Gloria Steinem

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Women's Choice
With Gloria Steinem
Activist and Author
Friday, Jan.. 18, 2002; 1 p.m. EST

Saturday at Lisner Auditorium on the campus of The George Washington University a benefit concert for the Voters For Choice Action Fund and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) will take place to celebrate the 29th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Ani DiFranco, Bruce Hornsby, John Popper from Blues Traveler and Joe Henry will unite for "An Evening of Music for Reproductive Freedom." Activist and author Gloria Steinem will be the host.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Gloria Steinem: As a non-Internet generation person I wish we could hear each other's voices, but I'm glad we'll be able to hear each other's thoughts.

Washington, D.C.: What is the connection between the Voters For Choice Action Fundand RAWA and this weekend's benefit concert? Where will the money go?

Gloria Steinem: The connection is shared purpose of self-determination for women but there is no organizational connection. The money will go to both of those organizations. The Action Fund trains and educates pro-choice candidates and elected officials in the U.S. from both parties and supports reproductive freedom -- that is, the right of the individual to decide when and whether to have children -- and the basic human right. RAWA is an organization of and for Afghan women that has been very brave and effective in fighting against the Taliban, specifically and against religious fundamentalism in general.

Arlington, Va.: How do the women of Afghanistan feel about abortion and abortion rights? Isn't their culture different?

Gloria Steinem: Yes, of course our cultures are different, but Afghan women used to be doctors and teachers and very much part of society and abortion was allowed under many circumstances and is now being restored. There was a recent news article about the restoration of reproductive rights. The point for women generally is not what the decision is but who makes it and the right of the individual woman to follow her own conscience and culture.

Washington, D.C.: What's the difference between pro-choice and pro-abortion and how do you identify?

Gloria Steinem: Pro-choice is the more accurate term because the idea of pro-choice people is both to allow the individual to make this decision rather than having the government force their decision on the individual but the problem with the pro-choice term is that it doesn't mention abortion and so may confuse people. Still, I prefer it because the point is to reduce the necessity of abortion by having sex education in the schools and easily available contraception. Unfortunately, the same organizations that are antiabortion often increase the number of abortions by opposing sex education and contracetion. Actually, abortion is self limiting whenever that is possible. I don't know anybody who gets up in the morning, "It's a nice day. I think I'll have an abortion." It is not a pleasurable experience. But it is sometimes the most moral, ethical and health and life saving choice.

Bethesda, Md.: Do you really think it's appropriate to have a celebratory concerts over the anniversary of a controversial court decision?

If social conservatives had concerts and fundraisers every July 2nd to show their joy over reinstatement of the death penalty, or every August 22nd over welfare reform, would that be appropriate too?

Gloria Steinem: Social conservatives and even moderates have celebrated welfare reform and the death penalty, both of which I disagree with. Look at the celebrations outside prisons on the very night of an execution. I don't agree with them but that's their right. It seems to me that to have a concert to celebrate the Supreme Court decision that has saved more women's health and lives than any other single law is very appropriate.

Mt. Lebanon, Pa.: As long as Congress and the Bush administration have a legal lock on the study and application of stem cell research, do women in the U.S. really have reproductive freedom? Are your cells yours or do they belong to some guy named George? Thanks much.

Gloria Steinem: That's a great question. I agree that there are sinister widespread efforts to patent and make profit out of everything from agricultural seeds to our own cells. In the Ukraine where stem cell infusions from pre-20-week abortions have been saving people's lives and health for almost 30 years, there is an example of using freely what nature provides instead of trying to artificially unite and grow stem cells in a way that can be patented but is still unproven. I think one day we will extend reproductive freedom into a larger principle called bodily integrity. The state will no longer have the power to invade our bodies, and each person will have the decision over their own bodies and material that comes from their bodies. Anything less than that is dangerous. If the state can keep you from having an abortion, it can also force you to have an abortion. To me, being pro-choice means going to the same lengths to keep any woman from being pressured into an abortion, or being pressured into selling or using her body, all of it or part of it, as to allow her to find a safe and freely chosen abortion, or otherwise to freely decide what to do with her body.

Alexandria, Va.: Ralph Nader used to say that if Bush banned abortion then it would make the Left stronger.

Do you think that during the 2000 presidential campaign Ralph Nader supporters attempted to help George W. Bush based on their delusional belief that a crackdown on abortion would radicalize the country?

What place do you see for the extreme left, i.e., Nader, the Socialist Workers Party, etc. in the coalition to keep abortion safe and legal?

Gloria Steinem: I didn't hear Nader say that, but I don't agree that making things worse is the path to making them better. I think the means are the ends. The ends reflect the means you use. That's why violence tends to beget violence, and should really only be used in self defense. I wouldn't consider Nader the extreme left. He's a consumer advocate, which is very important but is hardly a revolution. I think there's a positive role for all of us beyond labels as long as we act toward others with the same considerations we would expect. Sometimes the extreme right and the extreme left are inconsiderate by sacrificing people in the present in the name of people in the future. No one has the right to sacrifice someone else. If abortion is criminalized as may well happen with the next Supreme Court appointment by Bush, then women will be dead and injured for whom Nader and no one has a right to speak.

Washington, D.C.: Hello Ms. Steinem,

In the event that the Bush administration gets the opportunity to appoint a conservative justice to the bench, what would be our recourse to prevent the reversal of Roe v. Wade?

Thanks so much.

Gloria Steinem: We would have no legal recourse against the ultimate ruling of the Supreme Court except an electoral one and the long road to reversing that Supreme Court decision, but it's important to remember now that safe and legal abortions are already limited in this country by parental consent laws for young women, restrictions on federal health dollars for poor women, and many years of extreme terrorism against clinics and murders of clinic personnel. Besides this, Bush, who pretends to suddenly care about Afghan women, has instituted a gag rule internationally. It means that, if an Afghan woman is raped, and chooses not to bear the child of her rapist by having an abortion, even one paid for by her country's own funds, she invites the withdrawal of every bit of U.S. foreign aid that her country needs to desperately. This gag rule has been ruled illegal in this country, but Bush has imposed it on every other country in the world.

Washington, D.C: Thank you for all your energy and commitment to the feminist movement. I want to know if and how you work with young people to get them involved in women's issues and keep the movement going.

Gloria Steinem: I spend a lot of my time -- maybe several times a month -- speaking on campuses. I also work mostly with women younger than I, women of the Third Wave and with lots of programs like Take Our Daughters To Work Day and Girls Speak Out. But I'm not there to involve young women and girls, or to tell them what their issues are. They know that, they speak for themselves. I'm here to support them and to learn from them. Actually, there are more young feminists now than there ever have been before. It's just that women's pattern of activism tends to be the reverse of men. Women g et more activist as they get older and experience any qualities, so they tend to be more conservative when they're young and activist when they're older. Men tend to be rebellious when they're young and get more conservative as they get older. I don't mean everybody, I just mean statistically. That's because men gain power as they replace their fathers. Women lose power as they replace their mothers. But the age of activism is getting younger for women too, and one day those gender patterns will be gone.

Alexandria, Va.: You once interviewed Pat Nixon, and Mrs. Nixon kept insisting that you, Gloria Steinem, had grown up rich and pampered unlike Mrs. Nixon.

You tried to tell her that you grew up at times in poverty, but she insisted that you were a child of privilege.

What was that all about?

Gloria Steinem: I can't look into the mind and heart of Pat Nixon, but it felt to me as if she felt put upon, or even victimized, and so assumed that other people, especially from the media, were in a position of power over her. I tried very hard to make a human connection across that boundary, and I ended up feeling that I understood her better and liked her better than when I began. Still, I didn't succeed in changing her assumptions about me.

Washington, DC: Rural women, low-income women, young women, and women of color have barriers to access and even though abortion is legal, they don't have this "choice."

Do you agree that "pro-choice" assumes a level of privilege and does the movement for "choice" work for access?

Gloria Steinem: I agree that there are more restrictions by far on some women and there's really no choice without access. When we rate candidates as pro-choice that means they also support access for women and young women, that they support federal funding and oppose parental consent laws. Otherwise to me, they're not pro-choice.

Washington, D.C.:
Dear Gloria:

I'm pro-life or anti-choice as some would say. I really feel that one should not have a choice over someone else's life (the developing child's). Will any amount of evidence -if it could be produced convince you that a developing child is a child? Thanks.

Gloria Steinem: No amount of evidence will convince me that I could or should either force you to have an abortion or force you not to have an abortion. That's your decision. I hope you will give me and other women that same respect.

Washington, D.C.: Susan B. Anthony called abortion "child murder." Sarah Norton spoke of "the right of the unborn to be born." Elizabeth Cady Stanton called it "degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." Why have so many feminists today departed from the insights of these early women's rights advocates?

Gloria Steinem: I believe only the first quote was directed at abortion. Stanton was talking about men's ownership of children at the time, and I support the current version of that struggle which is children's rights. Children are not property to be owned by either parent. The atmosphere of the era in which Anthony made that statement was one in which abortion was dangerous. It was originally restricted by low not for moral reasons but for reasons of safety and infection. But in any case, we all have the power to state how we feel about abortion and to attempt to persuade each other. My objection is to laws that give the state that power. That turns women's bodies into the property of the state, which neither adults nor children should be.

Washington, D.C.: How do you view marriage, and how has your view evolved? As someone who feels comfortable in both non-traditional and traditional relationships, I'd like to know what marriage means to you.

Gloria Steinem: If I had gotten married when I was supposed to, I would have lost most of my civil rights -- my name, my credit rating, my legal residence, my ability to get a loan or start a business. Socially as well as legally, a married couple was one person and that person was the man. The womens' movement has fought for 30 years to change those laws, so that now an equal partnership in marriage is possible -- still not socially easy, but possible. So my attitude towards marriage has changed as marriage has changed.

I agree with you that we should be free to choose or not choose marriage, and the big remaining barrier to that freedom of choice is the inability of two women or two men to marry. That's because the state still says that marriage is about reproduction, even though a man and women can marry and choose not to reproduce. For myself personally, I didn't see the motivation or difference between living together and being married until I realized that the man I was in love with and I would not have the ability to, for instance, make a health decision for the otehr one if one of us was incapacitated. We wanted a commitment to each other, equal marriage is now legally possible, and so we did marry. It made me realize more deeply the unfairness of closing this choice to some and not others.

D.C.: Ms. Steinem,

What do you know about the original Jane Roe now working as an anti-abortion activist? She sounds a bit unstable to me.

Gloria Steinem: I don't personally know her, but she has changed her mind and seems to go where she finds the most personal support at that moment. That's her right.

Silver Spring, Md.: Did it ever occur to you that, oppression or not, true Moslem women oppose abortion and you may very well be upsetting them while attempting to give them this right?

Help the Afghan women, yes, force non-Moslem beliefs on them and you're asking for trouble.

Gloria Steinem: It's not my decision, it's theirs. As many Moslem women have pointed out, there is nothing in the Koran that forbids aborition , and some Moslem women support that right, some do not. There's also nothing in the Bible that opposes that decision. In fact, the Bible makes clear that a fetus is not a person, and someone who attacks a woman and causes her to lose a child should not be accused of murder. Nonetheless, some Christians interpret their religion as being anti-choice, while others say it's pro-choice. The same seems to be true of Moslems.

Gloria Steinem: I thank everybody for interesting and smart questions. I hope the fact that I happen to be answering them here just reinforces the need and right for each of us to find our own answers and to trust the unique voice that's in each of us -- and also to support it in others. I hope to see you at the concert on Saturday. It's going to be great -- and anybody who is worried about the future has only to listen to the lyrics of Ani DeFranco to know the future is in good hands.

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