Kitchen Table Politics. Stacie Taranto
mass in the state. Parishioners were told to contact their legislators to urge them to vote against the bill, with some church bulletins describing how to do so. But pleas like this were increasingly ineffective by the late sixties. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Griswold v. Connecticut decision in 1965, which eliminated remaining sanctions against birth control, occurred amidst sexual revolutions, feminist movements, and the advent of the popular birth control pill. Meanwhile, the church’s Vatican II reforms encouraged parishioner engagement and debate. This amalgam of factors caused many Catholics to question (if not blatantly disregard) what their church said about sex and reproduction, including its warnings about abortion. Still, pastoral letters like the one from 1967 hinted at the opposition the church was capable of mounting, an influence that would weigh heavily upon devout parishioners like Margie Fitton in the years to come.26
Once the abortion bill passed the State Senate, Catholic leaders began lobbying the Assembly, ultimately leading to a failed vote on 30 March 1970. The church directed parochial school students to send anti-abortion letters to Albany. Assemblywoman Cook remembered that “nuns would stand in the halls of the Capitol and cross themselves when I’d go by.”27 The day before the vote, an anti-abortion letter from the church bishops was read at every Catholic mass in New York State. Newly elected Democratic assemblywoman Mary Ann Krupsak of Schenectady, who was Catholic and an original sponsor of the abortion bill, was called a murderer by a bishop. The pressure got to her, and Krupsak, a feminist, voted against the bill as it fell three legislators short in the Assembly.28
Cook went back to the drawing board, and with outside advocacy from the Committee for Cook-Leichter, was able to get an abortion bill passed in the Assembly and signed into law. Cook kept careful tabs on who was supporting the bill. After groups such as Ruth Cusack’s from Long Island visited legislators in the Assembly, they would report back to Cook’s office; her team would then follow up with those legislators. Cook maintained that this was how laws were passed, with all the hard work occurring before the vote. Along with the physicians’ requirement, two changes were added. Abortion would now only be legal through the first twenty-four weeks of pregnancy, and afterward only if it were necessary to save the life of the expectant woman. A woman also had to consent to having an abortion before the procedure was performed. The final bill was therefore a reform measure, albeit one far less restrictive than those proposed before Cook and other women got involved. These changes secured additional support, including from Assemblywoman Krupsak, who had buckled under pressure from the Catholic Church the last time. The Assembly’s final tally was 76 to 73 votes in favor. Governor Rockefeller signed the bill the next day on 11 April 1970.29
Cook’s involvement in NOW led her to see legal abortion as a core woman’s right; in turn, she showed fellow feminists and everyday women and supporters how to pass legislation. Cook helped unite Rockefeller Republicans across the state with liberal Democrats in districts downstate that were not heavily Catholic. Together, they made abortion a public issue as much as a women’s one. Yet, their coalition left out whole segments of the Democratic Party and eventually enabled the small conservative Republican wing based upstate to gain power in the four populous suburban counties downstate, where (mostly Catholic) opponents like Margie Fitton lived and would soon organize.30
“Church Ladies” and the Right to Life Committee
The abortion reform bill that Governor Rockefeller signed in 1970 was the most expansive law of its kind. Between 1967 and 1970, sixteen states legalized abortion to some extent through either legislation or judicial review. New York’s law went the furthest because there was no residency requirement. It became a model for groups elsewhere, as the state became a haven for those seeking safe and legal abortions in the years before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the procedure at the federal level in 1973. Roughly 60 percent of abortions performed in New York from 1970 through 1972 were for women who did not reside there.31
Under these conditions, mounting pressure to recriminalize the procedure grew, with Margie Fitton’s participation increasing after she brought up the topic at candidates’ night at her church. Seeing that she was passionate about the topic, Fitton’s pastor, Father Ed Netter—who led St. Anthony’s Parish to become a hotbed of anti-abortion activism in Rockland County—asked her to attend a meeting with people from upstate New York associated with Ed Golden. In 1967, Golden had started an umbrella organization to connect anti-abortion activists across the state; in 1972, it was officially incorporated as the New York State Right to Life Committee (RTLC). Golden’s efforts allowed local actors like Margie Fitton, who joined St. Anthony’s anti-abortion group in Rockland County, to adopt uniform messages and tactics. Doing so strengthened opponents’ bargaining power as they moved to overturn the abortion reform law.32
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