When we were fighting to pass Roe V. Wade, we never called ourselves “pro-abortion.” We were and always have been “pro-choice.” But, as often happens, our name for what we were doing was erased by the media and “pro-abortion” was substituted and has remained.
No one in her right mind is “pro-abortion.” I know from personal experience what a difficult decision this is. But we are, and always will be, fighting for all women to make choices about our bodies and our lives, as enshrined in the law now challenged in Texas—illegally and unconstitutionally—and under attack all over the country.
What limited a woman’s choices in the many decades before the 1973 Supreme Court Decision? Many things: poverty, ignorance, powerful social and personal pressure, religion, maybe even love.
The commemorative bronze plaque shown here proudly displays the consequences. It is prominently displayed in the old plaza at Chimayo, the Northern New Mexico town that is being restored north of the well-known Santuario. Once an agricultural, Spanish-speaking settlement, it was abandoned years ago as farming the valley failed and is only now being saved from ruin by two local foundations and the devoted work of many volunteers. The bronze plaque is one of the results.
According to the names listed here, a long-forgotten 19th century Hispano woman, Petra Mestas Ortega, of a well-known family of weavers, bore fourteen children in this village. That means she bore a child at short intervals for most of her reproductive life and toiled to raise them. The flatirons commemorate her dawn to dusk work, and the photo of two young girls, perhaps her daughters, carrying tin pails of water on their heads, establish the labor women and girls performed here every day.
Did Petra Mestas Ortega have a choice? Certainly not legally. Her church would have condemned contraception as well, and she may have come to base her sense of self, and her husband’s pride in her, on having fourteen children, although this was not unique in that time and place.
We can imagine the effect this brood of children had on Mrs. Ortega’s life: impossible to further her education, which probably stopped before high school; almost impossible to travel outside her village, unless a grandmother or aunt could temporarily take over; not yet franchised to vote, and with no time or energy for political activity anyway; limited friends, for the same reason; and perhaps worst of all, any dreams she might as a girl have nourished beyond her flatirons, her stove, and the water someone had to carry from the well.
We are far removed, here in the prosperous—or mostly prosperous—U.S. from these dire conditions. But we are not yet free of political, social, intellectual and moral constraints on our freedom. Because our power, as women, has always been and may always be feared, we will have to continue to fight for choice, now and probably forever.
Dear Sallie Bingham,
I marched for the passage of Roe vs Wade oh, so long ago. And today, once again we are fighting for a right that should not even be a bitter battle, but rather a continuation of a better life for women, children and families. And yet, here it is again, like a broken record that is stuck in a sad groove of repeating itself instead of spinning forward with promise.
Thank you for your words.
This reminds me of the modest and most powerful for Modesta Avila
on a boulder on the Los Rios Historic District in Old San Juan Cspitrano, CA.
Thank You Again