[light music]
[somber music]
Medical history is being made
this week in New York State.
[Reporter] Over the last two weeks, the New York Assembly
spent more than 13 hours debating the bill,
which would make abortion legal for any woman
for any reason, up to the 24th week of pregnancy.
[Reporter] Advocates and enemies of the bill
brought tremendous pressures to bear
on legislators on the emotional issue.
We’re not gonna sit quietly any longer.
You are murdering us.
The drama was summed up late yesterday
when one man’s vote made the difference.
Mr. Speaker,
I had hoped that this would never come to pass.
I fully appreciate that this is
the termination of my political career.
But what’s the use of getting elected
or reelected if you don’t stand for something?
Aye 76, no 73.
Vote passed!
[audience cheering] [gavel bangs]
[somber music continues]
Blasting you with total abandon and profanity.
Very upset.
Your floor speech today was a traitorous one.
Does a person like you sleep at night?
If so, I don’t know how.
Many women say they should have recourse to abortions,
but this is often impossible
since most states won’t allow it,
and those that do have such stringent medical requirements,
few women qualify.
Most women who want abortions must go around the law
and a million do that in this country every year.
[Reporter] Have you gone through an abortion pregnancy?
Yes, I have.
[Reporter] Why?
I was pregnant and I could not have a child
and I was not willing to go through a pregnancy
and then give the child up.
I don’t think anyone has a right
to bring an unwanted child into the world.
[somber music continues]
My father was always concerned about the underdog,
always concerned about people who had less than we did.
He was known as a country lawyer.
Every so often, people who came
to him for help had no money.
So they’d pay him in eggs or they’d bring him a chicken.
We always have a moral conscience and a social conscience.
And so when he was asked by the Democratic Party in Auburn
to run for assembly, this is 1960, he agreed to do it.
[Person] Auburn was a highly Republican,
highly Catholic small town.
[Jim] A very slow, even tempered place.
Really, it wasn’t very exciting.
[bright music]
When my father won,
he was the first democratic assemblyman
from this county since the Civil War.
And you know what?
He was the last.
He had strong beliefs that a person in his position
as an assemblyman owed a lot to his constituency.
He knew how to serve his constituents
so that they got what they needed,
which is why he was able to get reelected
every couple of years by increasingly larger margins.
He got reelected five times.
And you know, every day he was at two or three events,
especially when he was campaigning.
Clam bakes and banquets.
Yeah, there’s Michaels with Kennedy.
[Reporter] Sometime this week
the assembly will take up the abortion measure
already passed by the Senate.
If the assembly approves the measure,
it’ll become the most liberal abortion law in the country.
This was a big thing. [groovy music]
Keeping in mind that 1970 was
before the Supreme Court decision in Roe versus Wade.
At that point in time,
New York was the second most populous state
in the United States, second only to California.
It’s a large segment of the United States.
It was affected by that, it was a big deal.
It was the first proposed law anywhere to legalize abortion.
In other states, do we eliminate the restriction
for rape and incest and things like that?
But never do we legalize abortion.
There are many who say
that this bill is abortion on demand.
I submit that we have abortion on demand
in the state of New York right now.
Any woman that wants an abortion can get one.
If she has $25, she has it done here
under the most abominable circumstances.
And if she doesn’t have the $25,
please don’t forget that she can abort herself.
And regretfully, regretfully,
this is happening more often than you or I like to admit.
This was a bipartisan subject.
There was a lot of Democrats
and a lot of Republicans on one side,
and there was a lot of Democrats,
a lot of Republicans on the other side.
Catholics and Orthodox Jews
have been warned by their religious leaders
to avoid any involvement with abortion procedure.
The Vatican has published a letter
from Pope Paul’s Secretary of State
making it plain that the Roman Catholic Church
still regards abortion as nothing more than homicide,
even when the mother’s life is threatened.
[somber music]
You know, I was 17 when this all came up,
so I wasn’t old enough to vote yet.
I don’t think I read the paper.
And I remember in religion class
they passed a petition around for us to sign,
you know, opposing the law.
And I remember that only one other girl
and I didn’t sign it.
I was shocked.
I was really shocked that all the boys signed it
and I was taken aback and said, you know,
what right do they have to say what women can
or can’t do with their lives?
People were talking about it.
It was big news, there’s no question.
But my dad was basically trying to stay out of it
’cause he didn’t wanna upset anybody.
His personal feeling about whether it should be legalized.
We never talked about, no girls in the family,
except for my sister-in-Law.
I didn’t talk to him that much about it.
You know, I was his daughter-in-law.
However, he was well aware of the fact
that his home base was the city of Auburn,
which was dominated by a large block
of population that was opposed to it,
largely because of religious beliefs.
We had a thriving law practice here in Auburn, very busy.
And obviously one would have to consider
that would probably be a negative effect on the practice
because a certain number of people might leave as clients.
So he made a promise to the county committee
that he would vote against it.
Has somebody thought to mention there are many,
many adopted children in this world
that have created happiness not only for themselves,
but for their parents?
In the last 10 years, 367 young women in New York City
were known to have died as the result
of an abortion or an attempted one.
Either self-inflicted or performed by an unqualified person
and under unsafe circumstances.
All we’re asking for is that these abortions be performed
by a doctor under proper medical circumstances.
The reason that the state of New York
adopted the strict prohibition on abortion
was for medical reasons,
because of the danger in an abortion
in the early years of the 19th century.
Now, this fact is no longer true.
The medical reason for the law doesn’t exist anymore.
[Terry] But when does life begin?
Can you answer that question? Mr. Terry,
for me, life begins at the moment of conception,
[Terry] thank you. but I am here
as a legislator.
I have an obligation to give a hearing
and recognition to the fact that
that is not the same view of all people
under all circumstances.
I’ve tried to get across
and obviously not succeeded completely.
Women do not have abortions unless they’re compelled
to do it by a sort of compulsion
that no law you can draw would change.
Could we have saved 367 young women from dying?
That is the only question of conscience, in my opinion,
that anybody should be concerned with.
[bright music] [crowd chanting]
I graduated college in ’68.
I was very involved in social action at the time,
anti-war, peace movement, civil rights.
I was doing everything.
My dad said, you know, I can’t vote for the bill.
And I said, I understand.
Just as long as your vote isn’t the one to defeat it.
I never dreamed that it would come to the point
where that would mean,
where his vote would be the one that was so critical.
This was typical of conversations
between young adults and their parents
in almost every house in the country.
Whether it was Vietnam, whether it was civil rights,
whether it was equal pay for equal work,
our parents couldn’t understand
why we weren’t happy with the way things were.
So what was in our house was emblematic
of what’s going on all over the country.
Except my dad was the state assemblyman
and unlike 99.9% of the rest of the country,
he could actually do something about it.
[somber music]
When I was a senior in college,
I found out there had been several young women
in my graduating class who had had abortions.
This is back in the sixties.
No one talked about it.
It was taboo.
I was lucky I didn’t have to face that problem.
But I could see the look of fear in girls’ eyes who did.
Finally became something where I had to express my,
you know, my beliefs.
I could see a change in him.
It kind of opened his eyes.
He had no idea it was as serious as it was.
And I probably said something like,
well, you’re probably still gonna vote the same way,
aren’t you?
[Mr. Speaker] Mr. Michaels,
Mr. Miller,
Mr. Merdodt,
Mr. Mitchell.
[Person] Mr. Speaker, I didn’t hear the vote.
May I have it again?
[Reporter] The bill needed 76 votes to pass,
and it got 75.
He had voted opposed.
He had voted opposed to the bill.
Staffers and aides were in the chamber to see what happened
and when they saw the number of votes switching against it,
they said it’ll never pass, and they started walking out.
Very often, the most organized groups
that do the most lobbying, that make the most noise
are groups that actually don’t represent a majority.
So very often you have to take
quiet conversation with yourself.
I know where people stand,
but I have to do what I think is right.
You’re the only hope we have.
You’re the only vote we’ve got.
[Reporter] An assemblyman, George Michaels,
an upstate Democrat who had voted against the bill,
asked for the floor.
Mr. Speaker.
[Mr. Speaker] Mr. Michaels.
I ask your indulgence.
I had hoped that this would never come to pass
just before I left for Albany this week.
My son, Jim, who as you recall, Mr. Speaker,
gave the invocation to this assembly
on February 4th, and he said, dad, for God’s sake,
don’t let your vote be the vote that defeats this bill.
Many people in my district
may not only condemn me for what I’m about to do,
but Mr. Speaker, I say to you, in all candor,
I may say this very feelingly to all of you.
What’s the use of getting elected
or reelected if you don’t stand for something?
So, Mr. Speaker, I fully appreciate
that this is the termination of my political career.
But I cannot in good conscience stand here
and thwart the obvious majority of this house.
The members of whom I dearly love
and for whom I have a great deal of affection.
I probably never come back here again
to share these things with you.
I therefore request you, Mr. Speaker,
to change my negative vote to an affirmative vote.
[audience applauding]
Aye 76, no 73, vote cast!
[audience cheering] [gavel bangs]
[Jim] Suddenly all hell broke loose.
[Reporter] In New York State today the Senate passed
the long disputed abortion bill.
One of the nation’s most sweeping abortion controlled-
Making it entirely a decision to be made
by a woman and her doctor.
The bill now goes to Governor Nelson Rockefeller,
who has said he will sign it.
I was living in Cincinnati at the time,
and I’m in the middle of a meeting that evening
and I’ve got this phone call from a station in Long Island
telling me what happened, and I said, what?
The kids were watching Sesame Street
when I got a phone call saying, switch stations,
grandpa’s on TV.
The fact that CBS and NBC
both had cameras in the legislative chambers
showed how groundbreaking it was.
I called my mother, she said, oh my God,
so much is happening, we can’t talk.
‘Cause the phone was just continually ringing.
Your family was correct in their description of you.
However, they were too kind.
They left out the adjective dirty.
Shocked and confused by your recent vote.
What a disgusting display of emotion you put on
for the benefit of television cameras.
That was a slick trick you used.
A man who lets his children make his decisions for him
cannot be much of a man.
All right, that was the Ks.
I hope you choke on your chicken soup and matza.
Oh yeah, there was real trouble.
A lot of people who were bent on not nominating him
for another term and they succeeded.
The ramifications?
He lost.
He lost his election.
He lost the primary, he lost his election.
This one just says, man, I am glad to see
that you’ll be out of the assembly next year.
You never had any business being there.
You were voted in by the people of your county
and not just your family.
Oh, we talked about it a lot.
It had great ramifications on the family.
My mother, who had been born and raised in Auburn,
felt that the community had turned on her.
Those are the letters we got, two or three weeks.
Then they stopped writing.
But the positive stuff… that never ended.
I remember being in this back bedroom
at my grandparents’ house when these women of all ages
came, flew from all over the country
to this little town in upstate New York
to come to his bedside and thank him.
I mean, it was incredible.
[Reporter] The most liberal abortion law
in the country went into effect yesterday.
Albany Planning Information Service,
would you hold on, please?
How far has this pregnancy advanced?
I’ll call you right back and can you fly right in
if I get that kind referral for you?
Simply a matter of how well New York City,
principally the city, of course, to some extent,
the rest of the state handle this new law here.
If they handle it well,
I think we’ll have repeal throughout the country
within two years at the most.
I’m that optimistic.
That Bill became modeled legislation for other states
and became picked up by the highest levels
of the court system in this country in Roe versus Wade.
New York State, among others
already have liberalized abortions.
Now the rest of the country must follow suit.
Definitely because of assemblyman Michaels
’cause if the bill had just sort of roared to approval,
it might not have attracted so much attention.
The Supreme Court agreed today to hear arguments
on one of the most sensitive issues of the time,
the legality of abortions.
In a landmark ruling
the Supreme Court today legalized abortions,
the majority in cases from Texas and Georgia
said that the decision to end the pregnancy
during the first three months belongs to the woman
and her doctor, not the government.
Thus, the anti-abortion laws
of 46 states were rendered unconstitutional.
This was probably the most important point in my life.
This was not his personal passion.
So the fact that he really listened
to his middle son and his daughter-in-Law,
who I can only imagine were talking
to him in pretty desperate tones.
You know, he took it in,
he took it in and he did something about it.
He knew what he was doing
and he did it at risk of the fact
that he would lose his political position with his vote.
Not many people do that anymore.
You know, we’ve talked about
some of the perspectives on leadership.
We’ve started a really great piece of work about,
you know, feminist leadership.
But now I want to move us to start thinking about
what I think is most critical,
and that is the element of leadership
that requires real moral courage.
I want today to talk about George Michaels.
My concern is that too many
of the people who exercise moral courage
don’t have a legacy ’cause we don’t talk about them.
If you’re looking for a model for doing that,
for sticking your neck out,
for taking a position of moral courage,
assemblyman George Michael is right at the top of my list.
[somber music] [birds chirping]
It’s not on his tombstone, but he always said,
the most important thing you can ever say about anyone
is he made a difference.
And my dad made a difference.
But what’s the use of getting elected
or reelected if you don’t stand for something?
[somber music continues]
[somber music continues]
[somber music continues]
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