[OPINION] Ina Chadwick: Spotlight Shines On Reproductive Rights

Longtime Westport resident Ina Chadwick is a journalist and playwright. She also founded The A Chronicles, which stages theatrical events around the topic of reproductive rights. Ina writes:

In 1968, at 23, I was raising 3 babies under 3 in suburban New Rochelle, looking for meaning beyond housework, commuter husbands and disposable diapers.

I was also a poet, still hoping to change the world using my Smith Corona typewriter after the children were asleep.

In that upscale neighborhood, without any obvious survival struggles, I hungered for purpose. I joined a consciousness raising group where a few liberal women gathered to discussed daily life, marriage and work, to find shared struggles.

At one touchy-feely gathering, the strong advice was simple: “Don’t let any man control you—and if he does, leave.”

I left that group after disagreeing about “leaving,” without making sure you had a plan. After all, in 1968 married women couldn’t get a checking account on their own.

Perhaps I learned I was a pragmatist, rather than a seeker of ideological clarity?

Looking back from 2026, I see that moment as an early sign of the escalating alienation between men and women.

A New York news story about Ina Chadwick …

The gap between feminist slogans and women’s actual lives became further clear to me when I began to do volunteer work at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.  I interviewed new mothers for Dr. Christopher Tietze’s World Population Council’s Intrauterine Device contraception research, and also spent time chaperoning male doctors examining women in the antepartum clinic.

One afternoon, a tired looking, middle-aged woman with a thick Irish brogue brought her Down syndrome 12-year-old daughter to the clinic. When the doctor confirmed the girl was 4 months pregnant, the mother said, “This can’t be. She goes everywhere with her father, the building superintendent.” I still remember the silence when the recognition of reality settled in.

When she asked about “that operation” for her young, innocent daughter, the doctor warned her about the law. I followed her to the elevator and gave her the name of a doctor on Central Park West — knowledge I had, I knew, because of my privilege.

She desperately needed to know what I knew. Many of the upper-middle class girls I knew were savvy enough in how to activate networks for the illegal procedure. Several had used abortionists, and reported about their experiences. I drove one friend to her procedure. Another friend picked her up when it was over.

That afternoon stayed with me. It turned reproductive rights from an abstract political argument into a matter of immediate danger, secrecy and access.

… and another.

Months later, I crafted with other women a data-credible survey to take door to door in New Rochelle to reveal religious and political beliefs, as well as income levels.

We tallied the results, and were able to go back with a petition to show that their senator wasn’t representing their beliefs, just his own. I was no longer arguing theory; I was arguing from what I had seen.

Our local senator had labeled us “angry feminists.” He was vocally anti-abortion, an issue that was high on the list that year of what might be constitutionally wrong for women.  He was out of sync with his constituents.

During that year, the 1969 New York legislative battles and the subsequent successful push to legalize abortion in the state as well as birth control, safe pregnancies and safe abortions, our data prevailed and was presented.

In 1978 I moved to Westport. My poetry was well underway, and I had let my Planned Parenthood membership lapse. I moved from poetry into journalism, editorial work, and eventually playwriting.

By this time Roe v. Wade had been law for 5 years, and my crusader work felt complete.

Ina Chadwick

I, like many of us, assumed Roe was settled law. I was wrong. For years I mistook legal victory for permanence. As reproductive rights were quietly eroded, I wasn’t paying attention.

Lost in my own entitlement, I almost forgot the next generation. Am I still a poet, still an artist? Could I make art and trouble again, as reproductive rights were undermined by funding cuts, state-by-state restrictions, and misinformation aimed at vulnerable girls?

Fortunately, the old impulse to agitate found a new form: theater. My door-to-door activism became a platform for The A Chronicles: bold theatrical events about reproductive rights, meant to disrupt stale narratives and spark conversation.

Our work was discovered and embraced by Reproductive Equity Now. They are bringing our bold, carefully curated, professionally produced 10-minute plays to the Westport Country Playhouse’s Lucille Lortel Rehearsal Barn on Sunday July12.

Each of the 4 short plays reveals a different aspect of reproductive health care. “R Rated: Reproductive Rights and Resistance On Stage” is directed by Keria Naughton.

We are confident the program will appeal to Westport’s greater sense of fairness. We are privileged to have local talent — including Keira Naughton and Max Samuels — to help keep us from sliding backward

The work must continue — not only in the political realm, but rendered and shared in stories that remind us what was won, what was lost, and whom we are still responsible to protect.

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