Why I Talked About My Abortion on the DNC Stage
On Wednesday evening, two days after Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards made convention history by becoming the first speaker to use the word "abortion" in a convention speech, NARAL head Ilyse Hogue made history when she stood in the Wells Fargo Arena at the Democratic National Convention and told the entire nation about her abortion. "I wanted a family, but it was the wrong time," she told the audience, about her unintended pregnancy. "I made the decision that was best for me - to have an abortion and get compassionate care at a clinic in my own community. Now, years later, my husband and I are parents to two incredible children." Hogue's speech is particularly significant because it comes at a time when abortion access faces an unprecedented threat in America, and anti-abortion violence and harassment have reached all-time highs. In an exclusive interview at the DNC, Hogue talked to Cosmopolitan.com about her speech, why it was so important to make, and what will happen to women's rights if Donald Trump becomes president.
Why did you decide to talk about abortion at the DNC, in front of thousands of people?
It was really sort of terrifying. It was very, very scary and it felt very, very important. I think that as long as we talk about these issues as abstractions, we're not actually going to make people feel represented in politics the way they need to feel represented. I knew that when I stood up there and told my story that I was literally being supported by millions of women who needed someone to speak to their experience given the fact that we're experiencing a crisis in abortion access, which is so central to our equality. It's kind of, "If not now, when? If not me, who?"
What has the reaction been like?
It's been pretty overwhelming - overwhelmingly positive. My inbox and my Facebook messenger box are blowing up with women not only thanking me but telling me their own stories. I try to read every single one.
We barely heard anything about abortion in both the Republican and Democratic debates. After hearing speeches from both you and Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards at the DNC, can we expect abortion to become a bigger issue in the general election?
Yes. Starting with the Democratic debates, I think what progressive activists learned through this primary season was that the progressive movement still has a lot to do to fully internalize what it means to fight for women's rights. When [NARAL] was doing the "Ask About Abortion" campaign, the most common response I got was, "But they're both pro-choice, so why do we need to ask about it?" But my response was always: They're both for expanding health care, and yet we demand that they answer how. They're both for regulating the financial industry, but we demand to know how. Just because this is what's marginalized as a woman's issue doesn't mean that we shouldn't have the same amount of space to flesh out plans, to understand what it means to undo the crisis in access in this country, what it means to move women forward. Functionally, how do you repeal the Hyde Amendment? It led to some nuanced debates. I think the primary really laid bare how we need to broaden the perspective of what is "the progressive movement" if we're going to fight for freedom and justice for everyone.
On the right, what we saw was one of the most frightening race-to-the-bottom debates. People are trying to forget that when there were16 candidates, they were literally up there trying to outpace each other on stripping women's rights. This was not ever a partisan issue. The first state to liberalize abortion laws pre-Roe v. Wade was Colorado under Republican Gov. John Love. The second was New York Republican Gov. Rockefeller. This was not a partisan issue. It was an issue of human rights and so the staggering downward distance that we've traveled in that period of time is amazing.
The majority of Americans in this country support legal access to abortion. So unless [the anti-choice politician] goes to these crazy extremes to marginalize the issue and infuse it with toxicity, they lose on it all the time. When we think about what [the abortion debate] looks like in the general [election], our position is that our side needs to come out swinging on it. Because we have the majority with us, and when we come out swinging, we are able to frame the terms of the debate in a way that makes sense and reflects the experience of so many women in this country. When we do that, we win, and [anti-abortion politicians] are terrified of that.
What will that reframing look like over the next three months?
I think we saw it this week. Cecile on stage, me on stage bringing real stories. Unflinchingly being supportive of advancing reproductive rights. Hillary's not just standing there being like, "Roe v. Wade!" She's actually saying we need to look at how this issue affects everyone. It's about looking forward to the future and expanding the frontiers of freedom, not just looking backward and saying we need to cling to what was actually the first step of the movement.
What do you think would have happened if you gave your speech at the RNC?
I would be interested to test it! You meet tons of people in the audience who are pro-choice. Their leaders are not reflective of their constituents.
Can you paint a detailed picture of what will happen to abortion rights under a Trump/Pence administration?
Day one, Trump moves to appoint one of the shortlist of judicial nominees that he's already made public. They're very scary. Their top priority is to overturn Roe v. Wade. Forget about things like equal pay, voting rights, marriage equality, because those things always go hand in hand.
And then you've got the question of what is the role of the executive branch on a lot of these issues that we care about. Regulatory authority, if used positively, has a great effect. I suspect they would strip the agencies of any regulatory authority to advance reproductive technology that helps put power in the hands of women. And then you have the fact that the executive branch has been, for us, a backstop against all of the federal legislation that's been moved by the extreme anti-choice Congress. President Obama has been the firewall. We're talking about abortion bans, we're talking about restrictions on contraceptions - you've lost that backstop. Every bill defunding Planned Parenthood, every bill that has been stopped by President Obama will be passed through unless we get the Senate back.
You've got, in Mike Pence, a vice president who's actually done everything that Trump has said he wants to do. And I think we could be looking at a scary environment beyond what people understand: Jailing doctors for performing abortions. Jailing women, like Purvi Patel, for having abortions. Really, really restricting access to birth control. Certainly, no policies to help working moms.
Their overall goal is to force through brute power the way that we live our lives and construct our families, and they want it to look exactly like theirs. And Donald Trump's been really clear about what he thinks his family should look like. His wife should raise the kids, dinner should be on the table - that's not the way most of us live our lives.
The other thing that I actually think is important for people to understand is that the discussion is set at the top. The tone and tenor of the discussion is set at the top. You've got two people at the top of the ticket that will be riling up [people like Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear]. It will be open season on clinics. It will be open season on patients of clinics.
I also think, for me, abortion access, control over our own bodies, is ground zero for women's empowerment. It is emblematic of all of the things that we need to feel safe in being to be able to say, "This is my body." I think you've got a culture around Donald Trump that is giving power to a really dark underbelly of misogyny and empowering rape culture, saying, "That's not your body." I have a tweet from the other day where somebody said, "Where I come from, women who can't control themselves are called sluts and whores." And I wrote back and said, "What do you call men who have sex?" And he wrote back, "Studs." Now these are Donald Trump's followers and that's rhetoric, but that's rhetoric that leads to things not only like restricting abortion access, but to things like Steubenville, and for women to be treated as objects and playthings for male culture around them. It's really insidious to believe that you could have Donald Trump and Mike Pence as president and vice president of this country, and not do real damage to the young men and young women and their understanding of power and control.
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