Her Body, Our Laws

by Michelle Oberman

  What he said about gay rights made sense to me too. It’s not that the battle for gay rights was easily won, but think of the speed with which activists were able to secure those rights. In the face of AIDS, in an era in which the president took years to acknowledge that millions of gay men were dying, activists got the Food and Drug Administration to accelerate the drug approval process. Two decades later, they had won rights ranging from freedom from discrimination to the right to marry.

  The triumph of gay rights is a reflection, as Cain suggests, of the relative power of privileged gay men compared to poor women of color. Gay men (and women) vote. Political candidates ignore or insult them at their peril. By contrast, the women most affected by abortion policies aren’t organized into a voting bloc. Many aren’t even old enough to vote. Women’s options, when facing an unwanted pregnancy, depend upon their financial resources. We saw it in El Salvador, and we see it here. Those with money have better options than those without. And the poorest women are unlikely to command the ear of a senator.

  Cain paid an enormous price for his commitment to protect abortion rights. Although Cain is most proud of work he did on other issues—child support and aid to the elderly poor—he is remembered and reviled for his stance on abortion. By the end of his three decades in office, he feared for his life.

  “Some of these people hated me,” he said. Six years after leaving office, he still feels the burden of his legacy. “I made a lot of enemies, which limits my ability to serve as a retiree and a volunteer.”

  Cain never campaigned on a reproductive rights platform. He didn’t even think about abortion during his first campaign, back in 1978:

  My opponent was a John Birch–type incumbent who wanted to fire gay teachers. She voted against the Equal Rights Amendment.

  I’d left the Baptist church a few years before, after spending a summer in 1972 working as a missionary in Center City, Philadelphia. I was in my third year of Baptist Bible College in Texas. I’d had a hard year because I’d begun to question the notion that the Bible is the word of God. I’d already decided that virgins didn’t have babies. And then, in Philly I saw girls from the ghettos, black and Italian young girls. I came home worried that their lives were ruined as a result of having babies so young.

  By the end of that year, they kicked me out of Bible College. I finished school at the University of Oklahoma, where I later got a law degree and completed the course work for a PhD in political science. I was working at the university in education, setting standards for county governments. The issues that mattered to me then embarrass me now: mandatory minimum sentences and capital punishment. I favored them both. And I also felt strongly about protecting the civil rights of gay teachers.

  The gay community organized around my campaign. I won by 175 votes. There was a big fight over seating me; it was such a close election. After that first race, though, I knew how to organize. I walked door-to-door, precinct by precinct. I held my seat even after the Right to Life turned poor churchgoing whites into Republicans. Even after 1986, when Tony [Lauinger] started mailing my constituents at election time saying I was for killing babies.

  OKLAHOMA’S RED SHIFT

  Everything about abortion law in Oklahoma began to change between 2004 and 2006, the final two years of Cain’s tenure.

  As Jordan of the Southern Baptist Convention put it, “In 2004, politics finally began to reflect the true nature of Oklahoma.” It was and remains a state in which a large majority of the public identifies as social conservatives.

  The Law

  In September 1990, Oklahoma voters passed a term-limits law, State Question 632, limiting service in the state legislature to twelve years. The consequences of this amendment to the state constitution weren’t felt until 2004, when the first group of lawmakers termed out. Certainly the most obvious change was the rapid shift in political control over the House, first, and then the Senate, from Democratic to Republican hands.

  Professor Andrew Spiropoulos explained how it had happened: “Term limits plus the candidacy of Barack Obama turned the state red almost overnight,” he said.11 Spiropoulos knew firsthand how Oklahoma suddenly went “pro-life.” In 2005, he took a two-year leave of absence from his job teaching law at Oklahoma City University in order to serve as the Oklahoma State House Policy Advisor. In that capacity, he was in charge of helping the new Speaker of the House determine and implement the Republican agenda.

  Abortion was a big part of the Republican agenda because of the central role it played in unifying constituents within the Republican coalition. Spiropoulos said, “Urban Republicans always needed a coalition of rural voters to win here, and these rural voters are pro-life and ‘pro-marriage.’” (He clarified that by “pro-marriage,” he actually meant anti–gay marriage.) The pro-marriage issue won’t sustain the coalition, he conjectured, because more libertarian urban Republicans will defect. Hence, abortion has become the central unifying issue for Oklahoma’s Republican Party.

  In spring 2006, a bill requiring minors to obtain parental consent became the first antiabortion provision signed into law. It was quickly followed by a bevy of laws, including provisions barring the use of state funds or public facilities to provide abortions, mandating ultrasounds, banning abortion after twenty weeks’ gestation, restricting the prescription of RU-486, and prohibiting insurance companies from offering abortion coverage.12

  Spiropoulos attributed the extraordinary volume of abortion laws passed as a response to Cain’s having blocked the laws for so long:

  The most important consequence of Cain’s single-handed thwarting of majority sentiment is that he created such an intense blockage in the system and waves of resentment that, when the Republicans took over, it exploded in a flood of new laws. If Cain had not blocked everything, a few of the laws would have passed over the years and, arguably, there wouldn’t have been such a rush to pass everything but the kitchen sink—there would have been new pro-life legislation, but the efforts would have been more measured.

  Now I understood how Oklahoma had suddenly emerged as a pro-life legislative powerhouse.

  None of the laws Oklahoma passed were new. They simply passed every measure enacted by other pro-life states, along with the occasional model bill drafted by Americans United for Life.

  The laws cover a broad range of issues. Some of the laws, such as a ban on sex-selective abortion, are plainly symbolic. Women seeking abortions in Oklahoma, as in other states, need not provide a reason for terminating their pregnancies. There is no way to enforce this provision.

  Other laws have had a direct impact on the delivery of reproductive health care in the state. For example, one state law forbids the use of public funds or facilities for the provision of abortion services. This law bars doctors at the University of Oklahoma hospital—the state’s leading health-care center—from providing abortions for any reasons other than rape, incest, or medical necessity. The ban’s most dramatic consequences are seen in cases involving poor women, who learn, typically halfway through their pregnancies, that their fetuses have severe anomalies.

  Consider what happens when a poor woman finds out that her fetus has trisomy 18, a condition that causes severe developmental delays due to an extra chromasome 18. As anomalies go, it’s fairly common—one in 2,500 pregnancies, and one in 6,000 births. Most of the time, the woman miscarries. For those who survive, life is precarious and profoundly limited. Only 10 percent will reach their first birthday. Those who live require full-time, institutionalized care.13

  Yet unless this pregnant woman has money to pay for a private abortion—which by mid-trimester, when these anomalies typically are discovered, will cost thousands, rather than hundreds, of dollars—she must continue her pregnancy.

  Nor is the impact of these new abortion laws limited to the poorest Oklahomans. Indeed, one of the men I interviewed remarked that the laws already have affected him personally. When he and his wife were expecting their first child, his wife’s obstetrician advised them
to do their routine twenty-week ultrasound at eighteen weeks, earlier than called for by the national standard of care. Because state law now bans abortions after twenty weeks, the doctor worried that waiting would risk their ability to terminate the pregnancy in the event the tests revealed a serious fetal anomaly.

  Abortion Lawmakers: Moral Visionaries and Movement Politicians

  I wanted to talk with the lawmakers. It seemed like the best way for me to understand what sort of expectations were behind this firestorm of new abortion laws. Did the legislators think the law could deter abortions? Were they persuaded that a speech from a doctor about fetal pain would cause some women to rethink their decisions? Or did they see the law as serving more symbolic purposes? Would they have agreed with Jordan of the Southern Baptist Convention, who said, “It may be tempting to postulate that the laws don’t matter; that it’s impossible to legislate morals. But no, you can legislate morality.”

  Although he had never held office, Lauinger’s name was at the top of my list of people I wanted to interview. My conversations with Spiropoulos confirmed my sense that Lauinger played a central role in setting the state’s antiabortion legislative agenda. Spiropoulos offered to call Lauinger on my behalf to tell him that I was “safe” and to ask him to meet with me.

  When Lauinger didn’t return my e-mails, I asked Spiropoulos if he’d reach out again. He did. Then, with only weeks to go before my visit, I left two voice messages at Lauinger’s office. Finally, I found a residential listing under his name in Tulsa and left an apologetic message, introducing myself and all but pleading for the chance to meet him.

  Mostly, I wanted to know what animates someone like him to devote his life to fighting to make abortion illegal. Pro-life men populate clinic protests, their red faces hurling epithets at cowering patients. But Lauinger didn’t stand in the rain with a Bible and a placard. He was universally described as “courtly” and “gentlemanly.”

  To me, he seemed like the wizard behind the curtain. He was the unelected man who, from his home in the suburbs, waged a decades-long battle to change abortion law. And if victory was measured in numbers of laws passed, he seemed to be winning.

  “Why the law?” I wanted to ask him. “What is it you believe will be changed when Roe falls?”

  But Lauinger didn’t return my calls or messages, so I never got to ask him. I learned later that, in addition to ignoring my entreaties, he also framed the scope of my interviews in Oklahoma. A week before my first visit to Oklahoma, Lauinger had sent e-mails to a long list of pro-life leaders around the state. One of the men I interviewed later read Lauinger’s e-mail to me. Lauinger had written to him as an “ally,” telling him that he and his assistant had declined my request to meet with them. He encouraged this man to do the same.

  “She is pro-abortion,” he wrote, and as proof, he included a link to an online petition I’d signed in 2007, decrying the threats to civil rights and to public health policy posed by forcing pregnant women to undergo testing for illegal drugs. He continued, “Long experience has taught me that there’s nothing to be gained by helping gather intelligence from behind enemy lines from seemingly well-meaning academics.” Now I understood why three Republican legislators had written to cancel our meetings, telling me they were too busy to reschedule.

  In the end, I was left with a small but interesting cross-section of folks to interview. There were four former legislators and two sitting lawmakers, one who is widely viewed as the furthest right member in the State House of Representatives, and the other, the furthest left in the State Senate.

  It was a rich pool in spite of Lauinger’s interference. Two of the former lawmakers were pro-life Republicans; both had served for at least two terms and both had been in office during the recent shift in power. Because I wasn’t looking to survey a large group of lawmakers, but rather to learn how they understood the role of law, the combined experiences and perspectives of those I interviewed proved to be plenty.

  The Moral Visionary

  Many of my interviews about abortion law in Oklahoma began with a preface, offered palms up and with an unwavering gaze: “I believe that abortion is the taking of a human life.” If someone starts from that premise, it seems obvious why they would favor a complete ban on abortion. The law should not permit women to terminate their pregnancies any more than it should permit women to kill their two-week-old newborns. The law governing abortion should mirror the law governing homicide.

  I went searching for a lawmaker who held these beliefs. I found State Representative Mike Reynolds.

  Elected in 2002, Reynolds proudly told me that he’s considered “the most outspoken member of the legislature.”14 He’s passionate in his battle against the corruption he believes permeates much of state politics. He’s crusaded against tax policies and other political stratagems that serve the interests of the four billionaires who “essentially control the whole state,” including the newspapers and other media outlets that they own. That said, he is clear about what really matters to him.

  “The stuff about corruption is games,” he said. “The only thing I’ve ever cared about is saving unborn children.”

  I was a little surprised Reynolds still wanted to meet with me, given how many of his colleagues had canceled our interviews. “Ten o’clock will be perfect,” he told me. “We can meet at H&H. That way, you can stay for lunch at the High Noon Club. It’s every Friday. We have all sorts of speakers. Half the Republican caucus will be there, and sometimes the lieutenant governor and the governor come, too. The only rule of membership is, if you have to ask what time it meets, you can’t come.”

  He laughed playfully and asked if I needed directions. I assured him I could find it on my own, and indeed, it was hard to miss. The H&H Shooting Sports store is like a small fluorescent city. It’s home to the country’s first National Shooting Sports Foundation’s five-star indoor shooting range, which boasts thirty rifle lanes, twelve pistol lanes, and six air-gun lanes.

  Reynolds met me at the door. A tall, fit man in man in his mid-sixties, he greeted me with twinkling eyes. Together, we passed through scores of aisles with shoulder-high shelves bearing crossbows, arrows, knives, shotguns, rifles, and pistols. An astonishing array of taxidermy stared down at me from various posts on the walls and atop the shelves—bears, large antlered deer, and smaller mammals, the names of which I must have learned in grade school.

  “I’ve never been any place like this,” I said, as we worked our way through the maze of weaponry. “And I’ve been to some pretty wild places.”

  “Thought so,” he said, smiling.

  Reynolds had first noticed the abortion issue in 1992, when the news covered the story of Dr. Nareshkumar Patel: “He was practicing, or murdering, in Warr Acres, Oklahoma. He was caught burning fetal remains in a Shawnee field. I organized a protest at his two clinics. And then I rented a 225-square-foot office in the same complex as his Shawnee clinic. We used it to intervene and counsel women going to Patel’s clinic. I was dragged into legislative office ten years later because of my frustration with political corruption in the state, not because of abortion laws. The problem with abortion is more cultural than legal. Mothers and women are taught to see the unborn child as a thing. It’s a cultural change that’s needed, not a legal one. That doesn’t mean that the pro-life movement won’t do everything possible to change the law. But the culture also has to change.”

  “You were in office during this past decade,” I noted, “when the state went from a Democratic to a Republican majority. Has that shift changed the way you view your job?”

  “I’m not into coalition building,” Mike responded. “I stand up for what I believe is right. I don’t fight every battle, just the ones I run into.” He laughed. “Seriously, though, I’ve only had five bills passed by the legislature in eleven years, and three of them were vetoed. I tend to spend my energy killing bad laws. I’m more afraid of doing the wrong thing than of not doing the right thing.”

  He went o
n: “The so-called pro-life movement is worried about pragmatics. Tony [Lauinger] takes slow, measured steps. He has his own sense of how to do things. Even though we both want the same outcome. . . . When I was first elected, Tony called me about a bill. He spoke for twenty-six minutes before he asked me what I thought. He’s killed bills behind my back. And now, the Republican leadership has turned against me. They’ve cut me out of committee assignments. There are folks running against me, raising dirt about my past.”

  As Reynolds and I chatted, drinking water at H&H’s 4U Café, our conversation veered into the personal. Reynolds spoke with remorse about things he’d done in his youth. There were tears, even though nothing he described struck me as unusual or even particularly blameworthy. The difference was that over the course of time, he had developed a new sense of the meaning and purpose of his life. He regrets not having been a better person. And he lives now with the conscious intent to be the best person he can be.

  Reynolds didn’t go “off the record” with me when he spoke of his family, his faith, or his past. He is not a man who worries about the political implications of his personal beliefs.

  He believes life begins at conception. He grieves that so many oral contraceptive users don’t understand that the Pill doesn’t merely prevent ovulation, but also stops a fertilized egg from implanting. I disagreed with him, explaining that the vast majority of hormonal contraceptives do work by suppressing ovulation so that the egg never ripens and there is nothing to fertilize, but he dismissed my interruption.

  “I didn’t know this fact until recently,” he said. “It pains me enormously. It’s why I supported the Personhood Act in both 2010 and 2012. Tony [Lauinger] argued against it this past term because he was afraid of failure. There were pro-business issues that worried the people from national, and they were calling the shots. Tony went to the Republican leadership and killed the bill. With Tony, it’s always ‘my way or the highway.’”