Beth Walton

bwalton@citizen-times.com

ASHEVILLE - A 79-year-old woman stood in front of a crowd Monday night to say the battle for abortion rights is not over. She said she got pregnant out of wedlock when she was 20 years old.

The year was 1957. The Supreme Court had yet to rule on Roe v. Wade, affirming a woman’s right to have an abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

It was socially unacceptable to be a single mother at the time, the Asheville resident told a room of 50 people at the aSHEville Museum in downtown, where a celebration was underway marking Planned Parenthood’s centennial anniversary.

The large nonprofit agency operates a clinic in Asheville, the only free-standing abortion service provider in Western North Carolina. In its first year, the Asheville Health Center saw close to 3,000 patients.

Sixty years have past since the day of her abortion, yet the woman speaking still doesn’t want her name to be known. She shook as she told her story.

The man who impregnated her took her to a “doctor,” she said. There, she was given three shots of whiskey and had a catheter inserted into her uterus.

She passed out from the pain and woke up screaming for help.

An aid came and checked on her. The woman said she was told that since she had yet to miscarry, she should leave the catheter inside and go on with her life.

Three days later she aborted by herself at her parent’s home. She healed without medical attention and didn’t tell anyone for 25 years.

She said it was a nightmare.

Around the country Planned Parenthood is marking 100 years of progress. The fight for reproductive rights is a battle advocates say was hard fought and ongoing.

The nonprofit health care provider opened its first birth control clinic on Oct. 16, 1916 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, said Sarah Eldred, communications manager for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the regional affiliate which oversees the Asheville clinic.

Women were lined up around the block for education and information, she said. That year, maternal mortality was the second leading cause of death next to tuberculosis among women of reproductive age.

Within a month, the clinic was shut down and founder Margaret Sanger and others were charged with crimes related to sharing birth control information.

Sanger, who grew up in a family with 11 children, spent 30 days in the Queens County Penitentiary, where it is said she discussed birth control with the inmates.

Today there are 650 Planned Parenthood health centers across the United States. In North Carolina, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates nine clinics, four of which offer abortion services. Statewide, the agency reaches around 26,000 patients annually, Eldred said.

One-hundred years shows the role Planned Parenthood has played in ensuring reproductive rights, said Nikki Harris, director of philanthropy in Western North Carolina for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.

Over the next century, Planned Parenthood will continue its mission to make sure all people have access to abortion service and care so they can safely raise children, she said. “Our community cares about reproductive rights and access for all.”

In addition to providing abortion services, the Asheville Health Center offers birth control, emergency contraceptive, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and other health care services for male, female and transgender patients.

Staff advocate for reproductive rights and are expanding community education programs, such as partnerships with local nonprofits like Tranzmission and the YWCA of Asheville, Harris said. Curriculum spans from sex education to healthy decision-making and relationship-building.

Places like Planned Parenthood are even more important now, given this electoral season, said state Terry Van Duyn, D-Buncombe, who was also at the event.

She pointed to recent remarks made by the Rev. Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Despite tapes showing presidential nominee Donald Trump making misogynistic comments about women surfacing earlier this month, Graham told his followers on social media to vote using their conservative Christian instincts and to think about who will be filling any vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s “scary” that Graham is supporting an “immoral sociopath for president,” Van Duyn said.

“What that reinforces for me is that for them this election is about rolling back Roe v. Wade. They will compromise everything they stand for to roll Roe v. Wade back.

"Women deserve to make their own choice and have access to quality care.”

North Carolina state Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe, also attended the centennial celebration.

One of the first things she did in the General Assembly was to pass the Healthy Youth Act, which provides for comprehensive sex education in public schools.

It was a hard and noble fight, and every year more of it gets chipped away, Fisher said. Nonetheless, she remains optimistic. “I think the landscape is changing and Planned Parenthood has so much to do with that.”