by Malcolm Shore – Friday, March 7, 2008
As she prepared to introduce the three speakers for a Feb. 26 panel in New York City about abortion-rights, a young World Can’t Wait activist drew from experiences in her personal life. She described how the partner of a good friend of hers lived in Peru, where abortion is illegal. Upon getting pregnant, she had no choice but to get an illegal abortion. The experience left both physical and mental scars-the woman was traumatized and, due to damage to her reproductive organs, she is now infertile.
“And that’s the direction our country is heading towards,” the event’s emcee told the crowd of 25 to 30 people, most of them college-aged women.
The accuracy of that conclusion, even more chilling than the anecdote itself, set the tone for the discussion that followed. The featured speakers at the event, which took place at Think Coffee in Soho, were Cristina Page, author of “How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America” and a spokesperson for birthcontrolwatch.org; Kathryn Joyce, a contributing writer to The Nation who wrote a forthcoming exposure of the womb-and-kitchen Christian fascist movement known as Quiverfull; and Esther Kaplan, who shone powerful light on the unprecedented interconnectedness between Christian fascists and official government policy under the Bush Regime in her book “With God on Their Side.” Each of the three placed the accelerating attacks on abortion rights within the larger context of a Christian Right movement-fueled by and allied with the Bush Regime- that has gathered significant momentum during the past several decades, and then taken particular leaps under the current administration, determined to lock women into a suffocating and submissive existence.
However, it must also be said that the terms of the three presentations were largely confined to the realm of electoral and legislative politics: Although the speakers, particularly Kaplan, acknowledged and even emphasized at times the dangers of assuming a Democratic administration would protect women’s right to choose, both the opportunity and necessity currently faced by the pro-choice movement was mostly framed in terms of electing a Democrat to the White House and then pressuring a supposedly more pliable Democratic Congress to enact decisive legislation.
Attacks on Abortion: One Crucial Part of a Larger Picture
That said, one point driven home very effectively by all three speakers, in their own ways, was the reality that the anti-abortion movement is not about defending children or “the unborn”; it is about attacking women. Page, the first speaker, noted that the same forces leading the charge to ban abortion are also seeking to outlaw birth control and backing legislation to deprive families of health care coverage. She added that anti-abortionists constituted 90 percent of the opposition to the Family Medical Leave Act-which would require employers to give their workers twelve hours of unpaid leave under circumstances including childbirth and placement of a child in foster care or adoption.
“You can’t get more pro-baby than that,” Page said, referring to the legislation these anti-abortionists opposed.
Page argued that the anti-abortion movement is centered on the goal of repressing Americans” sexuality, and solidifying the institution of marriage as between a man and woman, with the latter occupying a traditional submissive role. She also suggested that, since legal rights to abortion and birth control were largely based on the right to privacy, the stripping away of these rights would also signal the reversal of Lawrence v. Texas, which allows gay people to have sex.
Joyce opened her talk by envisioning a future society run by the Christian Right: Women, she imagined, would skip college in favor of lives of submission to their husbands, with control of their reproductive organs left to God. Joyce drew on her recent work in The Nation in linking the anti-abortion movement with larger interconnected goals of Christian fascists: to repudiate the feminist movement and return women to their “God-given” role of bearing as many children as possible, and to dramatically increase the population of white, European Christians in order to defend this population against perceived threats to its existence posed by Muslims and immigrants.
In this context, Joyce discussed “Quiverfull,” the subject of her upcoming book. Quiverfull is a national initiative undertaken by at least thousands of Christian fundamentalist mothers who believe abortion is a betrayal of God’s plan for women, and that their duty is therefore to serve as submissive mass-producers of children-ideally at least six- who will later serve as soldiers for “God’s army.” The name Quiverfull is taken from Psalm 127: “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” Joyce’s article in The Nation exposes Quiverfull from many different angles, and with a depth that is beyond the scope of this piece, but it is worth quoting one passage that touches on many different elements of the movement. (For your reference in this passage, Allan Carlson is the author of the book: “The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What To Do About It”; Mary Pride is one of the founding and most influential figures in the Quiverfull movement; and Rick and Jan Hess” 1989 book “A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ,” is marked by Joyce as the official beginning of Quiverfull).
“In the same way that Carlson recalls the “strand of garrison life” that the cold war fight against Communism brought to American society,” Joyce writes, “in the conservative Christian world that sees Europe as the measure of mankind’s fall, a besieged war mentality is a given. In both Carlson’s writings and in the work of Mary Pride and the Hesses, this is reflected in their description of patriarchal families as the basic “cellular units of society” that form a bulwark against Communism, as well as in the military-industrial terminology they assign to biblical gender roles within such “cells”: the husband described as company CEO, the wife as plant manager and the children as workers. Or, in alternate form, the titles revised to reflect the Christian church’s “constant state of war” with the world: “Commander in Chief” Jesus, the husband a “commanding officer” and his wife a “private” below him. And the kids? Presumably ammunition, arrows, weapons for the war.” (emphasis added)
Significantly, both Joyce and Page urged the audience to take right-wing efforts to ban abortion-and the larger package of assaults on women’s rights that these efforts are a part of-very seriously. Page cautioned the young women in attendance against taking comfort in the fact that the majority of New Yorkers favor abortion rights, noting that even if abortion remains legal in New York, they could be directly affected by it being outlawed elsewhere. “You”ll be competing [for abortions] with women from Nebraska,” Page said, “and people from all over the country who flood into this city.”
Kaplan’s speech focused primarily on what she viewed as critical steps that must be taken to reverse the onslaught of attacks on abortion and women’s rights. Again, nearly all of her proposals fell under the heading of pressuring Congress, or other governing bodies such as the United Nations, to take action; a theme of Kaplan’s speech was that, while neither a Democratic nor Republican president could be relied upon to protect abortion rights without a lot of mass pressure, the end of Bush’s term nonetheless provided a vital opening through which the pro-choice movement could and must make significant advances.
Defending Abortion As Seen Within Certain Confines
Kaplan outlined several “Day 1” measures the next president must be pressured to enact, including: Repealing the “global gag rule,” imposed by Bush on his first day of office, which prohibits non-governmental organizations receiving USAID funds from using their own money towards abortions; reinstating funding to the U.N. population fund, which the Bush administration cut off after accusing it of supporting forced abortions in China; and eliminating Offices of Faith-Based and Community initiatives, which supply Christian fundamentalist programs with financial fuel. Other measures Kaplan emphasized going forward included pressuring Congress to repeal the ban on “partial-birth” abortions. Kaplan also applauded the National Abortion Federation’s “30 years is enough” petition, which demands Congress repeal the Hyde Amendment, legislation that -only a few short years after Roe v. Wade-severely undercut that decision by preventing Medicaid funds from being used for abortions; in essence, the Hyde Amendment banned abortion for low-income women.
In addition to outlining policy changes she viewed as essential to protecting abortion rights, Kaplan also noted with outrage the massive federal funding being channeled to abstinence-only sex education programs-which studies have proven do not work and actually lead to participants engaging in risky sexual behavior such as anal sex without condoms-and “crisis pregnancy centers,” where women are lured thinking they will receive valuable guidance and then instead encounter staff members who try to guilt them out of having an abortion.
“They sit women down,” Kaplan said, “and show them a bloody video of late-term abortions, and tell them they are sinners.”
What was largely missing from both Kaplan’s presentation, and the other two, was a sense of what the American people could do right now, and outside of conventional politics, to not only protect abortion rights but reverse the escalating assault on women. For instance, Kaplan started her presentation by saying, “I think the way women’s rights and gender politics have played out so far in this election season is appalling.” She also acknowledged that, with both Obama and Clinton placing such a high emphasis on their Christian faith, they would not move to protect abortion rights without a lot of mass demand.
Yet, when she was asked during the question-and-answer session how the people could best take independent action, she replied, “I don’t know what to say about the activism. I don’t think we”re there.” Later, she said that The World Can’t Wait had fought the Bush Regime “as nobly as anyone,” and yet lamented that, “protesting Bush has been like hitting your head against the wall,” and suggested this dynamic would not exist in relation to the next administration.
Page was even more explicit. “This election will decide the future of Roe,” Page said, arguing that if McCain is elected, he will appoint two more Supreme Court justices in the mold of Alito and Roberts, setting the stage for Roe v. Wade to be reversed. Then, towards the end of the program, Page expressed remarkable pessimism about the effectiveness of independent action outside of electoral politics. “The only thing that happens is during election season,” Page said. “If we don’t make this an issue now, it’s over.”
Seeing Beyond Electoral Politics
But it seems a more accurate way to frame the issue might be: “If we only make this an issue now, it’s over.” After the program, NYU student Rachel Snow expressed a sentiment capturing the popular paralysis that perhaps leads Page to see little hope outside of the elections. Snow’s comment was one that, over the past two or three years, has become very familiar to those of us seeking to mobilize people to drive the Bush Regime from office and reverse its agenda. ” I think a lot of people are upset,” Snow said, “but don’t know what to do.”
But imagine the societal impact if the huge numbers of men and women across the country who already see abortion as a fundamental women’s right began to act on that conviction, in order to dramatically shift the terms on which abortion is discussed in this country-breaking through the debate between “abortion is murder” and “safe, legal, and rare” to foster a widespread understanding that women who cannot control their own wombs are essentially fertility slaves.
What affect could it have if, across the country, mass numbers of people began hanging signs in the windows of stores and homes depicting a coat-hanger crossed out by the international “no” symbol, unmistakably announcing their refusal to go along with the criminalizing of abortion?
What if, in cities and towns throughout the country, women preparing to enter crisis pregnancy centers received leaflets presenting scientific facts about abortion that exposed the absurdity of classifying a fetus as a “human life”, and which denounced the efforts of these crisis pregnancy centers to trick women into ceding their wombs to God?
What if high-schools and colleges held teach-ins with panelists like Page, Joyce, and Kaplan, educating students about sex and abortion, and how the Christian fundamentalist attack on both is part of an overall movement to return women to an overtly subservient position in society?
What if, when the next theocratic reactionary is nominated to a government post-or the next sinister legislative attack on abortion or birth control is proposed- people immediately took to the streets to deliver a resounding message of opposition?
And what if, more broadly, the call to preserve abortion rights as a fundamental part of women’s equality became an integral part of an overall mass repudiation of the Bush Regime and its agenda, sending future presidents, Supreme Court justices, and legislative bodies the message that efforts to attack women in general and abortion more specifically will come with a political price?
These are just some examples of the type of independent action that has the power to drastically change the political terrain on which the battle over abortion is being fought. And the need for this sort of action was powerfully driven home from beginning to end of the Feb 26 panel, including, in a very chilling way, by a conversation after the program with New York World Can’t Wait activist Sarah Parker.
The Future At Stake
A few years ago, when Parker was living in Louisville, Kentucky, she had a pregnancy scare. She said she tried to find a Planned Parenthood office, but instead mistakenly went to a crisis pregnancy center. She said the staff at the center went so far as to lie to her and say that, indeed, the building she had come to was Planned Parenthood, and that staff members indicated to her that they had the results of her pregnancy test, and yet refused to immediately disclose them. Instead, when Parker indicated she was considering an abortion, she was shown videos of aborted fetuses-much as Kaplan described-and of a woman who had considered suicide, supposedly because of the guilt she felt as a result of getting an abortion.
As Parker cried hysterically at the thought she was pregnant, she said the staff of the crisis pregnancy center repeatedly asked her if they had changed her mind about having an abortion. Ultimately, the center informed her that, in fact, she was not pregnant. But they offered her a Bible-which Parker refused. Parker said that , as she observed advertisements for crisis pregnancy centers on New York City subways lately, her mind returned to that incident three years ago.
No, people, the issue of abortion rights is not a “policy debate” or a matter of “personal choice.” Parker’s experience is one reminder of the type of future women in this society will have if we do not fight back, on demand and without apology, against the onslaught of attacks on their basic rights.