The problems within the pro-choice movement:
“Some of these leaders and their similarly aged deputies have been reluctant to pass the torch, according to a growing number of younger abortion-rights activists who say their predecessors are hindering the movement from updating its strategy to appeal to new audiences. This tension had been brewing for years, but in 2010, Keenan told Newsweek that she worried that the pro-choice cause might be vulnerable because young people weren’t motivated enough to get involved. The complaint struck young activists like Steph Herold, 25, as an effort to place blame on others for mistakes the establishment pro-choice movement has made along the way. ‘They are the generation that gave us legalized abortions, but they also screwed up,’ says Herold, pointing to the pro-choice establishment’s failure to stop the 1976 Hyde Amendment, a law that prohibits federal funding of abortions and disproportionately affects poor women. At a conference last May, Herold heard a women’s-clinic owner who has worked in the abortion field for some 40 years echo Keenan’s complaint–that young people aren’t involved enough in the pro-choice movement. Herold was furious. She stood up and, trembling, walked to a microphone. ‘We’re counseling your patients and stuffing your envelopes,’ Herold told the clinic owner. ‘You should be talking to us and not just about us.’”
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