NEWSWEEK: Is it tough to get Americans to pay attention to abortion when terrorism and war are in the headlines?
Kate Michelman: It is particularly challenging right now. However, it’s not as if we haven’t faced major challenges in the past 31 years. Having a march is a tried and true American tradition-whether it be for women’s rights, for civil rights, to express our views about war in times throughout our history. It’s a quintessential American expression. It’s a method for Americans to unite, come together, express views, speak truth to power, all those things. It has historically made very huge contributions, both to the national conversation, to the policy, to the direction of the country. I believe that we are at a moment in time where [regarding] the future of women, of the right to choose, of our right to privacy and women’s rights generally, we must speak strongly as a united American people on behalf of the right to choose.
You’re hoping this will be the largest pro-choice march ever, drawing perhaps a million people?
Numbers are dangerous. I truthfully have no way of knowing actually how many people will be in this city on this day. We’ve been working for more than a year. We’ve been using both tried-and- true, old-fashioned shoe-leather organizing strategies, walking door to door, sitting at malls passing out literature, organizing in communities. I’ve been all over the country speaking at larger and larger events. But additionally we’re using creative approaches on the Internet. This march is going to be the ultimate national meet-up. We have over 1,000 co-sponsoring organizations and they’re all using their Web capacity for organizing.
The official march logo refers to choice and justice and access and health and global family planning and oh, yeah, abortion is in there. There’s a lot going on. Is that a deliberate effort to broaden the appeal? Do you think it’s confusing?
It’s not a deliberate effort to broaden the appeal. It was really a way of bringing into sharp relief the set of issues that really touch women’s lives and are at risk. From my perspective, the central issue at the core of this march is a women’s right to choose. That right is at great risk. It’s in the most hostile political climate we’ve ever faced since Roe vs. Wade. There’s no question that a woman’s right to choose could be lost if this president is re-elected because the Supreme Court will be in his hands and the future of Roe is in jeopardy. I believe that one of the central issues of this march is the right to choose. But for many women that right is at the core of many other obstacles that they face, many other threats. For women of color, it’s access to health care. For women of the world, it’s global family planning.
So that’s not to say that the abortion itself couldn’t draw a crowd on its own anymore?
No, no, no. Not at all. In fact, we could’ve gone down that the road. The real impetus for the march was this very real threat to a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. We recognized that many lives are at stake. Our goal here is to capture the greatest number of issues in the title of the march. In fact it might have been easier in organizing just to have one issue. It certainly wasn’t a matter of we didn’t think we’d get enough people. This is a generation now that we have to excite about women’s rights. For many women the right to choose is just one of many issues they’re struggling with. I hope we’ll be successful.
Does that broader focus help attract younger women to your cause?
Some of the issues that are relevant to women today are not just abortion. They are sex education, emergency contraception. They are about access to contraception. They are about fertility issues. One of the purposes of this march is to excite a generation of women to mobilize on behalf of their right to choose, for themselves and their future but also for their daughters and their granddaughters. This younger generation of women doesn’t really believe they’re going to lose their right to choose. They don’t know what it was like not to have a right. They don’t know women who died. They don’t know women who suffered the humiliation and degradation of back alleys. They don’t know women who had to leave their families and fly to Puerto Rico and not even be sure they were going to come back alive. Women in my generation were motivated by the horror of this experience in our lives and said “no more.’ And we organized, we marched, we fought for the right to choose. These women assume that right. And by golly, I tell them on the campus, you should assume the right. This is a right of yours. It is a fundamental right. You should not ever have to worry again about not having this right. But let me tell you, truth is, you must worry about that. This is your generation’s fight. You need to be part of it.
It must be hard to leave your post six months before a major election that you’re saying is going to determine the future.
At first blush it does seem an odd time for me to be stepping down from NARAL. But I must say that for me personally as a woman this is the most important presidential election of my lifetime. While NARAL will play a major role in the election of a pro-choice president, I personally must concentrate all of my time on that cause. NARAL is strong and I’m proud of the work I’ve done. It can go on without Kate Michelman. My plan in stepping down now was to free me to do two things. One, to take care of my family a little more. I do have a daughter and a husband who are in great need of me. But additionally I must bring all that I’ve done all of my life to bear on this presidential election, to work for John Kerry in any capacity that he thinks I could be of value to him. I want to bring my experience, my recognition as a national leader, my ability to inspire, my hard work, I want to focus like a laser beam on electing John Kerry. All I have worked for all of my life is at risk right now.
