These older women voters remember a time before Roe – and they’re rallying around Kamala Harris

In 1965, when Betty Gunz was a junior in college, she had an illegal abortion that almost killed her and got her kicked out of school.

In 1965, when Betty Gunz was a junior in college, she was kicked out of school and almost died after having an illegal abortion. In the years since, she’s told the story of those days so many times that she no longer cries as she recounts being blindfolded in a strip mall parking lot, being given whiskey instead of anesthesia as the procedure was done on a kitchen table, and that the hospital called her parents to say their goodbyes after she developed sepsis and organ failure. In 1977, she told that story in a committee hearing in a failed bid to stop North Carolina legislators from passing some of the first post-Roe abortion restrictions, which required parental consent for minors. In 2022, she talked about it again in interviews after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision with local outlets here while standing outside the abortion clinic where she volunteers as an escort. And earlier this year, she marked the second anniversary of the ruling that overturned the federal right to an abortion by campaigning for Democrats, again describing what happened nearly 60 years ago. “We had to fight for a long time,” Gunz, now an 80-year-old retired psychotherapist here, told CNN during an interview in her Charlotte home. “And here we are, fighting it again.” Vice President Kamala Harris has made reproductive rights — and former President Donald Trump’s role in appointing three of the conservative judges who overturned Roe v. Wade – a central part of her campaign pitch in a bid to harness women’s anger into electoral victories. While much of the focus has been on younger women, some female seniors say reproductive rights is also a top issue for them. Unlike younger generations, who until recently may have taken federal abortion protections for granted, older women recall the era of illegal backroom abortions that preceeded Roe. Some, like Gunz, consider themselves to be the lucky ones, because they survived and went on to have families and careers. Others described feeling angry and concerned about women’s broader place in society and the rights available to their daughters and granddaughters.