How White Nationalists Are Hijacking the Anti-Abortion Movement

The growing overlap between anti-abortion activism and far-right extremism has started to spill into the real world in high-profile ways.

By Tess Owen and Carter Sherman
Feb 3, 2022

On New Year’s Eve, a fire ripped through the last Planned Parenthood in East Tennessee, turning the Knoxville abortion clinic into a hunk of rubble. As the ruins smoldered, some anti-abortion activists and members of the far-right celebrated online.

A Telegram meme account affiliated with the Proud Boys, a far-right street-fighting gang, responded to the literal fire with a string of fire emojis. “Aww, what a shame,” they wrote. “That will set their genocidal plans and baby parts market back for months.”

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7n4bq/white-nationalist-anti-abortion-movement


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


The Long History of the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Links to White Supremacists

Racism and xenophobia have been woven into the anti-abortion movement for decades, despite the careful curation of its public image.

By Alex DiBranco
(posted online January 8, 2021)
FEBRUARY 3, 2020

The anti-abortion movement in the United States has long been complicit with white supremacy. In recent decades, the movement mainstream has been careful to protect its public image by distancing itself from overt white nationalists in its ranks. Last year, anti-abortion leader Kristen Hatten was ousted from her position as vice president of the anti-choice group New Wave Feminists after identifying as an “ethnonationalist” and sharing white supremacist alt-right content. In 2018, when neo-Nazis from the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP) sought to join the local March for Life rally organized by Tennessee Right to Life, the anti-abortion organization rejected TWP’s involvement. (The organization’s statement, however, engaged in the same false equivalency between left and right that Trump used in the wake of fatal white supremacist violence at Charlottesville. “Our organization’s march has a single agenda to support the rights of mothers and the unborn, and we don’t agree with the violent agenda of white supremacists or Antifa,” the group wrote on its Facebook page.)

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/anti-abortion-white-supremacy/


USA – 10 years after abortion doctor George Tiller’s murder, advocates fear violent rhetoric

10 years after abortion doctor George Tiller's murder, advocates fear violent rhetoric

Alia E. Dastagir, USA TODAY
Published May 31, 2019

Ten years ago today, George Tiller, a Kansas abortion doctor, was attending Sunday service at his Wichita church when he was fatally shot by an anti-abortion extremist.

"However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence," President Barack Obama said in a statement after his death.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/31/george-tillers-murder-abortion-rights-advocates-worry-10-years-later/1300017001/