Michelman, Kate

A key figure in the pro-choice movement, Kate Michelman served as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the largest pro-choice advocacy group in the United States from 1985 to 2004. During this period, she emerged as one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, D.C. She has advised and campaigned for many political candidates, sought to defeat Supreme Court nominees who threatened to overturn Roe v. Wade, and worked to defeat a wide range of legislative attempts to deny or restrict women's access to safe and legal abortion.

Michelman was born in New Jersey in 1942 to an upwardly mobile Catholic family. From a very early age, she demonstrated a passion for politics and social justice, but it was personal experience that first led Michelman to the issue that would come to define her public life. In 1969, four years before the Supreme Court legalized abortion, Michelman's husband left her for another woman. Soon thereafter, she learned she was pregnant. At the time, she was a stay-at-home mother and a practicing Catholic. Relying on the rhythm method for birth control, she had given birth three times in three years.

Lacking the means to support her young family, Michelman grew desperate. After a failed suicide attempt, a doctor told her she might be eligible for a “therapeutic” abortion. To qualify, however, she had to obtain permission from both her estranged husband and an all-male hospital review board that subjected her to humiliating questions about her sex life. “Everyone else had control except me, and I had to bear the consequences,” she later explained. “It was then I became acutely aware of how desperate the situation is for women.”

After this searing experience, Michelman gradually got her life back on track. She went on welfare for a time, took a part-time job in a library, and in 1972 remarried. She then worked for several years in the nonprofit and social service sectors. Her career as a champion of women's reproductive rights began in 1980, when she was named executive director of Family Planning Services in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which under her tenure became the Tri-County Planned Parenthood. Michelman, who saw her job as providing clients with a full range of reproductive services-from abortion to infertility treatment-found herself drawn into the political fray. In the early 1980s, the pro-life movement, having abandoned hopes of reversing Roe through a constitutional amendment, had turned its energies to the state level, targeting Pennsylvania as a key battleground. Michelman's experiences combating pro-life forces in Pennsylvania would prepare her to take on a national leadership role within the pro-choice movement.

Michelman assumed the helm at NARAL in 1985 and two years later helped to lead the successful fight against Robert Bork's appointment to the Supreme Court. Even as pro-choice forces managed to prevent the wholesale overturning of Roe, however, they failed to stave off a host of new laws that have restricted access to abortion, including laws that require parental notification for minors, impose mandatory waiting periods, or ban all public funding of abortions. In [Page 946]response to the shifting political climate, Michelman and NARAL consulted with pollsters and adopted a more conservative message-one that sought to protect abortion rights by tapping into the public's widespread distrust of big government. Rather than insisting on women's absolute right to control their own bodies, the organization began to stress the need to safeguard individuals against undue government intervention. Their new slogan asked, “Who Decides? You or Them?” Although this pragmatic strategy proved effective in reaching undecided voters, critics have argued that NARAL's message has undercut its ability to defend the reproductive rights of poor women, who often rely on public funds.

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