Rousing the Silent Majority

In the past week several national figures have drawn an analogy between the Supreme Court's ruling in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and the Vietnam War.

In some ways, the analogy is apt. The regulation of reproductive freedom is a devastating invasion of a woman's body in the same way that the Vietnam War was an invasion of another country.

The issue of whether reproductive control belongs to a woman or to the state is one which divides people at least as sharply as the war did.

And the next year will see an increase in single-issue state and national legislative elections the like of which has not been seen since the Vietnam War. If any issue in the '80s could be compared to Vietnam, this would be it.

But for the people in the streets protesting, the 1980s and the 1960s--the fights over reproductive rights and Vietnam--are vastly different. Times have changed too much to make that analogy.

The '60s was the decade of the most overwhelming social change our nation has ever seen. The battles over civil rights and the issues surrounding the Vietnam War were magnified in people's lives by the advent of televised news coverage. And the obvious inequalities which were being fought against lent credibility to the protests.

BUT in this decade, American society is jaded. We have seen too many dead soldiers, too many protests, too many presidential scandals. The average citizen has heard too often that someone else is working harder, getting less and therefore deserves more.

We are harder to shock, and much slower to show sympathy for others. Our sense of justice has become increasingly personalized.

Discrimination against women and minorities has taken on a much more subtle nature and many have begun to deny its existence.

The Supreme Court session which ended with the announcement of theWebster decision will go down in history as a marker of our times. The Court's decisions subtly chipped away at many of the gains made in the civil rights era--most obviously in its decisions to narrow the interpretation of affirmative action and, with its ruling in Webster, pave the way for state regulation of reproduction.

And yet, the affirmative action rulings provoked little more than quiet outrage from some of the country's liberal legislators and editorial pages. The fight has been left in the hands of the pro-choice forces.

In the immediate wake of the Webster ruling it appears that pro-choice activists will marshall support for an active campaign to stop this backslide and prevent the anti-choice forces from gaining any further political strength. However, given that this issue will be up in the air for at least another year, it is uncertain whether that activism will be maintained at the level of intensity which it must be to make a real difference.

And even if pro-choice forces continue their vocal opposition to this backwards motion in women's rights, what difference does this make to the Supreme Court, a majority of which has already indicated that one of the three cases it will hear next session will likely be used to overturn Roe v. Wade?

During the Vietnam War, the people believed they could affect change. They campaigned, marched, held sit-ins and protests and pickets, convinced that America's democracy could not help but respond to this showing of public opinion.

And they were lucky. The issues they supported lent themselves to slogans, picket signs and songs.

But how do we, today, fight change which is so slow and insidious that it renders slogan-writing nearly impossible. What songs do we sing, what catch phrase tops our letters?

As the recent presidential elections showed us, America responds well to a sound bite. But how do we sound bite our fears about the Supreme Court's next three abortion cases? Or the importance of preventing any further erosion of civil rights?

The '80s are not like the '60s--fighting is harder now. The blatancy of discrimination in the '60s made change quick and forced the government's hand. Today, discrimination is less blatant, and while that means life has improved for minorities and women, it does not mean it is perfect.

The anti-choice forces are in a position of strength now. Not because more of the public supports them, but because they have the secure knowledge that the president and the Court support them.

During the '50s and '60s, bigots knew they could lynch a Black man because the Southern legal system was completely sympathetic to white supremacist claims. Today, the anti-choice activists know that the law is on their side. What limits will they set for themselves?

Still, pro-choice activists are lucky in many ways. They are working on the day's big issue, the one which is most likely to galvanize people to action.

When hundreds of thousands of men and women arrived in Washington this spring to march for women's reproductive rights, it was obvious that this was an issue that people would rally around. And people were easily gathered to protest the Webster decision--it was a specific event that called for action.

PERHAPS that spirit can be continued through three more Supreme Court decisions--which one will finally remove our rights from us?--and through 50 state and congressional elections.

Mollie Yard, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), is already calling for a March on Washington next October, the month before the legislative elections. Given the high turnout at NOW's march this spring, it is likely that October's march will also be a success.

And in every state, NOW and other established women's organizations will mobilize to lobby legislators and back candidates who support a woman's right to control her own body.

But the pro-choice forces lay claim to a huge silent majority of America's public. Unfortunately, that silence in successive presidential elections has stacked the Supreme Court so that the overturning of Roe v. Wade is virtually assured.

Which moves the debate to a local level. NOW has been actively campaigning for women's rights since its establishment in the early 1970s. Its campaigning alone may prove insufficient to prevent the Supreme Court from removing women's right to privacy. Now that we are so close--too close--to actually losing that right, the silent majority must raise its voice in protest to this turn of events.

Protest against Vietnam helped continue the activism of the Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps protest against this threat of injustice will also galvanize people to stop the gradual erosion of other rights which began in this session of the Supreme Court.