As you know, the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is this week. The ACLU's Reproductive Rights Director, Lorie Chaiten's letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun Times demonstrates yet again why these issues will remain in the forefront for the coming year:

Roe vs. Wade turns 35 on Jan. 22. With this anniversary, we mark not only 35 years of reproductive freedom, but also 35 years of impressive gains in the fight for women's equality.

At the core of women's equality is the ability to control whether and when we have children. The legalization of contraception in the 1960s and abortion in the 1970s fostered women's ability to make important life decisions.

This fact is not lost on the only two women to date ever to serve on the Supreme Court. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor co-wrote an opinion preserving Roe in 1992 that acknowledged, "The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives."

Last year, in a dissent to a Supreme Court decision upholding the first-ever federal ban on certain abortion procedures, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that the core of the right to abortion "center[s] on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature."

It is time to re-examine the roles access to birth control and abortion play not only in opening up the classrooms, boardrooms and legislatures to women, but also to ensuring women's equality more broadly. It is time to refocus on fairness and opportunity so that we all can make meaningful decisions about whether and when to bear children.

The political, economic and social life of our democracy depends on it.

Online: http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/letters/746936,CST-EDT-vox18.article