060197 Abortionist Faye Wattleton Sparks WCLA's 25th Anniversary

BY JO B. HOFFMAN

The Westchester Coalition for Legalized Abortion (WCLA) 25th anniversary celebration on May 15 was like an intimate family reunion - only this was a most extraordinary family.

Attending this reunion were former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton; the evening's emcee, Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman candidate on a national party ticket and United States Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission; State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer; and many longtime WCLA advocates who had gathered to pay tribute to WCLA president and co-founder Polly Rothstein. They recalled their shared struggles, past and present, in what Wattleton called "the incremental war against women's rights."

Wattleton, who is a former resident of

Westchester, said, "I feel like I'm coming back home." FAYE WATTLETON Faye Wattleton infused the room with passion. President the Center for Gender quality, a non-profit think :,ink established to research women's issues in the 21st Century, and a 1993 inductee to the National Women's Hall of Fame, she was introduced by Dr. Allan Rosenfield, Dean of Columbia University's School of Public Health as, "One of the remarkable women of the twentieth century." Though the issue is complex, her message is simple: "This is not just about abortion; it is about power, women's reproductive power, about every aspect of our reproductive power. Shall women have it or shall the government?" Recalling her frustrations with the incessant battles in Congress, Wattleton has titled her intriguing new memoir Life on the Line. "It's about what we want for our lives, that we want to control our reproduction. Women's lives have been on the line in the struggle and certainly my life was on the line in the time that I worked at Planned Parenthood," she explained.

In her speech, Wattleton says that the "partial-birth abortion" debate is a term used to inflame emotions. "It is repugnant to take up the semantics of the enemies of women's reproductive rights. We are losing ground, we're losing it fast. We are engaged in the most heinous attack on women. If we get a bad vote in Congress, we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask how this could happen in a country that is comprised of 53 percent women?"

The biggest danger to women is their own complacency, stated Wattleton. The bottom line is to take responsibility.

"Taking responsibility means asking our political leaders why they continue to stoke the fires of gender bias. And taking responsibility means we can really change the paradigm of history. Who knows?" Wattleton concludes. "We could even re-write it!"

GERALDINE FERRARO

"The war to keep abortion legal goes on," says Geraldine Ferraro, now the co-host of CNN's Crossfire.

On a recent show she went head-to head with the third trimester abortion bill's lead sponsor, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. "He wants to make it a political issue," Ferraro says. "I find that the most offensive thing. If you are a lawyer, where do you get off telling doctors what to do?"

Ferraro says, "The issue is about three things: politics, fundraising and, most distressingly, about ending legal abortion in this country."

People used to ask Ferraro how she managed to be elected to Congress in a conservative district popularly personified by television sitcom character Archie Bunker. "Archie Bunker didn't elect me,"is her reply. "Edith Bunker did." POLLY ROTHSTEIN

"Polly Rothstein reached out to the Edith Bunkers, urging them to get to the polls to elect pro-abortion candidates," Ferraro says, referring to Rothstein's rise into Westchester's leading pro-abortion spokesperson.

"We channeled our anger very appropriately into action, we didn't just sit there and stew," says Rothstein.

The major issue back in 1972 was legalized abortion. Rothstein says, "This week the issue is the debate surrounding the third trimester abortion procedure. We have come full circle. The proposed ban could once again set the clock back in the incessant battle for women's freedom."

"We've fought the same battle over and over," says Rothstein, who ran the WCLA out of her home until the late 1970s "You never win, it never stays won; it comes back again."

"I have been called the devil incarnate, infamous, a political terrorist," Rothstein continues.

To those detractors, Ferraro delivers the perfect rebuke: "Though I have taken a position on Crossfire against the cloning of humans, in Polly Rothstein's instance I would definitely make an exception."