Deborah Law  0:00  
Good morning. My name is Deborah Law, and I will be with you this morning, hosting this edition of Lambda Reports radio program by and for the lesbian community. This morning, I am joined by Lucia Miller, who is an organizer with Missouri NARAL. Lucia's been with NARAL for over five years, almost six years. I have known Lucia for several years, and have always respected the work that she's done in the political community. Thank you for joining us this morning. 

Lucia Miller  0:33  
Thank you for having me.

Deborah Law  0:36  
Obviously, abortion is a hot issue today, a lot in the news and a lot of things going on, and that's what we're here to talk about, is what's been happening and what is happening now and what will be happening. And first I was wondering if, obviously, abortion is not a new issue, though some people might think NARAL is a new organization. I mean, it's a name that's being bandied about, and many of us might be hearing about for the first time, but it's not a new organization. And you tell us a little bit about the history of the organization, maybe set a little background for us as we get into the current topics. 

Lucia Miller  1:09  
Sure, NARAL was founded, actually in 1969 even before abortion was made legal by the 1973 Roe versus Wade decision. It started out as an organization to work towards repealing abortion laws here in the state of Missouri and across the country. Of course, our organization has grown tremendously in the past six months, but we have been in there, plugging, working to protect reproductive freedom for 20 years, now, this is actually our 20th anniversary. So while the activity level has risen quite a bit recently, we have been working since 1969 on this issue.

Deborah Law  1:53  
Now, did Missouri NARAL also start in 1969 Yes, it did. Great. Now, the focus of NARAL has primarily been on a legislative front.

Lucia Miller  2:04  
Primarily, yes, we have been working in the area of lobbying to keep anti-abortion laws from passing, working in the electoral arena to try to get pro-choice candidates into office so that they can protect our reproductive choice. Missouri, NARAL works also on protecting access to abortion directly. One of the things we do is a clinic escort program, where we have volunteers at the clinics during anti-abortion demonstrations to help women get into the clinics. We work on the level of public visibility, building demonstrations like the big one coming up on November 12, and other demonstrations that all of it is is ultimately directed at keeping abortion legal through the legislative and political process, howeve.,

Deborah Law  3:00  
You must feel like you're in the heart of the beast at times,

Lucia Miller  3:05  
certainly with the Webster decision that that came out of Missouri, or actually came out of the Supreme Court, but was around a law out of Missouri, it certainly put us in the center of all of the turmoil. And I think in a way, although it was a dreadful decision that really took the heart out of Roe versus Wade, it gave us a boost, in a way, because it really opened people's eyes, and suddenly the phones were ringing off the hook at our offices, and everybody wanted to get involved with this issue. Because what the decision, the July decision, did was, was really alarm people as to the fact that there's not just a threat to it's not just a distant threat to the abortion right, there is actually a very direct threat.

Deborah Law  4:02  
Can you for our listeners, for many of us, it would be a review, but give us very briefly a synopsis of what the Webster decision, which I guess was really RHS versus Webster's, it went through the court system, what that decision actually did or prepares to do

Lucia Miller  4:23  
Well, what it actually did was the law that the Missouri law that the decision was based around, had a preamble that stated that life begins at conception and that the fetus deserves the same type of protection as any other citizen. The court allowed that preamble to stand, stating that it wouldn't have any direct effect on access to abortion services or any regulatory effect. And so they allowed it to stand. We have already seen that preamble being used in decisions around protesters at the clinics being allowed to go free because the judge deemed that, based on the preamble to the Missouri law, that that the protesters were acting out of necessity to save human lives. So we've already seen the negative effect of that preamble, even though the Court said it would have absolutely no regulatory effect on abortion. The other specific regulations involve the use of public hospitals to provide abortions. The law says that no public hospital may provide an abortion even if the woman pays for it, and the result of that was that two public hospitals in Missouri stopped doing abortions immediately after the decision. The third big, important part of the law says that women who are 20 weeks or further along in their pregnancy must undergo medical tests to determine whether the fetus is viable. That is, whether it could live outside the uterus or not. Abortions in Missouri stop at 24 weeks anyway, and according to all medical information, no fetus is viable before 24 weeks. So what it does is it forces women to undergo rather risky and expensive medical tests which will prove nothing. And it's a law that was not made to be good law, but made simply to challenge the Roe versus Wade decision, to try to see if they could overturn it, so that that's the basics of the Webster decision.

Deborah Law  6:49  
Hair raising, to say the least. And actually, must say, we're certainly it has long been a topic of interest, but we're here today because of some very specific things, and one of those is certainly the July 3 rendering of the decision by the Supreme Court, and what kind of response there's been afterwards. You touched on it very briefly, in terms of the outcry, or the tremendous response that there has been since the July 3 decision, a lot of activities, and I know Missouri NARAL has been involved, both on a local and really, I think, is a front runner on a national level in terms of dealing with some kind of coordinated response. What has been happening, and maybe then you can touch on what's going to be happening next weekend.

Lucia Miller  7:30  
Well, all of our activities have just sort of mushroomed, as far as things like lobby days, where we go and visit our legislators in Jefferson City, before the Webster decision, we might have a couple of dozen people heading to Jeff City on a lobby day. Since the Webster decision, we've had two lobby days, the first with 200 people and the second with 500 people. So you can see that it's just a tremendously different scenario, as far as those people who have always been pro-choice, who have always sat back and said, Well, you know, we'll be protected by the courts. We don't have to worry about this issue. It doesn't matter what our legislators do. Our sudden, you know, have suddenly woken up and said, boy, it's time to get involved. And most people don't even know who their state legislators are, because we don't realize the importance of state government until they get handed to some very important powers, the way the Supreme Court did in the Webster decision. We don't, we don't realize what state government can do, but really what I didn't get to about the Webster decision is that it really says that states can make many more regulations on the abortion issue. So that's what we're looking at in the upcoming legislative session, which starts in January, we already know that the anti-abortion groups will be introducing a number of greater restrictions on abortion, and that's why we're really building on our influence with the legislators, and we hope that the demonstration on November 12 that we've referred to a couple times will will have a major impact on the legislators of the state. 

Deborah Law  9:32  
Tell us about that demonstration.

Lucia Miller  9:34  
Well, it's called the Missouri march for women's lives, and it's on Sunday, November 12 in Jefferson City. It's coordinated with the mobilization for women's lives, which is going on in Washington, DC and in various states all across the country on that same day. Really, we hope for it to be the largest, well, the largest demonstration of anykind in the state of Missouri, but certainly the largest pro-choice demonstration in the history of the State of Missouri. And as I said before, what we want to do is is show visibly that there is a pro-choice majority in Missouri that will not tolerate our rights being taken away?

Deborah Law  10:21  
 I think it's very true with the Webster decision, has changed our focus from the nation's capital to our state capitals, which is one of the significant things about having this demonstration in Jefferson City next weekend. I know that obviously that for long there has been an active anti-abortion contingent working in Jefferson City and so 

Lucia Miller  10:41  
very active anti-abortion contingent. 

Deborah Law  10:44  
Yes, it certainly is incumbent upon any of us who are pro-choice to be voicing our concerns at this point and actually having our bodies present also, which is significantly,

Lucia Miller  10:54  
absolutely I've been saying to people, if you can only do one thing for this issue, get yourself to Jefferson City on November 12, because it will really make a difference. These state officials really, they really take notice when people are out on the streets. Letters are important, phone calls are important. But when they see massive numbers of people who are willing to get out of their houses and come together. It does have an impact.

Deborah Law  11:24  
 I have to say, as devastating as the Supreme Court decision was, the things that happen have have happened afterwards have been fairly encouraging. I mean, in terms of a response to a groundswell of public opinion that is actually turning the heads of many legislators and politicians in this country.

Lucia Miller  11:44  
There was, you know, there has been, for the last 16 years, a tremendous amount of pressure put on state legislators by the anti-choice people. And many of the legislators, I think, sort of bowed to that pressure, knowing that if they voted for an anti-abortion bill, it would be, you know, made null by the Supreme Court, that that that abortion rights would be protected by the court, and therefore they could say, Okay, I'll vote for this legislation, because it'll never go into effect. And now I think these legislators are really having to pay attention to who their constituents really are and where they stand on this issue, and they're listening very carefully at this point. 

Deborah Law  12:32  
Well, many of you who are listening out there may be wondering, how does this relate to a lesbian and gay population, since that has always been the focus of our show. And certainly, I think there are many levels that it does affect each of us, and certainly, in general, affects our community, not the least of which is the issue of privacy rights, which is really the basic tenet to pro-choice position.

Lucia Miller  12:58  
That's right. I think that sexuality and sexual preference is really, in a lot of ways, the basis of the abortion issue, controlling our sexuality is, I think, very high up in the agenda of the anti-choice people. And I think that it goes across the board. You know, there that these issues really are interconnected.

Deborah Law  13:30  
I also think another both I know and it's been happening on a state level and a national level has been the coalition building that's been going on around this issue. And as I was looking at some of the information that you had sent to me in advance, there are several lesbian and gay identified organizations and identified very clearly as lesbian and gay that are part of this coalition that is involved in building this mobilization for women's lives, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, being two that come to mind immediately. And so I think, you know, laying that groundwork in terms of coalition building is vital also. I must ask, I think there's much to be learned for our community in terms of future lobbying efforts and things that are already being done. But a question for me, as we have gotten more involved in as women, we have said to men, you've got to be involved in our issues as we are fighting with you on issues in terms of AIDS, which I think is closely tied in also, where do you think the reproductive rights community will be when we take our issues to the legislature? Lesbian and gay civil rights dealing with the sodomy laws in various states?

Lucia Miller  14:42  
Well, I have to honestly say that there will probably be some division among the reproductive rights community, if you would call it that. I think that there are many individuals that understand these issues very well and would come through with a lot of support. I think at a certain level.

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