





Violence Against Women's Health Organizations Frederick Clarkson print page Wed May 30, 2012 at 11:42:25 PM EST Anti-abortion violence has been a critical part of the so-called culture wars since the 70s. And it raises profound issues that as a democratic society, built on a constitutional system and carefully constructed culture of religious pluralism, we have dealt with poorly. Although the vast majority of anti-abortion leaders condemn violence and consider acts of violence to undermine their cause; serious crimes, including acts of violence against abortion providers continue. Most recently, there have been three burglaries and two arsons against Atlanta area clinics and the offices of ob gyn physicians, making regional news. However, the doctors who have been victims of the burglaries and one of the arsons believe that although they do not perform abortions, they were being targeted in retaliation for public opposition to antiabortion "fetal pain" legislation recently signed by the governor. (One of the arsons was unquestionably aimed at an abortion provider.) There are, of course, many things that could be said about all this. But I want to surface a few points that I hope will stay in our conversation about these things, long after the outrage over recent events has subsided, and our attention is drawn to other things. When perpetrators are caught, they are almost without exception, people who had previously been part of the ostensibly non-violent part of the movement. As I detailed in my 1997 book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy , when it comes to violence, it has been an overwhelmingly one-sided war of aggression. Here are a few brief points that I hope may help us open-up and improve the conversation over the long run. First, when it comes to antiabortion violence, it is the domestic terrorism that the government dare not name -- because top elected leaders of both parties are afraid of offending the sensibilities of anti-abortion religious leaders. Nevertheless, the way federal law enforcement treats antiabortion terrorism is one of the things that has changed since 911. There was a time when swaggering Operation Rescue militants and Army of God ex-felons mocked those who called them criminals, gangsters and terrorists, and they embraced such terms. All the better to scare people. But since 911, terrorism just isn't cool. Not to federal law enforcement. Not to the general public. But that has not stopped clinics and doctors from being targeted. Violence and threats of violence remains common as women's health centers and even private doctors' offices, not all of whom even provide abortions are targeted by both organized and sometimes ostensibly solo vigilantes. It is just more covert and there is less public swagger from its proponents. But the fact remains that no antiabortion group, including the Army of God, has been designated a terrorist organization. Similarly, few acts of antiabortion violence have been designated as acts of terror, even when they reasonably fit the definition. The media have struggled with this, as we generally lack a coherent common understanding of what is going on, including the terms to describe it. I wrote about this awhile back, pointing out that the current fashion in referring to religious organizations as "faith based" can obscure much about the religious identity and intentions of an organization. It is a term generally reserved for neutral or positive descriptions. If a group has committed or has planned acts of violence, it is usually tagged as a hate group, or anti-government, or some other term that avoids addressing the matter of religious motivations for major crimes. The case of Scott Roeder, who assassinated abortion provider George Tiller a few years ago, is instructive. I wrote: Scott Roeder (the man convicted of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas) was mostly described in the media as an anti-abortion extremist or anti-abortion militant, terms that fail to convey the depth and breadth of his views and the reasons for his crime. At his sentencing Roeder said that in murdering Dr. Tiller, he believed he was acting to enforce "God's Law." Roeder, as part of his statement to the court, read from the posthumously published book by Rev. Paul Hill, a Christian Reconstructionist who viewed himself as a "Phineas Priest"--a kind of biblical vigilante assassin--who was executed for the murder of a Florida abortion provider and his security escort. Hill also believed in the need for militias and for a theocratic Christian revolution. But one would not know all that to read mainstream press accounts. And while the sentencing was massively covered by national and international media, it would have been fair to describe Roeder as a "Christian terrorist," though the media didn't go there; he was described neither as a Christian nor as a terrorist in any of the news or broadcast accounts I could find. Second, the culture of threats, intimidation and violence goes well beyond abortion providers. It has, for example, often been the case that women's health centers targeted by arsonists and other criminals are not even abortion providers. That was certainly true of three of the above mentioned cases in Atlanta area. (Even an antiabortion state legislator recognized that the burglaries and arsons were probably acts of retaliation.) In another notable example, when Clayton Waagner sent some 550 envelopes of fake anthrax to Planned Parenthood and other clinics in the wake of 9/11, some of his targets were reproductive rights organizations, such as the Feminist Majority Foundation, that are not involved in providing medical services of any kind. And so it was also the case in New Orleans this week, where the offices of Women of Vision, a women's health organization serving the poor and marginalized, were largely destroyed by an arsonist. As if the poor in New Orleans have not suffered enough in the wake of Katrina. This is an organization that helps women whom too often, no one else will. Very poor women of color. Transgender women. Women with HIV. Sex workers. The long term pattern of crimes against women's health organizations and advocates could not be clearer, even as it is often obscured by our peculiar inability to come fully to terms with it. This situation ought to be of broad concern, since acts of terror against any of us, are acts of terror against all of us. Unless we can bring ourselves to see it that way, unless we can rally to understand ourselves as all in this together, more and more people will come to lose faith in democracy itself. It can be difficult to see ourselves as in the same boat as sex workers and very poor people with HIV. But when we struggle with dilemmas that ought not to be dilemmas, we make the Religious Right very happy. In a statement on their web site, (where it is also possible to make donations), Women with a Vision executive director Deon Haywood wrote: The worst damage was concentrated in our community organizing and outreach office where we store all of the resources we use to educate our community. We lost everything. We do not have an office to operate out of right now. Most of our office equipment and all of our educational resources were destroyed. Because of the targeted nature, we can only assume that this was intentional.



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