25 YEARS OF ABORTION DEBATE; ROE VS. WADE : CELEBRATE ABORTION RIGHTS BY REDUCING NEED.

Byline: Nancy Sasaki

AS the majority of Americans celebrate the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that recognized the right of individuals to control their fertility, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles has made a commitment to make the next 25 years about reducing the need for abortion.

Since the Roe decision was handed down, two warring factions in this country have engaged in the debate over abortion. Opponents of legalized abortion are often quoted as saying that organizations like Planned Parenthood contribute to the devaluing of human life. Nothing could be further from the truth. We envision a world where every child is a wanted child. We do more to prevent unintended pregnancy and abortion than all of our opposition put together. We maintain that Roe was about civil liberties.

There is a whole generation of young women in this country who have grown up in a world where the ability to control their childbearing is legal and seemingly accessible. Recent focus groups and surveys of young women in their late teens and early 20s, who are unaware of the way women lived before the Roe decision, have no idea the impact the decision had on moving women toward equality and don't see abortion as anything other than a cop-out for people who have acted irresponsibly, not because they had sex, but because they got pregnant.

So it's important that as we celebrate 25 years of legalized abortion in the United States, we all know what the real issue is. The Supreme Court does not make law. It interprets the Constitution. This is important because the court did not give women the right to abortion, it recognized a fundamental right of people to determine whether and when to have children as a private decision, not one for public debate.

Those who fought to have such a case brought to the Supreme Court and those of us who are still fighting today to keep abortion safe and legal called the decision ``pro-choice.'' These days people sometimes say the word ``choice'' is a euphemism for abortion. But choice means what it meant in 1973 - that a woman should be able to decide what is best for her in terms of a pregnancy and that no one else would be allowed to make that decision for her. You may believe that abortion is wrong, but if you also believe that you have no business making that judgment for others, that makes you pro-choice.

Part of why the word ``choice'' has lost much of its meaning is that young women today have no concept of what of what it was like where there was none. It was not until 1965 that the Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting contraception were unconstitutional, but only for married couples (Griswold v. Connecticut). Legislation barring unmarried women from accessing birth control was not struck down for an additional seven years.

A married woman had no way to regulate the number of children she wanted or could afford. A young unmarried girl was usually sent to a home for unwed mothers and the baby was put up for adoption. An older unmarried woman would marry the father if he agreed. If not, she was shunned by society and would even be fired from the job. Of course, all women had the option to face the odds and opt for an illegal abortion. Some women tried to self-abort, others went to a back alley and hoped that the instruments the ``doctor'' used were sterile, that he didn't puncture her uterus and leave her to die.

For women before 1965, neither their sexuality nor their fertility was their own. Griswold began the process, but it was not until the 1973 Roe decision that women were recognized as the moral equals of men, as people responsible enough to make such a decision.

And yet, 25 years later, less then 20 percent of counties in the United States have an abortion provider. The federal government, which does not subsidize day care while it pushes single moms into the work force, also does not fund abortions for indigent women. The unprecedented intrusion of the government to attempt to regulate one type of medical procedure (for late-term abortions) is two votes short of becoming law.

What's worse, the carefully crafted late-term debate has made even the staunchest supporters of choice move away from the idea of abortion as a broad constitutional right and rethink abortion in terms of reasons and timing.

The situation in this country threatens to take us back to the days before 1973, not because Roe could be overturned, but because the reality is that opponents of legalized abortion have successfully lessened women's access to abortion. They are successful in this strategy because most Americans don't believe there is any threat to abortion rights and don't believe access is limited.

However, the two sides of this issue have been engaged in a ``clash of absolutes'' since before Roe was ever brought before the courts. We agree with most Americans that the abortion debate is old. We are tired of spending time arguing, too. We have better things to do with our resources. While we will never stop advocating for the right of women to terminate a pregnancy, we at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles are committed to reducing the need for abortion through better education, better access to birth control, and a whole new way of viewing sexuality and contraception in this country.

Think about unintended pregnancy for a minute. Close to 60 percent of the pregnancies in the United States are unintended. We tend to think that unintended pregnancy occurs among teen-agers and the poor. The truth is teen-agers account for less than a third of unintended pregnancies. In fact, three-fourths of the pregnancies that occur to women over 40 are unintended. Married women account for 40 percent. Additionally, unintended pregnancy occurs to women across socioeconomic lines.

But let's take teen-agers as an example. Recent polls show that the majority of women begin using birth control after they enter into sexual relations. That is true for all women, not just teens. We expect our daughters to have discussions with their partners about contraception when we as adults are setting a very poor example. Teen pregnancy is not a problem of adolescents. It's an adult, societal problem.

People ask where is the common ground to end the abortion debate. It's here. The solution is education and better access to contraception. The answer is to demystify sex. Birth control should not be the responsibility of women. It should be the responsibility of every individual who does not want to conceive. Couples should discuss contraception before they begin sexual relations. Birth control should not be an afterthought because a woman didn't want to seem as though she were expecting sex or because we harbor romantic notions of being swept away. When we have come to this point in our society, there will be fewer abortions and people will not have the idea that abortion is used irresponsibly. It will be recognized as a part of our right to determine our fertility.

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Photo: (1--2) no caption (Abortion protests)