and the small children with them, carrying signs with ugly messages of hate. I didn't quite understand what they were protesting, but I knew that I didn't want to be a part of whatever it was.
I have never taken abortion rights for granted because throughout my lifetime, they have always been at risk. The threat has been visible; it is felt. And I don't doubt that the women who have come of age after me feel the same.
I've been hearing for years about how the anti-choice movement has done such a great job of engaging youth. I refuse to believe that is because their message is so much more appealing, but perhaps it is their approach. After college, I worked for a pro-choice organization and I could not have been happier about it. But soon it became apparent that my young co-workers and I were not going to be treated like adults capable of taking over the reins of an agency one day. We were coffee fetchers. I left that job after barely a year because I had too much love for myself to stay in a place where I wasn't treated with respect, especially when that job had me working more than 60 hours per week for $18,000 a year with zero benefits. It broke my heart to leave what I thought was my dream job: getting paid to fight for women's reproductive rights.
Does the post-Roe generation care? Yes. They absolutely care. I see it all the time. They're working in the clinics and in nonprofits for little pay and they're stepping up to volunteer, to speak out. They're in the streets, on campuses, in their communities and they aren't invisible. They are starting abortion assistance funds and raising money to help women who can't afford an abortion, usually devoting countless volunteer hours to the cause. I hear about how medical schools are not teaching abortion, but then I see groups of young med students organizing Medical Students for Choice chapters in their conservative schools and demanding clinicals in abortion procedure. I see law students starting Law Students for Reproductive Justice chapters and getting their administrations to offer reproductive justice courses. Young people are out there fighting for our reproductive rights everyday, but they have to be treated with respect, as adults and as leaders. They will carry the those torches, especially if we make it viable for them.
Even for those young people that would like to work in this movement, it is not always possible. It is important to remember that higher education is becoming more and more expensive and students are leaving with greater student loan debt than even before. In the years since I graduated, private loans have become more pervasive, and university financial aid offices seem to be pushing them at every turn. With the higher interest rates and resultant staggering student loan payments, this leaves quite a burden on young, college-educated people who would like to devote their lives to social justice work. They want to make the sacrifice, but when you get out of college with tens of thousands in student loan debt, it's not always possible to work for the poverty wages that many abortion-related jobs pay.
And this applies to even those with professional certifications, like nurses. A friend of mine recently struggled with a negotiation to get a local clinic to pay her the going rate for a nurse at an abortion clinic, which was still below what she could make somewhere else. And non-professionals are paid even less. Of course clinics and nonprofits are limited by many factors, but sometimes I truly believe they could pay living wages if they made the effort. I was once told by a clinic employee that she thought the director was more interested in finding people to work as cheaply as possible than in finding qualified employees. And a director of a pro-choice agency confided in me that she wanted to hire a college grad because "I can get him cheap."
I agree with the article that becoming an abortion provider carries additional burdens, such as the threats on your life and the loss of privacy. Those are factors that we can't always control, but we can control the other aspects of the environment to a certain extent. We can make these jobs viable options for young people, by valuing them and their work in various ways, including compensation and benefits. And I've found that the more respect someone is given, the more they are willing to sacrifice some creature comforts to do the work.
Regardless of the low wages and few tangible rewards, the post-Roe generation is still stepping up to the plate and doing all they can to protect reproductive freedom and make it accessible to all. So, to the Sally Burgesses of the world I say keep your torches. We've already lit our own.
