Whether Roeder acted alone as a technical matter in pulling that trigger, he had the complicity of a fanatical fringe. While the Reverend Joseph Scheidlers of this world appropriate the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement to cloak tactics never countenanced by that movement, telling us they act in "defense of the unborn," telling us they resist an American Holocaust, their democratic constitutionalists' robes are nothing but the emperor's new clothes. When they were sued years ago for violent blockades and blitzes at the clinics, they responded in court papers that their assaults and harassment were merely "vigorous protests," "sidewalk counseling," "rescues," or "sit-ins." Punishing them, they said, would set the precedent for chilling all social protestors, from Martin Luther King to PETA. They conveniently forget that Dr. King's goal was to secure peoples' rights, not to block them from exercising them.
Their
public language, the language they use in court, is very different than
the language they use for the troops. Among the troops, a women's
clinic is a "death mill" or "abortuary." The escorts who
help patients navigate the gauntlet of angry, abusive protestors to
get inside the clinic are "deathscorts." When the public relations
antennae are down and the judicial ear is not listening, Joseph Scheidler
vows to stop abortion "by any means necessary" and proclaims "
a year of pain and fear" for anyone seeking or providing an abortion.
He touts a "pro-life Mafia" for which he once emblazoned a motel
marquee "WELCOME PRO-LIFE ACTIVISTS-HAVE A BLAST" and passed out
nametags with firecrackers on them to pro-life conference attendees-just
after a spate of bombing plots and clinic attacks.
Joseph Scheidler is not atypical of the leadership that the militant wing of the anti-choice movement has had for many years. Randall Terry of Operation Rescue once led a demonstration on a Colorado clinic's premises during which he prayed for the doctor to be "executed." He repeated his prayerful threat over the radio three years later; two days after that broadcast, the doctor who replaced the assassinated Dr. Gunn of Pensacola was found murdered in Birmingham, with money in his pocket. As for Scheidler, his own appearance at the same Colorado clinic was preceded by a brick through the window and a phone-jamming campaign orchestrated by one of his friends.
The martial language is inescapable. "We will win because we're on God's side. It's a Holy War," Scheidler has said. Operation Rescue literature has trumpeted, "We are among the front-line troops in the battle for life. Together we will win! We have an army of people. The battle is raging...The Commander is calling most of us to the front lines."
Eric
Rudolph, too, esteemed himself a holy warrior, a good man who will be
hailed as a hero by later generations. He told the federal judge
who sentenced him: "I will be vindicated - my actions that overcast
day in January 1998 will be vindicated. As I go to a prison cell
for a lifetime I know that I have fought a good fight. I have
finished my course. I have kept the faith." People like
Rudolph and Roeder take their marching orders from the Scheidlers and
Terrys of the world. Dining on a diet of vitriol and jihad, these
criminals mistake projectiles for political tracts.
There are others behind them in the long ranks, the sort of people who think that if they send a letter to the clinic explaining why everyone there is going to hell along with the anthrax, it's just an expression of opinion. It's just dissent, and besides, the purity of their principles gives them a moral exemption from the laws that bind the rest of us. They will be vindicated.
Forget blaming Bill O'Reilly for fanning the flames. It is the rhetoric of the militant wing of the anti-choice movement itself that is the unindicted co-conspirator in Dr. Tiller's assassination. ]]>
H.B.
46/434 is a jaw-dropper, the sort of bill that is difficult to explain
to people because their first response is that you must have made this
up. But I couldn't make stuff like this up. That sort
of imagination is reserved for right-wing zealots.
Pro-choice
advocates agree that no woman should be coerced into having an abortion
any more than she should be coerced into pregnancy. The rub is
in how the bill's scriveners want to define "coerced" abortion.
Are you a female whose husband, ex-boyfriend, or parent beat you upon learning you were pregnant, after suggesting abortion? Are you a pregnant female whose husband or boyfriend stalked you after suggesting abortion? Are you a pregnant female unlucky enough to live with someone who would poison you in order to persuade you to have an abortion? If so, the Missouri General Assembly is on the verge of deciding that you are incompetent to make the decision about whether to terminate your pregnancy, even if your reason is to avoid bringing a child into such miserable abuse. It will make that choice for you by sending your doctor to prison for a felony if he or she knows these things and acts in accordance with your wish to end your pregnancy.
In Missouri in 2007, law-enforcement authorities reported 37,215 incidents of intimate-partner violence. Statistically, a significant number of those women had to have been pregnant, because domestic violence increases exponentially during pregnancy. Instead of dealing with this problem, the General Assembly wants to further disempower women by taking from them the decision to refuse to give an abuser another victim.
Real
women don't matter to the anti-choice lobby's propaganda machine.
If they can pretend that there is some groundswell of "coerced abortions"
out there that legislators need to address, they achieve two objectives:
(1) they perpetuate their absurd claim that women don't really choose
to have abortions but are the unwitting dupes of others, and someday
they will suffer mental trauma as a result, and (2) compulsory pregnancy
(for those with the fewest resources to fight back), which means they
can block one more abortion. But once their children are born,
Missouri women can't count on their legislators to fund safehouses
or preventive programs for intimate violence, or to provide a level
of care for their (living) children to pry them from the grip of poverty.
Maybe disbelief is the only possible response to a General Assembly with such lousy judgment and perverted priorities.
Related Stories
]]>These latest attacks are not a mere coincidence. They are part of a calculated political strategy by a governor with sagging approval ratings to convince his demoralized far-right base to show up at the polls in November 2008.
Voters across the country should be concerned -- these actions could lead to copycat attacks on abortion in states similar to Missouri, where anti-choice politicians occupy the governor's mansion and control the state legislature.
There are two tactics under way.
The first is Governor Blunt's secret "abortion task force," which he was forced to acknowledge after media reports of its closed-door meetings.
The second is a proposed ballot measure that, if adopted, would ban abortion in almost all circumstances and could spur a legal challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court, which, with two new Bush appointees, is more open than ever to attempts to undermine or eviscerate the core holdings of Roe.
We need only to look north to South Dakota for a blueprint on how Gov. Blunt's task force will be used as a political weapon.
In 2005, South Dakota lawmakers created the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion. Eleven of the 17 members of the task force were anti-choice.
The task force members produced a host of medically and factually inaccurate "findings" that perpetuated propaganda from non-scientific politically-motivated groups that had long sought to outlaw abortion.
One anti-choice legislator on the panel, state Sen. Julie Bartling, freely admitted that "[i]t is very important to lay the groundwork for what we hope in the next new [sic] few years will be a complete ban on abortions in South Dakota."
Bartling got her wish. The task force issued a report with a series of legislative recommendations that called on the state government to enact a near-total ban on abortion and a number of additional measures, including promotion of "abstinence-only" programs (instead of traditional, comprehensive sex education), and censorship of discussion of birth control in these programs.
The task force's anti-choice contingent rejected common-ground alternatives issued in a separate set of recommendations by several members of the task force who strongly disagreed with the final report. Instead, the anti-choice contingent began waving the misleading report as a state-sanctioned green light for additional attacks on a woman's right to choose.
Then, the report's backers got another signal to move ahead after the confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement on the Supreme Court. Alito was on the bench for less than four weeks before anti-choice legislators began work on an abortion ban that would directly challenge Roe. The ban's chief sponsor, state Rep. Roger Hunter, said, "I'm convinced the timing is right for this."
Using the "findings" of the one-sided task force report, legislators passed an abortion ban that Gov. Mike Rounds signed into law on March 6, 2006.
Fortunately for the women of South Dakota, the ban spurred a bipartisan grassroots effort to repeal this egregious attack on safe, legal abortion. The coalition--the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families --collected thousands of signatures and qualified a repeal measure for the November 2006 ballot. And voters in one of the nation's most conservative states resoundingly rejected the abortion ban, 56 to 44 percent.
While the political backlash may have temporarily stymied anti-choice forces in South Dakota and blunted their quest for a legal challenge to Roe, their tactics, with minor adjustments, are now being refined and imported by anti-abortion groups to Missouri. In Blunt's case, the governor didn't even bother with a perception of objectivity. All 14 of his task-force members represent organizations that oppose legal abortion.
In Missouri, the Illinois-based Elliot Institute is already collecting signatures to put a measure on the ballot that would ban abortion in Missouri in all but limited circumstances.
The Elliot Institute's web site is riddled with dangerous myths like a link between abortion and breast cancer that were long discredited by the National Cancer Institute and the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer Research.
This group's ballot measure has a deceptive title with language right out of the far right's playbook.
It would make it medical malpractice for doctors to provide an abortion unless they meet a number of medically unnecessary requirements.
A medical emergency is defined so narrowly that even some women for whom an abortion is necessary to prevent their death would still be subject to the bill's counseling requirements and "reflection time." That could mean that a woman whose doctor has determined her life is in jeopardy could have to wait 48 hours before receiving the life-saving treatment she needs.
The link between this ballot measure and Blunt's task force is clear. Proponents of the abortion ban will cite the material as information backed by the state of Missouri, when, in fact, it comes from a biased task force of which many voters may never be aware.
Pro-choice advocates in the Show-Me State are preparing for a bruising and expensive political battle.
In November 2008, the best way for voters to end divisive attacks on a woman's right to choose and protect Roe for future generations is to vote their pro-choice values - not only in my home state of Missouri, but throughout the nation.
The 17th annual Who Decides? The Status of Women's Reproductive Rights in the United States is the nation's most comprehensive report with analysis and tracking of choice-related legislation and Court decisions. The report cites Missouri as enacting six anti-choice laws in 2007, tying it with Oklahoma for the most of any state. It also ranks Missouri as 48th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia for protecting women's access to reproductive health services. The report and additional up-to-the minute information can be found at http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/whodecides/.
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