GOP was not always anti-abortion

We forget sometimes that the GOP was not always like this. Not that long ago, we had pro-choicers like Barry Goldwater. Or Ronald Reagan, Act One. Or George H.W. Bush, who was pro-choice before he was pro-victory.

The northeast quadrant of the country was once home turf to pro-choice Republican women from Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger to Barbara Bush. Now we are down to two female Republican senators from Maine who may yet be banned from taking communion with their fellow congressional parishioners.

This purge has led me to wonder what would have happened if the first abortion case to arrive at the Supreme Court were not Roe v. Wade. What if it had been brought by the woman who did not want an abortion?

Susan Struck was an Air Force captain, a nurse, when she got pregnant in 1970. Her commanding officer gave her two choices: abortion or resignation.

Struck picked a third: lawsuit. Ginsburg, then an ACLU lawyer, argued that the regulation banning pregnant women from service was sex discrimination. She also argued that Struck’s right to bear or not bear a child was her personal choice.

The case was heading to the Supreme Court when Solicitor General Erwin Griswold figured that he was going to lose. The solicitor advised the armed services to change the rules and the case became moot.

Today, it is mind-bending to think about how different the whole debate might have been if the first Supreme Court case arguing for the right to decide had been brought by a woman wanting to have a baby.

Would we have better understood this reality: a government that can force a woman to have an abortion is the same government that can force a woman to continue the pregnancy? Would it have changed a Republican Party that was traditionally so wary of government power grabs?

via A good time to recall Goldwater’s abortion view