What women want

COVER STORY: For 33 years many American women have believed that what's legal must be OK—only to have their consciences, moments or decades later, tell them differently | by Lynn Vincent

Hours before Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings began Jan. 9 on Capitol Hill, Myra Myers sought a hearing of her own on the steps of the Supreme Court. She carried her message on a dark blue sign that read: "My abortion hurt me."

Mrs. Myers, now 61, was 28 and married when she learned she was pregnant with her sixth child in January 1973. Just weeks after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, her husband persuaded her to have an abortion and later reassured her, "It was the only thing that could be done."

"I thought that because it was legal it might be OK," Mrs. Myers told WORLD. "And I believed the lie that the child I was carrying was not a baby." Both spouses now say it was the worst decision they ever made.

Mary Lou Greenburg doesn't want to hear it. Ms. Greenburg joined about a dozen counterprotesters at the court on the same day, protesting Mr. Alito's nomination. She told pro-life demonstrators: "It's not a baby till it comes out—that's what birthdays are all about."

The counterprotesters dubbed the first day of Mr. Alito's confirmation hearings "Bloody Monday." Two women wore white gowns with red stains across their stomachs, but they weren't the first to wave the bloody shirt. At a "Women for Alito" event hosted by Concerned Women for America Jan. 5, a small group of women, one wearing a shirt smeared with fake blood, brandished a coat hanger and chanted: "Bush and Alito will outlaw abortion and women will die! Bush and Alito will outlaw abortion and women will die!"

CWA chief counsel Jan LaRue, describing the outburst as "stunning," pointed out that pro-abortion women have opposed every Republican high court nominee since Lewis Powell, President Nixon's 1971 pick. "These folks are really, really desperate."

Desperate—and hunkering down in their foxhole of choice: the Supreme Court. Thirty-three years ago, in a ruling that pivoted on the vote of Justices Powell (ironically) and Blackmun, the court swept away protection for the unborn.

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