USA – We Need Courageous Leaders Who Stand Up to Anti-Abortion Extremists

Anti-abortion violence has increased significantly since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Our political leaders must not cower.

9/2/2023
by CARRIE N. BAKER

While headlines focus on politicians’ efforts to ban abortion at the state and national levels, anti-abortion forces are also working at the local level to erode abortion access—even in deep blue states such as Massachusetts. In addition to pumping massive funds into anti-abortion fake clinics in blue states, they are also working to block municipal protections for abortion healthcare by using threats and legal intimidation.

Recently, in the progressive Western Massachusetts city of Easthampton, both the mayor and city council president—both Democrats that claim to support abortion rights—voted against an ordinance to protect access to reproductive healthcare and gender-affirming care. The ordinance was supported by over 20 reproductive and trans rights groups in the community, who were perplexed and frustrated by their actions.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/09/02/anti-abortion-massachusetts/

USA – Small, rural communities are becoming abortion access battlegrounds

After local leaders in rural Nevada reached an impasse over a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic, an anti-abortion activist pitching local abortion bans arrived at their remote city hall.

May 21, 2023
By Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez | KFF Health News

WEST WENDOVER, Nev. — In April, Mark Lee Dickson arrived in this 4,500-person city that hugs the Utah-Nevada border to pitch an ordinance banning abortion.

Dickson is the director of the anti-abortion group Right to Life of East Texas and founder of another organization that has spent the last few years traveling the United States trying to convince local governments to pass abortion bans.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/small-rural-communities-are-becoming-abortion-access-battlegrounds-rcna84921

USA – Five sets of fetal remains found in anti-abortion activist’s home, DC police say

Lauren Handy claims she gained access to organ bank at university in Seattle but authorities have not disclosed source of fetuses

Jessica Glenza and Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Thu 31 Mar 2022

Five sets of human fetal remains were recovered from the Washington DC home of an anti-abortion activist after a raid, the capital’s Metropolitan police department confirmed to the Guardian on Thursday.

The activist, a woman named Lauren Handy, 28, is a leader of the group Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising (PAAU) and has described herself as a “Catholic anarchist” in the past.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/31/five-fetuses-found-anti-abortion-activists-home-dc

31.03.2022

Featured

News

anti-choice extremists

anti-choice fanatics

anti-choice stupidity

fetal remains

Lauren Handy

Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising

Tina Mankowski

United States

Anti-choice

Texas – Abortion rights groups sue, saying ‘extremists’ are using the courts to target them

Courts asked to block any lawsuits resulting from information gathered in depositions of leaders of groups that fund abortions

By BeLynn Hollers
Mar 18, 2022

Two abortion rights groups — Texas Equal Access Fund and Lilith Fund — have together sued two organizations outside of Texas and two private individuals who they say are targeting them as they try to aid pregnant women after the passage of SB 8, the state law that bans abortions after around six weeks. The Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based nonprofit law firm, and America First Legal Foundation, a D.C.-based advocacy group, are the two organizations listed in the lawsuit. It also names Ashley Maxwell of Hood County and Sadie Weldon of Jack County as defendants. The two women filed petitions in January and February, seeking to depose leaders of the Texas Equal Access Fund and the Lilith Fund.

Continued: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2022/03/18/abortion-rights-groups-sue-saying-extremists-are-using-the-courts-to-target-them/

Before the Capitol Attack, There Were the Abortion Wars

For reproductive rights defenders, the mood and some of the faces in the crowd were familiar.

By ALISSA QUART
FEB 04, 2021

Some 30 years ago a man named John Brockhoeft planned two bombings at abortion clinics and women’s health centers in Ohio and Florida. Brockhoeft was sentenced to seven years in prison (he served five) for the firebombing of one clinic; he had already served 26 months for scheming unsuccessfully to bomb another. Brockhoeft called himself a “freedom fighter” and kept a prison newsletter detailing his missions. It was an era when headlines were filled with the number of abortion providers who were either targeted or assassinated.

Three decades after his last clinic bombing, the same Brockhoeft livestreamed his arrival at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He called the moment his fight “for our beloved President Donald J. Trump.”

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/before-the-capitol-attack-there-were-the-abortion-wars.html

How Anti-Abortion Terrorism Fueled The MAGA Attack On The Capitol

LAUREN RANKIN
LAST UPDATED JANUARY 15, 2021

Last week, the world watched in horror as a pro-Trump mob, urged by the President himself, attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Thousands of angry people, rushed the Capitol building, overwhelming the law enforcement officers who were staged outside. They smashed windows and broke down doors; thousands of them flooded into the Capitol building itself. For several hours, they occupied congressional offices and triumphantly paraded through the House and Senate floors, wreaking havoc and calling for violence against and death for politicians and police officers, alike. By the end of the seditious melee, five people were dead.

One of the people there was John Brockhoeft, who posted online about his presence at the Capitol. Brockhoeft isn’t just any Trump supporter. He’s also a convicted anti-abortion terrorist.

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/01/10265551/anti-abortion-terrorism-capitol-riot-attack

Michigan Police Express Sympathy for Anti-Abortion Clinic Blockade

8/31/2020
by ABBY LAWLOR

In the early morning of Friday, Aug. 27, 12 fanatical anti-abortion extremists in Sterling Heights, Mich., formed an unyielding blockade in front of the Northland Family Planning Center—known for providing access to abortion, pregnancy tests, treatment for miscarriages, and gynecological care, among other reproductive health care services.

There are three Northland Family Planning Centers located across Michigan—and all have been under siege from anti-choice extremists throughout the summer months.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2020/08/31/anti-abortion-clinic-blockade-in-michigan-receives-sympathy-from-local-police/

Religious zealots only show why abortion should be legal

By Suzanne McLaughlin
22nd August

LAST week a 10-year-old Brazilian girl wearing a little flowery dress and cheap
flip-flops was bundled into a car boot clutching her fluffy toy frog. She was
driven through a back door to a hospital guarded by military police past a
throng of right-wing and religious extremists in order to have a termination.

Abortion is allowed in Brazil in just three instances: to save a woman’s life,
if it is the result of rape and if the child is dead. This little girl was
living through two of these circumstances. She was a victim of rape and her
life was in imminent danger and so the judge in her home area ruled that the
abortion should go ahead.

Continued: https://www.thenational.scot/news/18669689.suzanne-mclaughlin-religious-zealots-show-abortion-legal/

USA – How Gerrymandering Leads to Radical Abortion Laws

How Gerrymandering Leads to Radical Abortion Laws
Georgia's "fetal heartbeat" bill never would have passed if the state legislature truly reflected the voters' political preferences.

By David Daley
May 14, 2019

Stacey Abrams still hasn’t conceded that she lost to Brian Kemp in last year’s gubernatorial race in Georgia, and perhaps justifiably so. Kemp, formerly the secretary of state there, administered his own election, shuttered precincts in black communities, and presided over a last-minute voting roll purge that targeted predominantly minority voters. Despite all that help, he eclipsed Abrams by fewer than 55,000 votes—another sign of how purple Georgia has become.

Last week, however, the state legislature enacted—and Kemp signed—one of the most extreme “fetal heartbeat” abortion prohibitions in the nation. HB 481, which declares that “unborn children are a class of living, distinct persons,” limits abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy. If the law is allowed to take effect in January—rather than being held up in the courts—women who miscarry could be investigated by the state to determine whether their pregnancy ended unintentionally or with the help of a doctor or an abortion pill.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/153901/gerrymandering-leads-radical-abortion-laws

USA – The “Pro-Life” Movement is Built on Christian Supremacy, and its Rhetoric is Increasingly Dangerous

The “Pro-Life” Movement is Built on Christian Supremacy, and its Rhetoric is Increasingly Dangerous

Apr 11 2019 | Reproaction
By: Shireen Shakouri

As I celebrated Persian New Year with family and friends recently, my heart was torn between elation for the start of spring and an exciting year ahead, and sorrow for those facing fear and loss after the massacre against the Muslim community in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Christchurch terrorist began his hateful manifesto explaining his atrocities with, “It’s the birthrates, it’s the birthrates, it’s the birthrates.” Jelani Cobb recently noted in The New Yorker that many of the other terrorists who inspired this attack have also been highly concerned with the idea of controlling reproduction to prevent white Christians being ‘replaced’ by other groups – the bitter irony being that these terrorists largely are descendants of missionaries and colonizers who replaced the populations of the lands they now inhabit, [1] oftentimes through reproductive control.

Continued: https://reproaction.org/the-pro-life-movement-is-built-on-christian-supremacy-and-its-rhetoric-is-increasingly-dangerous/