AMHERST — As a professor in the medical school at Northwestern University in Illinois, Katie Watson left students in disbelief when she shared a statistic on her first day of class.
“I told them that 30 percent of women in the United States would have an abortion,” Watson said on Saturday at an event hosted by the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts at the Red Barn at Hampshire College.
“They were completely shocked by that number,” Watson said. “And here is the honest truth: I was, too.”
Watson is the author of “Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion.” This year, the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts invited her to speak at their annual event in honor of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
Learning that abortions are common practice but not common knowledge led Watson to question why that is the case, she said.
“What was it about ordinary abortion that didn’t warrant discussion?” Watson asked, adding that abortion rates have dropped since she first started sharing that statistic with her class. Currently, one in four American women will have an abortion by the age of 45, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group supporting abortion rights.
The stigma surrounding abortion leads to silence, and that silence continues to perpetuate a stigma that leads to women fearing discrimination. “Common behavior continues to be perceived as deviant,” Watson said.
“We have the prevalence paradox,” Watson continued. “Something that so many people do can be thought of as very unusual.”
Watson delved into the history of laws on male contraceptives in Massachusetts prior to Roe, the ethical arguments in public discourse for and against abortions, and the legal arguments that led to the Supreme Court decision.
After Watson’s talk, Linden Pearsall, a senior studying sustainable tourism at the University of Amherst Massachusetts, said that Watson presented a lot of information in an accessible way for her audience.
“She spoke in a way that all people are able to connect to,” Pearsall said. “Even for people who may not know a lot about abortion law, they could still feel connected to this issue.”
“If we can break the silence, then we can break the stigma,” Pearsall added.
In 1987, political activists, nurses, therapists, college students and faculty in the area organized to create the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts.
Over the past 12 years, the organization has helped over 2,500 people to access abortion health care, pledging nearly $640,000 to support safe and legal abortion. Last July, the fund pledged almost $110,000 to clients needing assistance, according to the fund’s co-president Carrie Baker.
Prior to Watson’s talk, the organization honored former state Sen. Stan Rosenberg and the former president of the fund, Robin Dizard.
In presenting a plaque to Rosenberg, former state Rep. Ellen Story said Rosenberg “fought on the forefront” for women’s reproductive rights before it was on the Democratic Party’s platform.
Ann Jones, co-president of the fund, said of Dizard’s work for the organization: “We’ve all benefited from her political savvy, straight talk, and her strong sense of what’s fair and isn’t.”
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com