Sherri Finkbine was living the American dream in 1962. She was the host of a popular children’s television show in Phoenix, AZ, and her husband was a teacher there. Their suburban dream turned into a nightmare when Finkbine discovered that the sedatives she was taking during her pregnancy contained thalidomide, a drug that had been found to cause birth defects.
Sixty years ago, abortion was illegal all across America, and Finkbine had to fly to Sweden to terminate her pregnancy. Her case brought the issue of abortion into the national conversation in 1962, and it still resonates today, after the Supreme Court on June 24 overruled the Roe v. Wade decision that had made abortion legal in America for nearly 50 years after the high court passed it in 1973.
Finkbine’s 1962 flight to Sweden to obtain a medical procedure banned in her own country made headlines across America and around the globe. Though she was a kids TV celebrity in Phoenix who could afford to fly overseas for an abortion, Finkbine’s saga reminded this nation that many American women did not have the means to obtain safe and legal abortions in 1962. Doctors said that Finkbine’s baby would have had birth deformities and could not have survived, but Finkbine still received death threats from “pro-life” people, and she was fired from her television job.
Decades after her pioneering pro-choice struggle, Finkbine’s name was in the news again in 2016, when GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. Finkbine answered, “Just having an abortion for any reason is punishment, and I really challenge anyone to say a woman ever forgets it. It’s not something you do lightly.” Finkbine’s long struggle for abortion rights that was undermined by the Supreme Court 60 years after her ordeal is a history lesson for contemporary America.
In today’s America, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court seems hell-bent on changing the lawful into the awful. On Capitol Hill and in state legislatures across the country, “conservatives” claim that they want to protect unborn babies in the womb while they cut programs that would aid children once they are born into the world. Those on the political right who claim to support “generations yet unborn” on the abortion issue are often the same people who deny the harm that humans are doing to Earth’s environment today—harm that will be passed along to “generations yet unborn,” since the children of today will inherit this planet tomorrow.
The overruling of Roe v. Wade is a victory for American right-wingers who seem to yearn for a nation of forced prayer, forced pregnancy and forced patriotism. Though abortion laws have been repealed or reformed in recent years in such countries as Ireland, Argentina, Thailand, Mexico, South Korea and New Zealand, the United States took a step back to the bad old days of illegal and unsafe abortions after the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision.
Today’s political poseurs who claim the mantle of conservatism would do well to consider the wise words of Barry Goldwater, the crusty conservative senator from Arizona who was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and who died in 1998. “A woman has a right to an abortion,” said Goldwater. “That’s a decision that is up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the religious right.” Though he had longtime conservative credentials, Goldwater was for reproductive choice and for gay rights—positions which are anathema to many of today’s imitation conservatives. He warned his fellow Republicans about the rise of the religious right, saying, “Mark my words, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican Party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem.”
The “terrible damn problem” is here today in a Republican Party that makes a mockery of what Goldwater meant when he said, “I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state.”
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