Roe v. Wade and President Obama

Today is the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. For the past three years NARAL Pro-choice and other women’s rights organizations have asked us to blog on the subject of keeping abortion safe and accessible. Blogging on this subject is not a hard thing for me to do. There are so many sub-headings that fall under the pro-choice and women’s rights subjects. And as much as I would like to tell you some of the many stories in my personal experience, they have asked us to answer the question “What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?”

I think my main hope is that the President AND the First Lady take up the conversation of abortion and keep it active, defending it at every turn. With everyone listening so closely to every word they say I feel they have a unique opportunity to share their feelings as to why they are pro-choice. I think it is important to bring more African Americans into the conversation about abortion because of a documentary I saw exactly one year ago today.
“Silent Choices” is a film made by Faith Pennick, and I was lucky enough to watch the documentary and take part in a question and answer session with her after the film at Bennett College last year to celebrate Roe’s 35th anniversary. The documentary brilliantly points out that most of us currently working to keep abortion safe and accessible are young, white females. It’s not that African Americans are against abortion en mass, it’s just that we as Caucasians don’t understand how complicated the issues are and how deep the emotions go when it comes to abortion and African American women.

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t mean to imply that the emotions surrounding abortion are easy for any of us. They are not. The issues are unique, personal, and should be left to a woman and her doctor. We all know, however, that often things just aren’t that simple. There is peer pressure, family pressure, religious pressure, and as is now pointed out in the documentary “Silent Choices”, a great deal of historical pressure when it comes to the African American community. It is definitely a documentary worth taking the time to see.Now that we finally have an African American President in this country I believe we can widen the conversation about abortion to include women of every ancestry and color. Indeed, I believe that this presidency can help us widen the conversation on all issues where America is found lacking. And wouldn’t that be a wonderful legacy for President Obama to leave us.