PERSONALLY Proponents of choice have remained quiet for too long BY MARY ANN SORRENTINO

Pundits are endlessly pondering the effects of a second George W. Bush presidency on American life over the next four years and beyond. To those of us hovering on the left, the resulting predictions are, at the least, unsettling. But to a significant corps who remembers life before January 22, 1973, one possibility chills more than many others, as images of women we loved file through the theaters of our minds. These women endured unsafe and illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade, and too many of them never lived to tell us about the horror of their experiences.

In New York City at the turn of the century, so many died from illegal abortions that before women went to undergo the procedure, they would say to friends, in code: "I am going to make an angel today." Pioneering birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger put the issue more broadly: "No woman can truly be free unless she can control her own fertility."

I served as executive director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island from 1977 to 1987, in the thick of post-Roe hysteria, when those opposed to choice were just cutting their teeth on hard-line advocacy. In those days, picketers passing out leaflets regularly visited our clinic. On the January 22 anniversary of Roe each year, they would leave a black wreath on my door. It was relatively harmless, and tolerable within the bounds of First Amendment rights. But 31 years later, the chilling fact is that the so-called right-to-life movement lives in the Oval Office and owns too much of both chambers of Congress.

Years ago, Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that Roe was "on a collision course with technology." She was referring to medical advances that have steadily allowed fetuses to survive at earlier gestational ages. This weakened the justices’ trimester-based reasoning that made Roe the law of the land. Today, other technologies, such as stem-cell research, raise new discussions about when life begins and what science may — or may not — do to save one life through body tissue that may — or may not — be used for future conceptions. But such discussions need not amount to a "collision course."

For too long, pro-choice advocates have rested on the laurels of the legislative and court victories of the 1970s and ’80s that allowed Roe to prevail. They have cowered in the face of a movement that claims to stand for life while it sometimes guns down, in broad daylight, those who disagree with it. They have taken shelter in less-controversial family-planning services such as sex education and contraception, leaving their enemies free to advance and to secure legislative turf that will endanger the choices, freedoms, and lives of women for generations to come.

Let’s be clear. Bush will have four more years to shape the US Supreme Court with several possible appointments. He says he will appoint only those who "know the difference between personal opinion and constitutional issues." For those who see abortion as murder, such distinctions are not possible.

John Kerry tap-danced around his "pro-choice" position every time he was asked about it. Every time, he felt compelled to note that he had been an altar boy, or to offer an extended apologia mentioning his wife’s adoption counseling. In Rhode Island, the governor and the first lady host right-to-life fundraisers while local providers of reproductive freedom and their supporters sit by silently. Those who oppose abortion rights embrace controversy to win the war; their pro-choice opposition prefers to avoid the discomfort of the limelight, even if it means surrendering ground once gained by the blood of women in bondage and the men who loved them.

Those who do not remember or are too young to know the horror of seeing a loved one go off to some dark, unknown place for an illegal pregnancy termination only to return raped, maimed, or fatally injured, should speak to anyone over 60 who can tell them.

Those who argue that Roe must be reversed for our own good must be met with a very loud chorus of "we will not go back to the bad old days!"

We hold our collective breath and listen for the majority outcry to take up the cause. The war at home looms again, and too much time already has been wasted.