“It Was the Struggle in the Streets That Won Abortion”

interviewed by Zoe Yungmi Blank (International Strategy Center)
edited by Matthew Phillips (International Strategy Center)

On Aug. 28, the International Strategy Center (ISC) and the Seoul Women’s Association held a Progressive Forum entitled “Post Roe v. Wade: Reproductive Rights Through a US Lens.” The following is the interview (conducted by ISC’s Zoe Yungmi Blank) with Joyce Chediac, a Redstockings member in the 1970s and currently an editor with the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Liberation News and a staff member with its women’s publication Breaking The Chain. This is an abridged version edited for clarity and brevity. 

(Source: Liberation News)

Can you briefly introduce yourself and how and when you got involved with the Redstockings fight for reproductive rights?

Sure. I grew up in New York City and I met Redstockings in 1969. And that's the year that they had the first national speak out about abortion in the U.S., where 12 women got on stage in a church in Greenwich Village before 300 people and told the stories of their abortions or their attempts to get abortions or what happened to their friends.

And it was electrifying because no one talked about abortion, particularly in personal terms, and what it meant. One woman did manage to get a legal abortion because she got two psychiatrists to say that she was not stable enough to have a child. And she said it was the sanest thing she ever did. There was another young woman who got an abortion and she had gone to ten institutions trying to get an abortion, and the tenth said that they would give her an abortion if she would consent to sterilization. She was 20 years old. So that was just some of the stories that people told and it really resonated with the audience. And people got up and gave their own stories and it was like a shot that was heard around the country.

It was a struggle whose time had come and people started giving testimonies. There were demonstrations. There were disruptions of all male meetings on abortion. Our line was that the experts on abortion were the people who had them or might have had. It was not a doctor, it was not a minister, and it was not a politician.

So that's how it began. And it was the struggle in the streets that won abortion.

It was people saying “Look!” like the Jane Collective in Chicago, a group of women who decided to learn how to give abortions so they could give them particularly to low income women. And so we raised this. And eventually, four years later, we won nationally the right to legal abortions with Roe v Wade. 

What does it feel like now to see Roe v Wade overturned?

It makes me very angry. First of all, the majority of the people in the U.S. did not want this overturned. The majority support abortion rights on some level and certainly not for these fetal personhood laws that are coming next. And when it's explained to people, they find them extremely destructive. But we have a right wing element that's going right ahead and doing these things even though it's against the popular will.

But in the states where abortion is being made legal, there's so much confusion that a lot of the people are not being treated for miscarriage related situations because they're afraid they may be accused of abetting an abortion or harming a fetus. And in some of the states, the penalties for this are draconian. There may be up to 99 years in jail, huge fines. So, there's been cases of women who are miscarrying, walking around and bleeding for ten days until they get treatment when the situation becomes serious enough where they are clearly in danger. In Texas, which has the worst set of laws on abortion, treating miscarriages has become dangerous as doctors fear what they can do and what they can't do. 

How can you be equal in society if you're not allowed to control your own body? So this is a fundamental attack on women as equal human beings in society.

Why do you think we're currently seeing these attacks on women and marginalized people? Are other rights at stake?

Well, I think that the right wing and the ruling circles in this country were not happy with all the gains that were made. And I think it goes back to a decision of 1954 of Brown versus Board of Education, which said that separate but allegedly equal facilities for Black people was against the Constitution, which gave Black people, African-Americans, more opportunity in this country.

And there was an alliance made between the ultra right and the evangelicals. And I don't think the ultra right really cared about abortion either way. But they found in the evangelicals, footsoldiers that were willing to go out and demonstrate in front of abortion clinics and make it hard for people to go there. And this is what began in the 1980s in this country.

Ronald Reagan invited Jerry Falwell, the head of the Moral Majority, to the White House. That kind of cemented the alliance. 

You've spoken in other interviews on the need for global solidarity. Have there been any good examples that we can note? How can people in South Korea, America and elsewhere support each other?

Well, I think this is a very important question. I'm glad that you raised it. And that's why I'm so delighted and honored to be speaking here. You know, because maybe this can be the beginning of getting that solidarity or learning more about each other to do it.

As far as abortion in the U.S., Mexican women have been extending solidarity. There's a group called Love Deliverance, which has said that it will help women in the U.S. get abortion.

There are groups in Europe that are providing abortion pills via mail, and we are very moved by this solidarity, you know, and accept it readily. But we would like to give solidarity to our sisters in Korea and elsewhere. So we'd like to know how we can do this. And how we can best communicate. I mean, the businesses, the capitalists, they work globally.

We need to be global too because our struggles are connected.  

How many billions of dollars have been used to keep US GIs in Korea? Where does that money come from? It comes from US taxes and that could be used to meet social services at home. And yet it goes to limit Korean self-determination. We could fight this together. It hurts women and families the most. And there are many other issues that I think that if we talk to each other more, that we can work closely with. And that's a very exciting prospect.