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

03.02.2022

anti-choice extremism

anti-choice hatred

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice racism

anti-choice terrorism

anti-choice violence

anti-choice white supremacy

Cassie Miller

Christian nationalism

Church at Planned Parenthood

clinic arson

Eric Rudolph

far-right extremism

Great Replacement theory

John Brockhoeft

Karissa Haugeberg

Kathleen Belew

Knoxville Planned Parenthood

Ku Klux Klan

March for Life

National Abortion Federation

Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi

Proud Boys

Southern Poverty Law Center

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

USA – Failing to embed abortion care in mainstream medicine made it politically vulnerable

Actions by the medical profession in the 1970s still reverberate today

By Carole Joffe
Jan 11, 2022

Even before the expected June announcement by the Supreme Court of its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson — a decision many believe will overturn Roe v. Wade — abortion care in America is in trouble, marginalized from the rest of medicine.

Nearly 50 years after legalization nationwide, the majority of obstetrician gynecologists and primary-care doctors do not provide abortions — even though 1 out of 4 American women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Women in the “abortion deserts” of the South and Midwest are forced to travel many hours to reach a clinic. Only 4 percent of abortions take place in a hospital and only 1 percent of abortions take place in private doctors’ offices. The remaining 95 percent occur in free-standing clinics, which offer excellent care, but are largely isolated from other medical institutions. Over 1,000 restrictions, such as mandatory waiting periods, have been passed by state legislatures that make abortion care considerably more difficult for patients and providers alike.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/11/failing-embed-abortion-care-mainstream-medicine-made-it-politically-vulnerable/

Abortion in the Surveillance State

The digital platforms people rely on to access or learn about abortion are also being wielded to spy on and punish them.

By Kylie Cheung
November 22, 2021

Shortly after Texas enacted Senate Bill 8, a near-total abortion ban that’s primarily enforced by citizens spying on and policing each other, Texas Right to Life launched what can really only be called a snitch hotline, calling on the nosiest of neighbors and worst of people to submit “tips” about people they suspected to be seeking or helping people seek abortions.

Things didn’t go as planned for the hotline, once the teens of TikTok and other Very Online abortion rights advocates caught wind of it. Good Samaritans across the internet joined forces to inundate the hotline with false tips, Shrek memes, furry porn, and other generally ludicrous submissions, rendering the thing useless for anyone but ride-or-die Shrek fans. The hotline — which likely would have been weaponized by abusive ex-partners or anti-abortion activists seeking to make an easy $10,000 by suing people who help others have abortions — has since been dropped by several hosting services.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/abortion-in-the-surveillance-state-1848076906

How extremist Christian theology is driving the right-wing assault on democracy

The Texas abortion law is one step toward the true goal of Christian dominionism: Destroying democratic government

By PAUL ROSENBERG
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 31, 2021

Progressive policies and positions are supposed to be rooted in reality and hard evidence. But that's not always the case when it comes to the culture wars that have such an enormous impact on our politics — especially not since the unexpected evangelical embrace of Donald Trump in 2016, culminating in the "pro-life" death cult of anti-vaccine, COVID-denying religious leaders. If this development perplexed many on the left, it was less surprising to a small group of researchers who have been studying the hardcore anti-democratic theology known as dominionism that lies behind the contemporary Christian right, and its far-reaching influence over the last several decades.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2021/10/31/how-extremist-christian-theology-is-driving-the-right-wing-on-democracy/

Texas doctor who violated state’s abortion ban is sued, launching test of constitutionality

by Ann E. Marimow
Sept 20, 2021

A lawsuit that could test the constitutionality of the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban was filed in Texas on Monday against a doctor who admitted to performing an abortion considered illegal under the new law.

The details of the civil suit against Alan Braid, a physician in San Antonio, are as unusual as the law itself, which empowers private citizens to enforce the ban on abortion once cardiac activity has been detected — often as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-abortion-doctor-sued/2021/09/20/f5ab5c56-1a1c-11ec-bcb8-0cb135811007_story.html

We Need a Left Strategy for Confronting the Anti-Abortion Movement

The anti-abortion movement has grown increasingly militant in recent years — and increasingly successful. The liberal pushback isn’t cutting it. We need a leftist strategy to defend abortion rights.

BY ANNE RUMBERGER
July 14, 2021

Abortion access has been uneven and inadequate for decades. But with the recent announcement that the Supreme Court will hear a major abortion case next term concerning a Mississippi state law that would ban almost all abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, the threat has reached new levels.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization strikes at the heart of the precedent set in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that abortion is permitted until fetus viability, generally at around twenty-four weeks. As it hears the case, the Supreme Court will consider one clearly delineated question: whether or not “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Mary Ziegler, author of Abortion and the Law in America, said recently that the court taking up the case could result in overturning Roe, but it could also get rid of viability as the point at which states can ban abortion.

Continued: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/anti-abortion-movement-choice-reproductive-justice

14.07.2021

Commentary

Featured

Alliance Defending Freedom

Anne Rumberger

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice protests

anti-choice restrictions

anti-choice terrorism

anti-choice violence

At the Well

Bevelyn Beatty

Child Evangelism Fellowship

clinic blockades

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Edmee Chavannes

Father Fidelis Moscinski

Flip Benham

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Mary Wagner

Mary Ziegler

Monica Migliorino Miller

National Abortion Federation

Operation Rescue

Operation Save America

overturning Roe v. Wade

‘Radicalized’ anti-abortion movement poses increased threat, US warned

Comments from Anu Kumar of reproductive rights group Ipas come as militant anti-abortion groups gain legislative influence

Jessica Glenza
Thu 8 Jul 2021

The president and chief executive of an international reproductive rights non-profit has warned that the American anti-abortion movement has significantly radicalized and is working to spread its ideology around the world.

The comments came as pro-gun anti-abortion theocratic militant groups who seek to prosecute women who have abortions under murder statutes have gained increasing legislative influence in the US.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/anti-abortion-movement-radicalized

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

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