OUR COMMUNITY

28 | FEBRUARY 3 • 2022 

H

adassah, the Women’s Zionist 
Organization of America, 
“stands unequivocally for a 
woman’s right to choose,” said National 
Hadassah President Rhoda Smolow. 
“Patients have the right to make deci-
sions about their reproductive rights. 
Medically unnecessary laws in some 
states restricting reproductive rights are 
meant to shame women.” 
What seemed like settled law on 
legalized abortion after 49 years is no 
longer certain. The conservative major-
ity on the Supreme Court of the United 
States (SCOTUS) seems poised this 
session to overturn the High Court’s 
1973 landmark Roe v. Wade 
decision. With growing con-
cern, Hadassah hosted an 
online program, “The Road 
Beyond Roe: Advocating 
for Reproductive Rights.” 
The special guests on Jan. 
18 were writer and social 
justice activist Letty Cottin 
Pogrebin and Dr. Chavi Eve 
Karkowsky, a maternal-fetal 
physician.
Pogrebin took part in con-
versation, guided by jour-
nalist Esther Kustanowitz. 
Pogrebin’s newest book 
is Shanda: A Memoir of 
Shame and Secrecy. Pogrebin 
recalled that when she co-founded Ms. 
Magazine in 1972, abortion was still ille-
gal nationwide, though allowed in New 
York. 
Stating that “we have a right to our 
voices and our experiences,” Pogrebin, 
82, remembered when “famous women 
admitted in the magazine that they had 
had an abortion.” She said telling others 

is a way to “normalize abortion,” which 
she considers to be health care.
“We humanize the issue with exam-
ples from real lives — those who had 
abortions and those who died having 
illegal abortions.” She considers herself 
fortunate for getting access to two safe 
abortions in the before-times. 
“It is not an immoral choice,” she said.
Offering the statistic that “one in four 
American women will have an abor-
tion by age 45,” Pogrebin said she views 
abortion as respect for women and 
that “pro-choice is pro-child, because 
the worst thing in the world is to be 
an unwanted child, whose mother was 
denied an abortion.” 
It was unexpected and thrilling, she 
said, when Roe v. Wade passed. But 
Pogrebin and feminist friends like 
former U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug and Ms. 
Magazine editor Gloria Steinem made 
the mistake of thinking they could relax. 
“We didn’t see then that abortion 
would become a litmus test for conser-
vative Republicans,” she said. 
“Little by little, they chipped away 
at the constitutional law with restric-

tions attached to it, [such as] the Hyde 
Amendment that wouldn’t cover poor 
women’s abortions. We at Ms. figured 
out that our future would be to fight 
these challenges.”

A DOCTOR’S VIEW
Karkowsky drew upon her career expe-
riences as a physician to write her first 
book, High Risk: Stories of Pregnancy, Birth 
and the Unexpected (Liveright/Norton 
2020). 
The maternal-fetal medicine special-
ist, known as a high-risk pregnancy 
doctor, deals with pregnancy compli-
cations. In the course of her work, she 
might present abortion as a choice for 
certain patients. 
Karkowsky spoke of a patient who 
earlier gave birth to a child with an 
abnormal brain, requiring substantial 
care from her. When the mother became 
pregnant again, the result of amnio-
centesis — testing the amniotic fluid 
— indicated the fetus would also have a 
brain abnormality. 
“Because Roe v. Wade exists, I gave 
my patient a choice to terminate the 

Settled law for 49 years, the future of the 
right to choose is uncertain.

Hadassah Hosts Reproductive 
Rights Program

ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER 
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Dr. Chavi 
Eve 
Karkowsky

Letty Cottin 
Pogrebin 

HADASSAH

