– Make posters. But don’t draw hangers, please! The young woman in front of the altar gives clear instructions. Hangers seem unnecessarily provocative to many, she explains. I’m in a church in Washington. But this is no church service, the church is filled with angry women. They are at an orientation meeting and have only been allowed to borrow the church room. The next day they will demonstrate against abortion outside the White House. A church in Washington serves as a meeting place for the women who will demonstrate for abortion rights. Here they learn what to do if they are arrested. Photo: Tove Bjørgaas / news Clothes hanger abortion At this meeting, the women learn what they should and should not have in their pockets if they are arrested. ID card, cash, water and an energy bar are essential. The latter in case there is a long wait at the police station. Knives, nail scissors and expensive jewelery should be left at home. And there should also be unnecessarily provocative slogans with drawings of coat hangers. A young woman demonstrates outside the Supreme Court. Photo: Tove Bjørgaas / news For 50 years after desperate women in the USA used such hangers made of steel wire that you can untangle to perform home abortions, the world has, after all, moved forward. Organizations and companies are now doing what they can to help women in states where abortion is prohibited to obtain pills for home abortion. Although these have become illegal in some places, it is hopefully not the case that women will be taking out knitting needles and hangers again. Set back 50 years Turning fifty can be terrifying. Turning half a century this summer is almost a little strange. I feel like I’m in the early 1970s here in the US. Around the year I was born. In 1972, American women marched as they do today. The following year, the Supreme Court gave them the right they were fighting for. The Roe v. Wade ruling affirmed the right to self-determined abortion for all women in the United States. In many other countries, the abortion fight was still going on. In Norway, for example. In the USA, fairly early legalization contributed to the fact that the abortion issue has mobilized opponents on the right for 50 years. And in June this year, the Supreme Court reversed itself. Dobbs v. Jackson is the Supreme Court decision we may be talking about for the next 50 years. It allows US states to make their own abortion laws. Several hundred protesters sat down in front of the White House on July 9 in an action for abortion rights. Photo: Tove Bjørgaas / news Sky-high prices and Watergate But it’s not just the abortion verdict that makes it feel a bit like the 1970s in the USA right now. This summer it was established that there are now recessionary times in the American economy. Two quarters of negative growth is the definition of that. There is a sharp rise in prices, not least because of sky-high energy prices. That was also the case in the 1970s. Richard Nixon chose to resign as president in 1974, after the Watergate scandal. He ushered in a long era in which distrust of American politicians increased. Photo: AFP In addition, trust in the politicians was on the line. On June 17th, the year I was born, thieves broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building down on the Potomac River in Washington. It turned out that the thieves had been sent there by the campaign of President Richard Nixon. The Republican president had to resign two years later. The Watergate scandal started an era marked by strong distrust of American politicians, who many regarded as corrupt and power-hungry. Heard it before? It’s 1972 all over again. The Watergate building is still there, not too far from the White House. It was here that burglars associated with Richard Nixon’s campaign for re-election broke in in June 1972. Photo: Tove Bjørgaas / news Had three abortions In All Souls’ Church in Washington there are also women who remember the year I was born. One of them is 72-year-old Sandy Lessig from Texas. In 1972, she went to university in a different place than she had planned, because of what happened to her four years earlier. Sandy Lessig (72) and her daughter Nicola Lessig (34) walk in a demonstration train in Washington. Photo: Tove Bjørgaas / news Sandy was so ashamed of the illegal abortion she had in her final year of high school that she chose to change her educational plans and move to a place where no one knew her. In 1968, she consulted a doctor who had lost the right to practice in her hometown, because she had become pregnant when the contraception she and her boyfriend used did not work. Sandy Lessig in her school yearbook in 1968, the year she became pregnant and had a forbidden abortion. Photo: private The doctor did not use anaesthetic. Although what Sandy thought was a miscarriage hurt a lot, she was still just as nauseous and weird a week later. – I did not know that I would bleed after an abortion, she tells me. Sandy had to return to the same doctor two more times for him to complete the abortion. The last time her mother had found out what was going on. She threatened the doctor to “out” him in the local newspaper if he harmed her daughter. It went well. But the shame lived on in Sandy. And the 1970s shaped her view of the world. First she demonstrated for self-determined abortion. Then against the war in Vietnam and President Nixon. Mother and daughter are abortion activists after what the mother experienced when she was a teenager. Photo: Tove Bjørgaas / news Holding hands and wiping tears And when the abortion rules were tightened in Texas a few years ago, she volunteered. She became a “hand-holder”. One who holds the hand of women about to have an abortion and wipes their tears. Now she has signed up to drive women from Texas who cannot drive themselves, the 10-12-15 hours it takes to get to a state where abortion is allowed. At the orientation meeting in the church, Sandy says that she is ready to be arrested for what she believes in. The next day, she sits down on the sidewalk in front of the White House gate along with hundreds of other women. She shouts: “My body, my choice”. And: “Whose streets – our streets”. Just like she did in the 1970s. 150 years back I stand there in the rain and look at the protesters and at the mighty house behind them. And I think that actually we could have got into the time machine and traveled even further back in time. For example, 150 years, to the 1870s when the Americans had to find their way forward after the civil war. The losing southern states, which had to give up their slavery, introduced racial segregation laws in these years which remained in place for a long time. This is how the Americans built in the 1870s. New York’s public library is a landmark from the era when rich industrial and media moguls wielded great influence, just as it does today. Photo: Seth Wenig / AP And in 1973 Mark Twain came out with the book “The Gilded Age” or “The Golden Age”. It tells the story of a few very rich men who owned the media and the most important American industrial companies of the time. The book draws caricatures. But it depicts shameless corruption in Washington and huge differences between rich and poor. Does it ring a bell in 2022?
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Back to the 1970s – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
