1973 February 4

“Women’s Lobby” Adjusts Lobbying Priorities in the Wake of “Roe”

 

The New York state “Women’s Lobby” is in the process of revising its political agenda and legislative priorities, according to a story in the New York Times on this day. A coalition of various women’s groups had formed with an abortion-defense agenda prior to the historic Roe v. Wade decision on January 23, 1973. The victory for abortion rights in Roe evidently caught many feminist leaders in the state off-guard, and they are now working to put together a common agenda.

Most feminists in the state, according to the article, regard day-care as “the next big women’s issue.” Other important issues include having pregnancy and childbirth as “temporary disabilities;” no-fault divorce; removing marital status from credit cards; removing all restrictions on access to contraceptives, even for 14 year-olds. Several feminist leaders, however, said that divorce law reform was very complex, with no consensus at this point.

Members of the New York state “women’s lobby” (which the Times placed in quotation marks, suggesting that the paper regarded it as something unusual) included state chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the New York Radical Feminists, the women’s project of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the women’s law clinic at New York University Law School.

Learn about abortion in America before Roe: Linda Greenhouse and Riva Siegel, Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling (2010)

Learn more: Gail Collins, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (2009)

View a timeline of the history of abortion in America: http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/history_abortion.html

Learn about the ACLU Women’s Rights Project here

 

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