NARAL Pro-Choice America recently sent out a tidy little email reminder of what is at stake in the fight for reproductive rights in the U.S. For me, the email is compelling because they are clear that the War on Choice is not simply one of laws and legislative battles, but it is literally a violent, gorilla war with lives at stake.
While the numbers do speak for themselves, I think there are some additional points to be considered. I trimmed it a bit, and added emphasis to some crucial points and, of course, put in my 2 cents! Credit for the numbers must go to NARAL.
The 30-year campaign of anti-choice violence has already resulted in:
8 murders
17 attempted murders
41 bombings
175 arsons
406 death threats
5,800 acts of vandalism
13,995 harassing phone calls and hate-mail incidentsClinics spend thousands of dollars on bulletproof glass, armed guards, security cameras, and metal detectors.
The email doesn’t mention the emotional toll these tactics have on patients, providers and clinic employees, but that is important, too. The problem for patients is obvious–it is one way to deter them from seeking services. For those souls that go to work or give up spare time to volunteer so that women can have access to needed care and services to have to worry that there will be a violent attack on their clinic or at their home is just plain inexcusable! If these types of attacks were happening at plastic surgery clinics, the country would be outraged and the perpetrators would be hunted down like the terrorists they are!
And 87 percent of counties in America do not have a single abortion provider available.
That means that only 13 percent of counties have an abortion provider! There are 50 states, so that the hard reality is that there isn’t even an abortion provider in every state! This, as you know, significantly limits access to services, particularly for the poor and for young women without access to transportation (or permission to cross state lines).
No matter how you look at the numbers, one thing is clear: Anti-choice activists intend to put all abortion providers and women’s health centers out of business so that, even if abortion remains legal, women will have no access to it.
This, my friends, is the crux of the matter! Legality means exactly nothing if there are no providers. A lot of women of my generation (and younger), those that don’t remember the days before Roe v. Wade (1973) was decided, think “abortion is legal, there is nothing to fight over.” They are wrong. We must fight for access and affordability. And we must fight to ensure that the perpetrators of clinic threats, intimidation, violence and harassment are stopped so that clinic workers and patients can do what they need to do.
Are these anti-choice tactics working? Do the math for yourself. Dr. George Tiller was shot to death on May 31, and his practice in Kansas was permanently closed shortly after. This leaves an immense void for women in Kansas and all around the country who counted on Dr. Tiller’s commitment and service to reproductive choice.
We need your support to work with our friends in Congress to ensure that the violence and inflammatory rhetoric used by anti-choice groups, politicians, and pundits will not be tolerated. And if elected officials won’t stand with us, we must do everything in our power to elect leaders who will.
NARAL and other pro-woman organizations don’t just need financial support. They need voices. They need people to stand up and make their outrage heard. They need us — those that are already speaking out — to bring an end to the complacency of a generation and to bring this fight back to the forefront of American politics.
And groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America need our input so that they can shape comprehensive agendas that will mean access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and family planning services for all.
Great post, good numbers and a good synthesis of why this is such a big issue.
Thanks Annaleigh & Colleen for the comments (and the props
Jeremy–Whether or not the other side believes abortion is murder is irrelevant. The pro-choice side does not run around proclaiming that all life is sacred. And perpetuating domestic terrorism and vigilante justice will not reduce the number of abortions, it will only make them more dangerous for women. Somehow killing an abortion doctor (a fully grown, living breathing human being) does not seem very “pro-life” to me.
If the “pro-life” side really wanted to reduce the number of abortions they would stop harassing clinic workers, killing abortion providers and, instead, use their energy to ensure that women have what they need to raise the children they insist be born.
The “pro-life” movement has aligned itself with the religious right–the same people that vote to slash welfare benefits, including medicaid, fight health care reform, slash education funding, support killing Iraqi children in the name of “freedom” (how “pro-life is that??), support the death penalty (if a clump of cells has a right to live, no matter what it will turn out to be, doesn’t a person on death row??) and then use violence and intimidation to harass women who don’t want to bring children into a life of poverty?
Until the “pro-life” side can dump the hypocrisy and get on board with helping the women they want to force to raise children, your argument has exactly zero credibility.
Jonna- I was raised in a very strict ‘irish catholic’ environment…Catholic school the whole bit–even wore one of those ‘Jan 22 1973″ prolife bracelets for years…my change to ‘pro-choice’ was only after seeing all the violence you wrote of-and seeing too many neglected unwanted children…
Blogged this after the murder of Dr. Tiller…
My problem with the ‘right to life’ crowd is that those people have a rather incomplete view on what your “right to live” is.
There’s a distinct difference between “anti-abortion” and “pro-life.” If you simply oppose abortion for its own sake then you fall into the first category. The second category comes with it many more responsibilities. Most who claim that they are “pro-life” fall into the first category because “pro-life” brings with it many more powerful implications.
Claiming the label “Pro-Life” means that you encourage life to continue. If you’re willing to put forth an effort to encourage and push the zygotes to become fetuses and eventually whole humans living outside their mothers’ bodies, then you must also be willing to accept the responsibilities to make this happen.. It’s a known fact that most abortions are performed on women who are single, young, and of limited financial means to support a child.
Those factors, once removed, will remove the desperation that often motivates a woman to abort her pregnancy.
How do we remove them? Don’t destroy the institutions that we’ve got in place to protect the poor. Yes, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, WIC, Food Stamps, and Welfare are expensive to keep in place, but everyone deserves to have adequate medical care available and everyone deserves to be able to eat. (Read that again. It says Everyone deserves to have adequate medical care and everyone deserves to be able to eat…)
Also, if you’re ‘Pro-Life’ I feel you should support equal opportunity for education. I’m in support of a full life–and that means that everyone should at least have a fair chance to succeed. I know that many people have led a fucked-up childhood. I know many people whose parents had given a piss-poor example of how to live your life. However, this should not prevent you from actualizing yourself in the skills you have.
Basically what I’m saying is that if you want to keep the kids alive till they’re walking around, you should support efforts to make public schools as good as the private ones, no matter where they are.
Once again: everybody deserves a shot. And if you’re going to fight to let the kids get born, you should fight to let them get by.
Basically–my point is that by claiming a stance of “pro-life” you are also claiming at least some responsibility on a societal level to keep the kids alive until they reach adulthood and can take care of themselves. Whether you take that responsibility is up to you.
**b-t-w- the Roe-V-Wade ‘baby is now 37 years old– wouldn’t you want to carry that ‘baggage’ ” I was the kid my Mom didn’t want that caused the landmark decision”…sheesh***
What is stunning about these numbers is how small they are compared to the violence committed on the pro-choice side.
Step into the shoes of a pro-lifer: having an abortion is ending a human life. Whether you agree or disagree, that is the undeniable truth they see.
Therefore, from their perspective, the pro-choicers have exterminated 50 million human lives since Roe vs. Wade. If we look at the situation objectively, the pro-lifers have a lot more to gripe about.
8 lives vs. 50 million. Any fair-minded person can see the discrepency. To the pro-lifer, those 50 million lives carry equal weight to the 8 that pro-choicers are concerned about.