As for Kissling's piece, Smeal said, "You saw what I said [in the Village Voice]." She continued, "Frances is not changing the discussion." When told that several other pro-choice advocates had spoken warmly -- if tentatively -- about Kissling's essay, Smeal said: "Personally, I think I know the leadership of this movement; I know this movement very well. And we are focused on keeping women's fundamental rights for reasons of her survival. Of course we are moral, feeling people. We're mothers and grandmothers and social workers and teachers and nurses. This isn't new."

"The polls have been the same for 30 years," Smeal said. "And in reality, so is the debate. At various stages someone says something that seems different for two minutes and then you realize that it's just more of the same, like the church's stand that abortion is immoral."

It's true that the movement has always implicitly included personal ambivalence about abortion under its "choice" umbrella. Starting with Margaret Sanger's assertion that every child should be a wanted child, family-planning advocates have always been family-friendly -- in theory. But backed into a corner, forced to defend a hard legal line that cannot afford gray areas, they have sometimes found it easy to confuse "pro-choice" with "pro-abortion."

Smeal is right that Clinton, Dean and Kissling are not exactly talking revolution. But she may also have an investment in behaving as if nothing new is being said. Clinton's dropping of the term "common ground" with reference to right-to-lifers in the wake of the election, in a media climate where all anyone can write about is the left's attempts to make inroads into the red states, is surely calculated. This is gift-wrapped for the press for maximum exposure and impact. And that impact could alter perceptions about the strength and cohesion of the pro-choice movement -- just as it must fight for pro-choice judges and address the possibility that Roe could be overturned and the abortion decision sent back to the states. It's a moment when perceived signs of discord are not good. As Smeal stressed with exasperation, "I feel like I'm chasing at windmills. Ever since the election, the press has been determined to start infighting on the liberal side."

She also pointed out a very real danger in the "make abortion rare" Clinton speak: Nothing is going to change unless contraception becomes cheaper and more readily available to everyone, and that looks increasingly unlikely. While Smeal and her supporters advocate over-the-counter sales of birth control pills and emergency contraception, several states have recently passed laws that allow pharmacists who don't believe in contraception to refuse to sell it to consumers.

As she considered the impact of a morality debate on the movement's ability to focus on more pressing medical concerns, Smeal became nearly apoplectic. "We're sitting around saying, 'Oh, is she a good girl or a bad girl?' It's sad for [some women], so they talk about morality when children in homes for unwanted children don't have clothing? I think that's sick. Children are naked and we're not doing anything about AIDS or clean water ... So basically, I'm sick of reading about this. Am I a moral person? Come on! I was raised a Catholic! I was raised with this theology!"

Smeal's point here is compelling. Even if there were no legislative risks to pursuing questions of reproductive morality, doesn't it lay an additional burden on women who choose to abort? Why should we bring good-girl/bad-girl questions of guilt into it? Kissling's argument -- not in response to Smeal but in our earlier conversation -- is, "Women are already having this conversation with themselves ... Do you think women don't know there is something inside them? Duh. Come on. Do you think they are not bombarded with talk that is moralistic and negative every day? Do we not have something better to offer them in the way of moral framework? Women are dealing with this, and I don't think we should infantilize them."

Kissling also said, warning that she knew this response might sound "a little harsh": "I don't think that the right to choose abortion or the right to be treated as an autonomous empowered woman means you are entitled never to hear anything that might be troubling ... Life is not without its complexity ... In critical areas of moral inquiry we have to speak the full truth."

Asked whether the women's movement needs to make changes, Smeal said, "What the women's movement needs to do is put women back in the picture and put girls back in the picture. Because if [abortion becomes illegal again] girls and women will be maimed, they will die, they will be hurt, they will suffer needlessly."

Amy Richards, co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation, an organization of younger feminist activists, wrote in an e-mail, "Sadly ... the reaction to Clinton's remarks and Kissling's proposal seems to be resistance to understanding the current state of things, which is an evolution of abortion rights, not backpedaling." Later by phone she said that Smeal "and the other leaders of the pro-choice movement need to listen more to their constituents and what they're saying. I think she and they lived in a time when abortion was illegal, so they can only foresee two scenarios: legal and illegal. But now there is confidence -- which they might describe as naiveté on the part of younger women -- that no one is going to take the right to an abortion from them."

Richards said that years ago, when approached by someone who asked her if it was possible to be pro-life and a feminist, she said "absolutely not." "That's because I interpreted being pro-life as being anti-women's choices," she said. "But what people were really saying is, Can I be a feminist and be someone who is conflicted about this issue? Do I have to say I'm pro-abortion? And the answer to that is no."

"It's interesting that it's happening right now," Richards said of what she perceives as the shifting attitudes within the movement, noting that Michelman's departure from NARAL earlier this year preceded Planned Parenthood chief Gloria Feldt's resignation two weeks ago. Richards wondered if "this isn't a moment at which the old guard is stepping down."

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