For many women defending Roe, 1973 decision is a living memory

“I cannot believe it’s the 21st century, and we have to fight this again,” says Lauri Shreve, barely in her 60s, shaking her head in disbelief, in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

It was a sentiment repeated over and over Saturday, in hundreds of cities across the country, as abortion-rights protesters rallied. After nearly 50 years, the nationwide right to abortion appears set to end, following the recent leak of a draft ruling that would overturn the 1973 precedent, Roe v. Wade. 

For the first time in her life, Ms. Shreve says, “I had to march.” She and her husband, Randy, who own a landscaping business, traveled 2 1/2 hours from Cumberland, Maryland, to take part in the Washington protest. 

“I actually had to tell [my grown daughters] how important this was,” Ms. Shreve says. “They didn’t see the big picture, that never before has a constitutional right been taken away.”

The thousands who rallied near the monument and marched to the Supreme Court were a diverse group in many ways, including gender, age, and race. But perhaps most striking was the large number of “women of a certain age” – those in their 50s and beyond. Women no longer in their childbearing years, but who felt so passionately about the possible demise of Roe that they had to do something public. 

Many younger women, of course, were here, too. Some came with friends, others with parents, husbands, partners, small children. A few were visibly pregnant, some making a point: They were having a baby by choice. 

But the large number of older women in the crowd points to a possible paradox: that older women who favor abortion rights, many with firsthand memories of life before Roe, may feel more intensely about the possible loss of that right than the women who could be directly affected. 

“Younger people didn’t grow up in a non-Roe world,” says Jennifer Butler, a 50-something Presbyterian minister and outgoing CEO of the advocacy group Faith in Public Life, standing near the “faith tent” at Saturday’s “Bans Off Our Bodies” rally. “They’ve always taken that right pretty much for granted.” 

For older American women, the memories can be visceral – the illegal and sometimes dangerous abortions they or their friends had; the women who died from a botched abortion; the sadness and shame of giving birth as a teenager, then in some cases placing the baby for adoption; the fight to make abortion legal nationwide. 

Part of the paradox is that many polls show younger women are generally more supportive of abortion rights than older women. A March survey by the Pew Research Center found that support for abortion rights at six weeks of pregnancy is strongest among the youngest women and declines with age – 61% among women ages 18 to 29 versus 38% among women over 65. 

Then there’s the importance of abortion as a “voting issue.” This could be critical in the November midterm elections, with Republicans – who typically oppose abortion rights – already with the wind at their backs. Combined Gallup data from between 2014 and 2021 show that among female voters age 55 and over who identify as “pro-life,” 27% vote only for candidates who share their views; among women in this age cohort who consider themselves “pro-choice,” the figure is 20%. But among younger voters, it’s women who identify as “pro-choice” who say more often than their “pro-life” sisters that they will vote only for candidates with whom they agree on abortion.

This raises the next question: Can Democrats use the overturning of Roe, expected next month, as a tool to galvanize young voters – a cohort notorious for not turning out in midterms – to vote in the November midterm elections?

For now, abortion-rights advocates are working every demographic they can, and see ground for mutual learning – not just the older women teaching the younger about life before Roe, but also younger women teaching their elders about modern-day advocacy, including the use of technology and social media, and about the changing rhetoric.

“Students are much more likely to talk about reproductive justice than abortion rights,” says Laury Oaks, chair of the department of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “I want to focus on the unity, the coming together, the places of consensus over the places of difference.” 

Standing outside the Supreme Court after marching down the Mall in Washington on Saturday, two middle-aged women are discussing generational differences in approaches to activism on abortion.

“There are fewer young people here than I would have expected,” says 50-something Samantha Shofar from Silver Spring, Maryland. “Maybe they’re just complacent.” 

Her friend Cindy Jacobs sees something larger at play. 

“There have been several years of things just eroding,” says Ms. Jacobs, also in her 50s and from Silver Spring. “Democracy is crumbling and rights are crumbling – and it’s leading to this path of something even worse.” 

Ms. Shofar’s 25-year-old daughter is in Israel, she says – otherwise, she would have been here to protest. But her other child, who she says is nonbinary, “has what I consider a very nihilistic view. And I think it could be somewhat typical of this generation. They don’t think anything good is going to happen.”

The view from Austin

Patricia Kruger, standing on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin on Saturday, holds a sign that says simply, “1973.” 

It is a reference to the year the Supreme Court found, in Roe v. Wade, that the Constitution’s concept of personal “liberty” protections included a woman’s right to choose abortion. 

Taking part in the Austin protest, where the crowd numbered in the hundreds, seemed to carry extra meaning: Roe was based on a Texas case, and in 2021, the so-called Texas Heartbeat Act dramatically curtailed the right to abortion in the state to about six weeks’ gestational age – far shorter than the 2018 Mississippi law that is currently before the court and the vehicle for Roe’s likely demise. 

To the protesters in Austin, as elsewhere in the country, the message is simple. 

“I have a daughter, and I think it’s important to fight for her future,” Ms. Kruger says, noting that her views haven’t changed over time. She recalls writing a “pro-choice” article in high school 30 years ago.

“We’ve come a long way since then – but we’re moving backwards, and this is a very scary time,” Ms. Kruger says. 

Some of the women here are old enough to remember friends going out of state – or out of the country – for an abortion.

“When I was in high school in Ohio, I had a friend who got pregnant despite being careful, and they had to go to New York because it wasn’t legal in Ohio,” says protester Carol Goodwin. 

Bonnie, a University of Texas grad who declined to give her last name, shares a similar story: “I had a roommate at college who had to go to Mexico to get an abortion, and it was very dangerous.” 

There’s also nuance to protesters’ views. 

“I’m disabled, and the concept of carrying a pregnancy to term is not viable for me,” says Caitlin Dalton. 

“We look at abortion as one thing; it’s about aborting this potential life,” she adds, tugging at the grass as she talks. “I understand people who feel sincerely about that. But I want people to understand this will affect many different things; it will lead to many other dangerous things.” 

Her mother, Tiffany Almeida, seems to have a more brass-tacks approach: “Women are waking up,” she says, suggesting that “women start taking their money and their skills out of states they don’t agree with.”

A first time protesting in Washington

Back in Washington, 60-something Julie is wearing the pink hat she wore at her hometown women’s march back in January 2017. 

She asks to withhold her last name, out of fear that protesters “will look me up.” And for the record, she says she opposes the protesters who have shown up at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices over the expected overturning of Roe. Others at the march make the same point. 

This is the first Washington protest Julie has ever attended. 

“I’ve never felt like I had to,” Julie says, mentioning that she had a medically unsustainable pregnancy that had to be terminated, before having her son. “I’m not for abortion, but I’m not against it. I’m for the right to choose. ... Just being able to make our choices about our bodies. And it’s a lot more than just a physical body. It’s your mental state. It’s your family situation. It’s your financial situation.”

Marge Matthews, who’s in her 80s and here with her 60-something daughter, is a veteran of marches – against the Vietnam War and for women’s rights. Her observation of how younger protesters are behaving at the march: “They’re more outspoken. They say it like it is – dirty language and all.”

Indeed, many of the homemade posters on display here are not suitable for a family newspaper.  

But generational change is inevitable. The organization Faith in Public Life is about to get a new CEO, as Ms. Butler shifts to “founder-in-residence.” 

Jeanné Lewis, who is in her early 40s and Roman Catholic, will take over on June 1. She seems excited about the possibilities – of seeing people of faith who support abortion rights come to the fore and discover their agency in the event that Roe is overturned.

“There’s a lot of mythology around who’s having an abortion and why,” she says. And the move in some states to ban abortion without exceptions for rape and incest, she adds, is only pushing more people into their camp.

She says that 1 in 4 women have had or will have an abortion, and the majority are mothers, or will be mothers.

“I’m not sure that everyone is clear about the implications” of the Supreme Court’s pending action, Ms. Lewis says. “I have never lived in a world without Roe v. Wade. And because there’s still so much stigma attached to having an abortion, there aren’t a lot of narratives.”