The International Movement Behind Anti-Abortion Activism

It’s fueled by racism, says Professor Carol Mason in her new book.

Eleanor J. Bader
Jun 12, 2025

In From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary, Carol Mason, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Kentucky, draws a through line that connects both domestic and international anti-abortion activism to an ascendant network of white supremacist, Christian nationalist and authoritarian movements.

It’s a scary read, grounded in Mason’s three decades of attendance at rightwing events and perusal of scores of books, articles and pamphlets penned by anti-abortion conservatives. Her goal? To understand the ideology and motivating factors that have propelled the movement for the past half century.

Continued: https://indypendent.org/2025/06/the-international-movement-behind-anti-abortion-activism/

The Christian right has set the US on the road to Gilead. Without a fight, other nations may follow

Organisations that pumped money into overturning Roe v Wade are making inroads in Europe. Women’s rights are truly at risk

Deborah Frances-White
Sat 5 Apr 2025

With Donald Trump as president, there is now a heavy strain of Christian nationalism driving the US political agenda. From draconian abortion policies to ending birthright citizenship, some of Trump’s first executive orders sound startlingly like something out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian novel turned TV show set in Gilead, a fundamentalist, fascist version of the US where women have no rights. But it is urgent we understand that what is happening in the US could happen here. This road to Atwood’s Gilead is charting a course straight through the UK and Europe, and we may well be sleepwalking on to it.

In November 2024 I debated with the American conservative lawyer Erin Hawley at the Oxford Union. The motion was “This house regrets the overturning of Roe v Wade”, the US supreme court’s landmark decision that once protected the right to have an abortion at the federal level. Hawley is vice-president of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, founded by the US Christian right. She is also a high profile lawyer and supported the state of Mississippi on the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that overturned Roe.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/05/christian-right-us-gilead-roe-v-wade-europe-women-rights-abortion

Trump’s win spells disaster for abortion rights

I’ve spent years tracking the far right attack on reproductive rights. Here’s what Trump’s win means for abortion.

Sian Norris
6 November 2024

Trump is heading back to the White House and the consequences for reproductive health in both the USA and globally are catastrophic.

When Trump first came to power in 2016, it provided Christian nationalists with what the author Anne Appelbaum described as their “biblical moment”. This was their unique opportunity to push forward their project and to fulfil their desired policies – to ban abortion, to roll back LGBTIQ rights, and to protect whiteness in America.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/trump-abortion-rights-catastrophe/

Project 2025 Is Already Here

Core aspects of the far-right plan to overhaul U.S. government are already being put into place, through an anti-abortion influence campaign overseas.

GILLIAN KANE
APRIL 25, 2024

When pundits, critics and supporters discuss Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s readiness work plan for a second Donald Trump presidency, it’s always in the future tense. At more than 900 pages, Project 2025’s playbook, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, is a door-stopper of policy recommendations that lays out detailed steps for decimating democracy in the first 180 days of the new administration. Some executive orders include eliminating the Department of Education (“a woke education cartel”), renaming the Department of Health and Human Services the “Department of Life,” and anchoring these commitments in the promise to restore “the family as the centerpiece of American life.”

This Christian nationalist plan is no fever dream: even if Trump loses in November, many core aspects of Project 2025 will still be implemented. In fact, some of its recommendations are already underway.

Continued: https://inthesetimes.com/article/project-2025-protego-trump-huber-abortion

It’s 2023, but certain men are desperately grasping for control of women’s bodies

Barrington Salmon
DECEMBER 30, 2023

America harbors a profound and deep-seated hatred for women. The misogyny is pervasive, leaching into just about all areas of life, tainting, polluting and poisoning relationships, the home, marriages, the workplace, friendships, education, intimacy and the privacy of the bedroom.

This toxic brew continues to percolate into the pores of the US consigning the distaff gender to second-class citizenship and systematic discrimination. This despite women comprising approximately 51.1 percent of the U.S population.

Continued: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/12/30/its-2023-but-certain-men-are-desperately-grasping-for-control-of-womens-bodies/

USA – Voters back abortion rights, but some foes won’t relent. Is the commitment to democracy in question?

by: JULIE CARR SMYTH and CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Associated Press
Nov 19, 2023

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The statewide battles over abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to abortion have exposed another fault line: the commitment to democracy.

As voters in state after state affirm their support for abortion rights, opponents are acting with escalating defiance toward the democratic processes and institutions they perceive as aligned against their cause.

Continued: https://www.kxan.com/news/political-news/ap-voters-back-abortion-rights-but-some-foes-wont-relent-is-the-commitment-to-democracy-in-question/

War on women: The link between white supremacy, “men’s rights” and anti-abortion politics

My research finds a strong connection between white supremacy, support for "men's rights" and anti-abortion views

By ANTHONY DIMAGGIO
APRIL 1, 2023

Efforts by Republicans and their allies to roll back abortion rights continue, with a looming federal ban on the abortion pill mifepristone, which accounts for more than half of all pregnancy terminations each year. That case is being decided by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, and was litigated by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian advocacy group that was also involved in the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision last year, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion. Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, has adopted various terms used by anti-abortion advocates in his comments from the case, referring to "chemical abortion" and "mail-in abortion," for example, phrases that are widely rejected in medical professional settings. His language has led to concerns that the judge is tipping his hand to the anti-abortion movement, and will likely declare a national ban on mifepristone.

The right-wing Christian dimension to the anti-abortion movement has long been obvious, and even as the proportion of evangelical Christians has steadily declined in American society, the religious right has become a highly influential force in the Republican Party. What is missed in this discourse, however, is any discussion about the ways that both white supremacist and male supremacist ideology appear to be driving the contemporary push to outlaw abortions in America.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2023/04/01/on-women-the-link-between-supremacy-mens-rights-and-anti-abortion/

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