aprii 2. 2004 -
Which came first?
/ / | was at PSU and I was looking for a
»p la ce to be,” says Carm en Schwisow, a
• field organizer with Planned ParenthtxxJ
of the Columbia/Willamerte. She joined a
group that was organizing the National
Young Women’s Day of Action. It was
Schwisow’s introduction to reprcxJuctive
rights education and activism.
Schwisow, who is 28 years old and graduated
with a degree in womens studies and sociology
in 1999, says that for her, “It was feminism first,
coming out as a lesbian second."
A commitment to feminism is one reason
many lesbians and hi women work in repnxluc-
tive rights organizations. Though difficult to
quantify in numbers, the women I spoke with
agree that, as Schwisow notes, “It’s quite evi
dent whenever you walk into a pro-choice
organization, you always find queer women
working there.”
Maura Roche, a lobbyist for BRO, grew
up in a family of progressive activists. Her
mother was a member of the Oregon
Women’s Caucus, while her father was a
"The opposition has
a deeper willingness to
take anti-environment,
anti-choke, anti-gay,
anti-death-with-dignity
issues and weave
them together"
— Maura Roche
it's ME!
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leader in the peace movement. “My entire
life this whole concept of fighting for the
right to privacy...has been a huge ftx:us in
my family,” says the 37-year-old, who has
been instrumental in fighting both anti-gay
and anti-choice ballot measures throughout
the 1990s and up to the present day.
If ever there were an expert on Lon Mabon
and his tactics, it is Roche. She feels “lucky to
have figured out a way to combine making a
living and doing activism."
Teaming up with Roche and Thorpe to
advance progressive bills in the Legislature
and battle discriminatory ones is state Sen.
Kate Brown. “My first job out of law school
was at Portland Feminist W omen’s Health
Circle,” says the 44-year-old Brown. “A
number of the women there were lesbians. 1
think it’s been really critical to the under
pinnings of the women’s movement to have
[lesbian and straight women] working
together.”
As an out hi woman, Brown is the only
queer in the stare Legislature.
“I was pro-choice before I was a lesbian,”
says Sue Bums, manager of In Other Words
Women’s Books and Resources. In Other
Words has signed on as a supporter of the
March for Women’s Lives, and Bums hopes to
co-sponsor a bus to Washington, D.C., with
another feminist organization.
Bums, 33, says she got her start being an
animal rights activist and then moved on to
pro-choice activism and queer liberation.
“My politics depend on the belief that I’m
not a lesbian first, I’m not a human first, I’m
a female human and I’ll go down fighting for
my right to do what I want with my female
body.”
Burns, who lived in New Haven, Conn.,
and Austin, Texas, before moving to Port
land to helm the women’s bookstore, says
many Portlanders are hip to the intercon
nectedness of forms of bias. “1 think one of
the great things about Portland is that the
lefty progressive scene is integrated," she
says. “ It seems like almost all the political
dykes 1 know and meet are multi-issue
activists, and pro-choice is included in
th a t...it’s very hopeful.”
Keep your laws
off our bodies
ortland has decades of history behind
the collaboration between queer rights
and pro-choice groups. In a recent inter
view with Just Out, former Oregon National
Abortion Rights Action League executive
director and current Multnomah County
drive with Pride
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Chair Diane Linn said
recently, in 2000, Mabon
queers offered “dramatic”
drafted the Student Protec
support to the choice com
tion Act, which would have
munity in the early 1990s.
severely limited sexual edu
She says she’ll “never forget”
cation, including crucial
the financial and political
HIV education in public
support Right to Privacy
schools, had it not been
(B R O ’s predecessor) gave at
defeated.
that time.
“The opposition has a
“Sometim es BRO sup
deeper willingness to take
porters don’t understand why
anti-environment,
we work with reproductive
anti-choice, anti-gay,
rights organizations," says
anti-death-with-dignity
Thorpe, noting BR O ’s meip-
issues and weave them
bership in the Pro-Choice
together,” says Roche. “Pro
Coalition of Oregon. “ I
gressives [tend to] segregate
explain to them that we
our politics. We’re very
share a belief in the funda
choice oriented.”
mental right to privacy. And
The irony that progres
we share a common oppo
sives’ commitment to egali
nent. The religious right tar
tarian ideals can be an
gets [queer and pro-choice
Achilles’ heel is not lost on
groups] in the same ways
Rcx:he. To combat this, she
with the same tactics.”
puts forward a view of “con
Roche has fought this com
stitutional connectedness”
mon opponent firsthand for
underpinning reprcxductive,
years at the state Capitol.
gay and death-with-dignity
“Many people don’t know that
rights. “[It’s about] privacy
— Sue Burns
Lon Mabon started out on
of the body and...self-
anti-abortion measures,” she says.
determination in terms of who you build your
Mabon was the driving force behind
life with and the quality of your life,” she says.
1990’s unsuccessful Measure 8 to ban abor
tion, and he and the Oregon Citizens
Continued on Page 30
Alliance continued to put forth
anti-gay and anti-choice measures
throughout the ’90s, including the
CHOICE • JUSTICE • ACCESS • HEALTH
infamous Measure 9 in 1992. More
" I'll go down
fighting for my
right to do what
I want with my
female body"
March for
Women's Lives
P
MARCH
ro-choice activists say the
time is right for a public
demonstration of historic size
in support of reproductive free
dom and justice for all women.
W a sh in g to n D C
A p r il 2 5 , 2 0 0 4
Threats to these rights have
never been so systematic and
ABORTION * GLOBAL* FAMILY PLANNING
coordinated, and the lives and
health of women have never
faced such peril. A t 10 a.m. April 25 on the National M all in Washington, D.C., people
will march to uphold choice, justice, access, health, abortion, global and family planning.
The principal organizers are the Am erican C ivil Liberties U nion, Black W omen’s
Health Imperative, Feminist Majority, N A R A L Pro-Choice Am erica, N ational Latina
Institute for Repnxluctive Health, N ational Organization for Women and Planned Par-
enthixxl Federation ot America. i n
For more information or to register, call 202-349-3838 or visit tente . marchf /no»men. org.
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