May 7, 2001
Life Before Roe
By BOB HERBERT

Elizabeth Furse, who retired as a Democratic congresswoman from Oregon in early 1999, talked by phone the other day about the ordeal she went through trying to get an abortion 40 years ago, when most abortions weren't legal.

In 1961, the year John Kennedy assumed the presidency, Ms. Furse was 25 years old. She was married and had two small children. The family lived in Los Angeles. Ms. Furse was a homemaker and her husband was an obstetrician. Both were pleased when they learned she was pregnant again.

"We were very good parents and we wanted a large family," she said.

But following a series of tests, Ms. Furse was warned that if the pregnancy was carried to term, the baby might be born with devastating disabilities, including the possibility of brain damage.

The couple struggled to decide whether to continue the pregnancy. Eventually, said Ms. Furse, they made what she described as the "heart- wrenching" decision to seek an abortion.

That was much easier said than done. Her doctor was sympathetic but was unwilling to perform an abortion, which was legal only when the life of the mother was threatened. Ms. Furse and her husband refused to consider an illegal abortion.

In an account of her experience that she gave to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (Naral), Ms. Furse described the great danger faced by women who pursued abortions in those days:

"I knew women who went to San Francisco or Mexico, not knowing whether they would come back healthy — or come back at all. In desperation they were forced to make those horrible, life-threatening choices because abortion, which could have been done simply and safely by licensed physicians, was illegal. My husband had seen so many women with botched abortions who had been dumped on the front lawn of the hospital where he worked. It was a frightening time for women."

Soon after deciding to seek an abortion in 1961, Ms. Furse was faced with her own horrible choice. Her doctor told her that because she had only one kidney, she might be able to persuade a hospital panel to approve termination of the pregnancy on the grounds that it threatened her life.

But there was a catch. The abortion would be O.K.'d only if Ms. Furse would agree to undergo a complete hysterectomy. That way, the panel reasoned, she would never again be faced with a "life-threatening" pregnancy.

Those kinds of twisted, sadistic solutions were widespread in the era before Roe v. Wade. Ms. Furse had the abortion, and the hysterectomy.

"I was sterilized," she said. "And for a woman of 25, that's so extreme. For me, it was such a shock that I could be sterilized for that reason."

Ms. Furse has publicly discussed her experience because she is concerned about the rollback of abortion rights over the past several years. "I think young women, in particular, have no idea how frightening it all was," she said. "We were prisoners of other people's fears, of other people's prejudices."

Now, with a conservative administration in Washington and Republicans in control of Congress, Ms. Furse is more worried than ever that the assault on the reproductive rights of women will not only continue, but accelerate.

President George W. Bush has already appointed staunch abortion foes to crucial positions in his cabinet, two examples being John Ashcroft as attorney general and the former governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson, as secretary of health and human services.

One of the president's first actions upon taking office was to sign an executive order barring overseas family planning groups from receiving U.S. funding if they provide abortion services or counseling. And Mr. Bush's proposed budget would eliminate insurance coverage for contraceptives for federal employees.

Ms. Furse noted that Mr. Bush, who could end up making two or more appointments to the Supreme Court, has said repeatedly that the justices he admires most are the ultraconservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Roe v. Wade itself is by no means invulnerable.

"We are rolling back these rights that took so long to achieve," said Ms. Furse. "The consequences are huge."