How Roe Shaped the World of Work for Women

When Barbara Schwartz looks back on her early years as a stagehand on Broadway, she remembers its electricity: the rushed dancers slipping backstage in their costumes, the props sliding past with flashlights between their teeth.

She was able to plunge into that arduous career, she said, through a choice she made in 1976. She had an abortion at a clinic she found in the Yellow Pages. It was three years after the Roe v. Wade ruling established the constitutional right to abortion; to Mrs. Schwartz, the world seemed full of new professional opportunities for women. She got a credit card in her own name, became one of the first women to join the local stage hands union, and joined the crowd backstage at shows like “Cats” and “Miss Saigon.”

Mrs. Schwartz, 69, is now retired. She spends her retirement years escorting women to the doors of an abortion clinic on the Virginia-Tennessee border. She was drawn to this volunteer effort, she said, because for her, the promise of her 20s has faded — the result of laws that abolished access to abortion, with a leaked Supreme Court ruling last week showing that Roe is likely to be overthrown.

“This is my giant, pay it in advance,” said Mrs. Schwartz.

Ginny Jelatis, 67, feels the same way. She had reached high school age the year Roe v. Wade was decided; she began serving as a clinic escort after retiring as a history professor in 2016.

“I feel that my life is framed perfectly by this issue,” said Ms Jelatis. “I came of age when I was 18, and here I am in my 60s and still fighting this battle.”

For women like Ms. Jelatis, who came of age in the early 1970s, the world of work and opportunity changed rapidly. The female employment rate went from about 43 percent in 1970 to 57.4 percent in 2019. Many different factors drove more women into the labor market during those years, but scientists argue that access to abortion was a major factor.

“There is no question that legal abortion makes it possible for women of all classes and races to have some control over their economic lives and ability to work outside the home,” said Rosalind Petchesky, a retired political science professor at Hunter College. whose investigation was cited in the 1992 Supreme Court ruling in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, which reaffirmed Roe.

The women who entered the workplace just after Roe are now reaching retirement age. Some of them, like Carolyn McLarty, a retired veterinarian, are more committed than ever to their advocacy against abortion. Some, like Ms. Schwartz, look back and find their careers owed to the 1973 Supreme Court decision and the reproductive choices it opened up to women. So they spend their retirement years as escorts for abortion clinics.

The experience of older clinicians, shared in interviews in recent months, shows what Roe meant to a specific cohort: women who fought for access to abortion as they reached adulthood, and whose working lives were shaped by the opportunities they thought Roe offered them.

“My God, it’s all been brought back,” said Debra Knox Deiermann, 67, a clinic escort in the St. Louis area. “I just can’t believe that young women won’t have access to what we had.”

Many women who started their families or careers as Roe was decided have also fought hard against legal abortion. According to Gallup, in 1975, 18 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 29 believed that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances; last year this was 23 percent in the same cohort of women, now between the ages of 63 and 75.

A 2021 Pew Research poll found that 59 percent of Americans said they believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 39 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases. . Recent data from Pew indicates that women are slightly more likely than men to say that abortion should be legal in all cases, and younger people between the ages of 18 and 29 are much more likely than older adults to say that abortion should be legal in some or all cases.

Bound4Life, a grassroots anti-abortion group, estimates that one-fifth of its volunteers are retired. Eagle Forum, an anti-abortion group that reaches people of all ages, estimates that most volunteers are 55 and older.

“They are almost the only age group to respond to our emails and take action when we send alerts to call their elected officials,” Tabitha Walter, Eagle Forum political director, said in an email to The Times.

Some are motivated by the tectonic cultural and legal changes in abortion that they have witnessed, and in some cases led, over the course of their careers.

“I’ve seen the pendulum swing from very conservative to out-of-control God rejecting,” said Ms. McLarty, 71, who volunteers to serve as secretary of the Eagle Forum board and has been involved with Oklahoma’s Republican Party. “The younger generation sees how they have been cheated on many things.”

Ms. McLarty said she knows that changes in abortion laws in her lifetime have coincided with increased female employment. But for her part, she wishes she had spent less time on her career and more on parenting.

“Looking back, I probably would have spent more time at home,” says Ms. McLarty, who worked part-time when her children were small. “There are different times in your life for different chapters.”

The past half century has brought about many cultural changes that have facilitated women’s access to the labor market. New technologies created new administrative roles, many of which went to women; high school graduation rates rose; the stigma on married women in the workplace decreased. But sociologists and economists argue that legal abortion is an extremely important factor, allowing many women to postpone starting a family and save money in early adulthood.

Recent research has sought to understand the role that access to abortion plays in women’s employment. Most notable is the Turnaway Study, conducted at the University of California, San Francisco. Researchers followed two groups of women for five years — one group who wanted and got an abortion, and another who wanted an abortion and couldn’t — and found that those who couldn’t have an abortion had worse economic outcomes. Nearly two-thirds of those who did not request an abortion were living in poverty six months later, compared with 45 percent of those who received the procedure.

Roe’s overthrow would mean women across the country face a patchwork of state abortion access laws, with 13 states banning abortion immediately or very soon after the court’s ruling. According to an analysis of research results from the financial site WalletHub, there is likely a link between the regions of the country where it is most difficult to get an abortion and the regions with the fewest options for childcare and parental leave.

For older women who thought they could achieve financial stability because of the decision to have an abortion, there is resonance in sharing their stories with the younger women they meet in clinics today.

“The older people I work with can remember that fear of, ‘My God, what if it happens to me?'” said Ms Deiermann, who spent most of her career working in the reproductive health advocacy.

Many clinic volunteers, such as Ms. Deiermann, remember the time when their classmates and friends had illegal abortions. Telling those stories feels more urgent than ever.

Karen Kelley, 67, a retired obstetrician and childbirth nurse in Idaho who volunteers at an abortion clinic there, spent her childhood in harmony with her Roman Catholic family’s anti-abortion beliefs. Then she found out she was pregnant in her early twenties, with no income to support a baby. Realizing that motherhood could “derail all her hopes,” she chose to terminate that pregnancy, about six years after Roe.

That’s a memory Mrs. Kelley passes on to the women she escorts to the steps of the clinic. “When I’m asked, I’m always honest that I understand how they feel because I had an abortion and they have every right to make the decision,” she said.

And some older women said the position they’re in now — retired, with savings and stability — is something that traces them back to Roe.

“It gave us the opportunity to decide to get married and start a family later on,” said Eileen Ehlers, 74, a retired high school English teacher and mother.

What Roe gave her, she said, she can now pour back into volunteer work: “We have time.”