Pro-choice advocate: Stand up for rights

Several years ago, a bishop visited Nancy Keenan to talk about abortion.

"He came swooping down my hall ... and you could almost feel the tension," Keenan recalled last night.

"I know your mother," the bishop said.

"Well, she's pro-choice too," Keenan replied.

"How can [you] hold this position as a Catholic?" the bishop asked her.

"You can dictate in the halls of the cathedral," Keenan told him, "but you can't dictate in the halls of the capitol."

Then a Montana state government official, Keenan firmly held the view that you should "stand by what you believe in" — even if it meant defying your own church by supporting abortion rights.

That conviction has guided Keenan since the beginning of her political career. She is now president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, one of the country's largest abortion rights groups, where her mandate is to help get pro-choice political candidates elected.

"We want [abortion] available to women," Keenan said last night to a small audience in Dodds Auditorium. "We want it legal. We want it safe."

But Keenan expressed a desire to shift the debate away from abortion itself to preventing unwanted pregnancies. She criticized opponents of abortion for "the hypocrisy of not wanting to advance a prevention agenda, but at the same time wanting to outlaw abortion."

Keenan was particularly critical of current laws that allow pharmacists to deny women access to birth control medication.

"Do we believe as women, we are free? We have right now a president fighting for freedom around the world, and we're losing our freedom here," Keenan said.

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She called for a greater female presence in what she said is a predominantly male U.S. government. "Women approach public policy differently," Keenan said. "I don't think we saw issues about daycare until women were elected. I don't think we saw issues about battery until women were elected."

Keenan said that while pro-choice advocates won in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that overturned antiabortion laws, the pro-life movement "has been trying to take that win away ever since."

Keenan said her worst fear is a federal ban against abortion, and though NARAL is prepared for that, Keenan said she believes it won't happen.

"I'm glad that the American public is pro-choice," she said. "I'm glad that they share our belief that it should be about the health and the life of the women."

"I think as long as the American public understands and supports the tenants of Roe — the health and the life of the women — we're there."

But Keenan doesn't downplay the hardships of being in politics and the public eye.

Shortly after she "stood up to [her] bishop," Keenan and her mother went to church. A woman turned to Keenan and said, "The bishop is right. May you burn in hell."

But other churchgoers whispered as they passed by, "We're with you dear, we're with you."