The Battle Over the Future of the Anti-Abortion Movement if the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade

BY ABIGAIL ABRAMS/WASHINGTON, D.C., TIME magazine
MARCH 25, 2022

On a cold, clear weekend in January, tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists convened in Washington for their annual gathering, the March for Life. The mood was triumphant. In the next few months, the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to pare back or overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established the constitutional right to abortion. Anti-abortion activists have been fighting for this moment for nearly a half century. For three days surrounding the march, they danced and prayed and tearfully embraced in the streets.

But under the surface, the weekend was fraught with tension. For decades, the well-organized, largely grassroots movement has worked to unite a diverse cross-section of American society behind their cause: white evangelicals, as well as some Catholics, Black protestants, Hispanics, and conservative Democrats. Now, with their goal finally in sight, the different factions of the movement have disparate ideas of what a post-Roe world might look like, and how the movement should channel its considerable political power toward achieving those visions.

Continued: https://time.com/6160143/anti-abortion-roe-wade-supreme-court/


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


White nationalists are flocking to the US anti-abortion movement

The white supremacist and anti-choice movements have always been closely linked. But more and more, they are becoming difficult to tell apart

Moira Donegan
Mon 24 Jan 2022

This weekend’s March for Life rally, the large anti-choice demonstration held annually in Washington DC to mark the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, has the exuberant quality of a victory lap. This, the 49th anniversary of Roe, is likely to be its last. The US supreme court is poised to overturn Roe in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, which is set to be decided this spring. For women in Texas, Roe has already been nullified: the court went out of its way to allow what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called a “flagrantly unconstitutional” abortion ban to go into effect there, depriving abortion rights to the one in 10 American women of reproductive age who live in the nation’s second largest state.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/24/white-nationalists-are-flocking-to-the-us-anti-abortion-movement


The Link Between the Capitol Riot and Anti-Abortion Extremism

By Jessica Winter
March 11, 2021

In 1988, a young Baptist minister in Buffalo named Daren Drzymala launched Project House Call, a series of protests in which he and fellow anti-abortion activists picketed the homes of local abortion providers. One of their first demonstrations occurred that September, on Yom Kippur, outside the home of a Jewish ob-gyn named Barnett Slepian. A few months later, on the third night of Hanukkah, they targeted Slepian again, and also another Jewish abortion provider, Shalom Press. The protesters prayed and sang Christmas carols outside their targets’ windows.

Local councils in Buffalo soon passed bans on the picketing of private residences. But the anti-abortion activists’ fixation on Press and Slepian did not end there.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-link-between-the-capitol-riot-and-anti-abortion-extremism


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

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
Feb 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/