A strange combination of denial and relative passivity in the face of a years-long campaign against reproductive rights has brought us to this day. [Updated June 20, 2022]

Yeats's famous line, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity," might be an exaggeration, but it's not that far off. What we do now is an existential question.

I saw the breaking news of Politico’s major scoop yesterday about the time when many others did; if there is testimony to the value and importance of social media, this would be an important exhibit. As for the flap about the “leak” of the draft decision: As so many others have pointed out, that is just gaslighting and a deflection from the real issues, which are matters of life and death for many women. So I will not discuss that here, even though, as a journalist, I am supposed to be interested in such things.

I was late yesterday checking the mail, so it was only after the news broke that I saw the above mass mailing from the leading pro-choice advocacy group NARAL. I have been on NARAL’s list for a number of years, thus I receive such mailings regularly. But this one had a special urgency, of course, as we all knew that the “conservative” (read: right-wing, reactionary) majority on the Supreme Court was leaning heavily towards overturning Roe v. Wade. They were put on the Court to do just that.

Or did we know? How many of us were engaged in magical thinking, and thought the power of our Tweets, or the moral force of our support for reproductive rights, would somehow be enough to avoid the coming of a day that the enemies of women’s freedom have been planning and scheming for years?

I’d like to go over the contents of this NARAL mailing, because it illustrates the problem I am exploring here.

1. First, a four-page letter to me (“Dear Michael”) from the new president of NARAL, Mini Timmaraju. The letter laid out in detail the events that had brought us to the brink of seeing Roe overturned, and described a number of the laudable actions that NARAL had taken (I skimmed over the beginning of the letter because I wanted to get to this part quickly.) Thus NARAL had led the fight, the letter said, to stop the confirmations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett (all three fights were lost, of course.) It campaigned for pro-choice candidates in the 2018 midterms (that was good, it led to a first-ever pro-choice majority in the House.) NARAL helped oust anti-choice Democrat Dan Lipinski in Illinois (also good) and campaigned for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (net effect yet to be determined.) At four pages, however, the letter was much longer than professional mail campaign people normally recommend, but Mini is new, so perhaps that could be justified.

2. Next in the mailing were specific things that we could do to help the fight. That started off with an envelope in which to mail contributions to NARAL. Since few mailings I receive from worthy organizations do anything other than ask for money—asking people to actually do something concrete is a very rare request—that was not surprising.

3. Then came some pre-printed letters to my Congressional representatives that I was supposed to sign and send off. Since I live in New York, the letters were addressed to Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, along with my terrific, progressive Representative, Mondaire Jones. In the letters, I “urge[d] you to reject any measure that would undermine our fundamental rights” to reproductive freedom, and I warned them, “I will be watching.” I felt particularly uncomfortable, I must admit, threatening my representatives in this way, since there was no question where each of them stood on the issue.

4. I was not asked to do anything else, other than fill out a donation slip at the bottom of the sheath of three letters and send money to NARAL.

We’ve known for years—decades—that abortion opponents in the U.S. were working fervently and nonstop for this day to come. And yet I don’t think I have it wrong if I say that our approach to this assault on reproductive freedoms has been marked by a strange sense of denial, a notable passivity, and an almost allergic reaction to anything smacking of militancy. As state after state has adopted abortion restrictions, just begging for their unconstitutional laws to get a hearing before the Supreme Court’s highly receptive majority, the reproductive rights movement has been like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. Few demonstrations have taken place—the last March for Life was in January of this year, and the next one is scheduled for January 2023—leaving both Supreme Court justices and the public at large with the impression (wrongly, but perhaps not all that wrong) that activists do not really feel as strongly about the issue as they claim to be.

I am sure many will feel I am being unfair. Pro-abortion activists are dedicated, hard-working, and passionate about the cause. But have they been pursuing an effective strategy? And what if an effective strategy against the right is to be as militant and “unkind” as they are when it comes to matters of life and death?

Could the fact that most reproductive rights activist organizations are based in states (and DC) where abortion rights are not immediately threatened have something to do with the often formulaic nature of the fight? Again, it may sound very unfair, but why should I be asked to preach to the choir, as NARAL did in its mailing to me, when that would be a clear waste of my time? Was I being given busy work to do while I wrote out my check? Why are we not being asked to do things that would be really effective, eg, mounting a national march but in Texas, or Kansas, or Mississippi rather than DC or New York City?

And while we are discussing the Supreme Court: Since it is not a legitimately constituted body (and has not been since Merrick Garland was refused a confirmation hearing), why am I not being asked to write to my legislators, along with Joe Biden, to demand that they begin working on legislation to expand the Court?

As soon as the draft decision leaked, DC authorities threw up a barrier around the Supreme Court building (leading some to suggest that the leak was a deliberate action by some members of the Court.) Yesterday evening thousands showed up anyway. But even that is far, far from enough. We are way behind the curve on this one, but a militant demonstration of a million people in DC is not too much to ask in this crisis. And not next year—next weekend, at the latest.

When the Parkland school killings took place in 2018, the students asked everyone to come to DC, and we did, more than a million strong. In the fight for reproductive rights, that would be just a first step. Will we be accused of “insurrection” if we tear the barriers down? Perhaps. Some things are actually worth fighting for. The time for writing letters is long past.

Update June 20, 2022: In today’s New York Times, feminist pioneer and author Susan Faludi, whose 2006 book “Backlash” exposed the war on women that is now in full force, published an opinion piece entitled "Feminism Made a Faustian Bargain With Celebrity Culture. Now It’s Paying the Price.” The piece reflects many of the concerns I and others have expressed over the past few years on social media and other venues about white middle class feminism and its weak, short-sighted approach to the systemic nature of sexism and misogyny. Faluci concludes this form of feminism has left us largely defenseless against the current attack on reproductive rights.