Actress Defends Abortions at Rally

On the day lawyers argued before the U.S. Supreme Court about the extent to which the state can restrict abortions, actress Morgan Fairchild warned a Cal State Northridge audience that if that right is taken away, other personal liberties could follow.

“If we do not have the right to control our own bodies, what right will be next?” she asked about 75 students Wednesday. “If your body is owned by the state, what is to prevent, when there’s overpopulation, the state saying that you cannot have a child?”

The “Speak Out” rally at CSUN was one of several organized nationwide by the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Douglas D. Graham, a Studio City screenwriter and producer, said abortion is a choice not up to “governments, churches or pipsqueak ayatollahs,” but to individual women. “It’s a woman’s choice, and men have no role in this other than to support a woman’s choice.”

Other speakers told the students about the days before the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortions.

After an illegal abortion, women would have to lie to hospitals to get treatment, one speaker said. They would have to say, “I’m pregnant, I fell, and I think I’m miscarrying,” said Wendy Oates of Sherman Oaks, a member of the California Abortion Rights Action League.

And to get a legal abortion, a woman had to see two psychiatrists and claim she was suicidal, said Claudia Anderson, also a member of the California group.