Anti-Abortion Terrorism Chalks Up Another Success
By Ian Welsh Tuesday Jun 09, 2009 5:00pm
The Tiller family has announced that it is closing Dr. Tiller's clinic. The terrorists have won, and that assassination has succeeded in doing what it was meant to do. I'm sure the murderer is very happy tonight.
The bottom line on right wing terrorism against abortion rights is that it's succeeding and has been for some time. Take a good hard look at the chart at the top and try and tell me otherwise. And when it comes to late term abortions, well, Tiller was one of the very few who still provided the service. According to Tiller, speaking in March before his assassination, he was one of only three doctors left in the US doing such abortions. Now there are two. If those numbers are right, one third of all abortion doctors doing these abortions were just killed.
In the aftermath of Tiller's death, I heard a lot of progressives talking about how the anti-abortion folks were losing. The bottom line is that they're winning. It is harder to get abortions than it was 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 25 years ago. Abortion access peaked in 1982 and has been declining ever since. Consider that the US population has increased by approximately 30% since 1982. At the same time the number of providers has dropped by over a third.
Now, most types of abortion violence had been in a slow, long term decline (the exception is burglary) so there's certainly some reason for optimism. At the same time I strongly suspect that anti-abortion violence will rise, along with other types of right wing terrorism, during Obama's administration.
The larger point is simpler. It's harder to get an abortion than it has ever been since Roe vs. Wade, because there are just less doctors who perform abortions. Until more doctors step up and start providing abortions, especially late term abortions, this will continue. It's hard to blame doctors for not being willing to provide abortions. Not only could you be killed for doing so, your family will be stalked and perhaps harmed, your clinic will be burglarized, you will be subject to constant legal harassment and your life will, in general, be made a living hell along with the lives of your family, friends and associates.
It's a lot to ask of someone. But this comes back to the truth of rights. You have no rights that people aren't willing to suffer and die for. Rights that someone won't put their life on the line for will be taken away by people who are willing to resort to intimidation, violence and to push for laws which take those rights away.
So the questions, then are these:
1) Where are the doctors who are willing to risk their lives, the lives of their families, and to endure constant harassment to ensure that women keep this right, not just in theory, but in practice?
2) Where are the mass of people who will provide money, aid, and physical protection to the doctors who put their lives on the line? Yes, they exist even now, but obviously there aren't enough of them, because the number of abortion providers keeps going down.
Is this a right you're willing to risk your life to keep? If enough people don't answer that question yes, then you will continue to lose it.
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Duly noted...
Good luck next time your ten year old needs an abortion.
The American Taliban should be treated as the terrorist organization is it. It's time for law enforcement to step up to the plate, and do what they are constitutionally, and legally bound to do ... eliminate these domestic terrorists by agressively enforcing our terrorism laws.
It's time to put these dogs down.
Convince the Right to do back alley abortions and they'll be screaming for real doctors. Women will vote in droves for progressive measures to protect them from their insane husbands and mothers.
You bet. Let them overturn Roe vs Wade and within months people will be agitating to make abortion legal again. Folks under age 50 don't remember what it was like: your college roommate going to a motel, hoping that it really was a med student she was going to meet, women in emergency rooms mutilated, infected and bleeding out because they tried to abort themselves or were the victim of a butcher, cops finding women left to die in cheap motels. The truth is that from time immemorial if a woman doesn't want to be pregnant she will find a way to end it. I have never had a conversation about abortion wherein the other person didn't say, my sister, friend, cousin, mother aunt, grandmother, me had an abortion. It is far more common that the anti-choice folks are willing to admit.
Legal or illegal women will have abortions; legal fewer women will die.
This needs to be called 'anti choice', not pro life.. I feel I am 'pro life',but I am no less 'pro choice'.These people are against a womans right to CHOOSE.
aliasalias.
What these wingnuts terrorize other people for has nothing to do with 'pro life'!
You're so right.
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Agreed. Tell the families of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and 4500 American service-members the GOP is "pro life".
you're right. My bad.
You'll have to get them to stop using "pro-abortion" first.
they're anti-woman.
Plain and simple.
If men could get pregnant they'd be setting up abortion clinics like Starbucks in every strip mall in America.
I'd be the first in line too!
"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament" - Florynce Kennedy.
up to a certain point..third tri mester abortions are murder....and although the doctor should not have been murdered..it is good 1/3 of the doctors that do these late term abortions are gone..
Not sure about that. Declining abortion numbers might mean that sex education is doing its job. The real test would be polling women who had children: are regretful mothers going up? Personally, I think it's a positive that abortion rates are going down.
but I see far too many young girls coming into our drugstore buying pregnancy tests, and seeming very casual about it.
Makes me worry...as if we haven't really moved on...but I would be so happy if I were wrong.
...how sex ed could be doing its job when no one is allowed to teach it.
COMPREHENSIVE sex ed is not allowed to be taught. Every other form is allowed, up to and including abstinence.
A few things on this. First, not all teens see motherhood as something bad. Some see it as a fast-track to a certain "respect" or "adulthood" or sadly, finding someone they can love.
As for the meme that the Reagan-Bush-W Imperium has somehow supplanted sex education in every corner of the kingdom--er, I mean nation ... I find it hard to believe. In some red states, to a degree: they tend to have higher instances of pregnancy and abortion anyway.
For this graph to have any meaning, it needs context. Overall pregnancy rates among teens, single adults, and a perspective on women who want abortions, but can't get them. Otherwise, this kind of thing quickly degenerates into conservative-like fear-mongering. We don't need more of that crap.
what is being discussed here
Personally, I'd be inclined to use the word "assassin" instead of he word murderer.
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I prefer "Al-Qonservative"
This is a victory for haploid spermatozoon and ovum everywhere.
Isn't it simply grand to know that sledge hammer like terror and murder gets such glowing results?
...from a country that believes every citizen has the right to carry around a murder weapon? You're gonna get a shitload of murders.
The conservative elite will get Buffy her abortion. Especially if she were impregnated by a non-white.
Women will still get pregnant and abortions will still be a fact of life, that is something the right wing terrorists cannot stop.
If an abortion is necessary, women will travel to Canada to get an abortion.
poor and can't make it to Canada. Sorry if I don't share your optimism...
We tried that already. Thousands of women died from shock and sepsis due to botched abortions. That's why Roe vs. Wade was fought - to make the procedure legal, and thus SAFE. And that's precisely why the Rethugs want the decision abolished. If abortion is deadly again, they think women won't get them.
Yeah, I laughed, too.
I'll never forget watching If These Walls Could Talk, the HBO film, particular the 1950's segment where Demi Moore's character died on her kitchen table from a botched abortion with no one to help her...
that addresses the issue is Vera Drake. Very powerful.
Where do you think right wing anti abortion women go for their abortions.
To the clinics where they protest; when I escorted at a clinic in the 1980s I saw it more than once. One even sat in the waiting room with her daughter and tried to get the other women to leave.
human health rights...
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Getting an abortion shouldn't be as easy as buying candy. What's exactly wrong with going through a process where abortion shouldn't be not just legal, but yet a thoughtful procedure? I don't know, I had friends who took their girlfriends to abortion clinics because they didn't want to stop partying, so to me it's not that simple.
Not first trimester D&Cs, but procedures that are only done when any type of delivery endangers the life of the pregnant woman. The type of procedures that account for about 1% of all abortions.
on what Tiller did. Those involved in seeking his services did not do this on a whim. I don't think that most women seeking them do so lightly, but in the end, it really is no one's business why they do it.
There's already a "process." It's called a waiting period, in which anti-choicers get plenty of opportunity to intimidate and abuse women seeking an abortion. God forbid it should happen, but if I should ever find myself unable to continue a pregnancy for whatever reason, the last thing I want is to be told I'm a baby killer, going to hell, etc.
Also, Dr. Tiller did late-term abortions, which are for women who are *dying*, or are having babies that are *dying* or *dead anyway*. Hardly the walk thru the candy store you seem to think it is!
I am pro choice, it's just that I've seen it abused too many times. Nothing matters more than the health of the mother, including the emotional aspect of it. It's interesting that these morons on the right oppose assisted suicide. It's fucked up to think that a terminally ill patient could have a better chance of doing assisted suicide if they get pregnant, that's the world republicans live in. Like I say, there should be a counseling period where women should be aware, never done by someone with personal views, but objective medical advice. Yet, I stand by my view that it should not be as easy as buying candy, there has to be a middle ground where such decisions are not taken lightly, because it's anything but it.
Tiller was in the minority on the issue at large. Do you think any woman can really afford counseling on top of delivery or abortion fees? Do you think she has good odds of getting a therapist that will actually provide more than the "Trust in Gods Will" bullshit?
what with all of the right-wing arguments in your posts. "easy as buying candy". yup, that's what this is like for women. like buying candy. idiot.
I don't need to respond to you in the same arrogant way you called me, and yes, it was as easy as buying candy, otherwise, how do you explain my friend going with his girlfriend to the abortion clinic in the morning and then spending the afternoon in the mall shopping for nikes? I'm trying to take this conversation to a level of respect that you cannot understand because for you it's all about taking sides, as if you were a watching a baseball name. I feel sorry for you. You have no idea how traumatizing this experience can be for some people because I am using "right-wing arguments in my posts". You need to grow up, and you need to do it as soon as possible, unless you decide that you have no place at a voting booth.
I have a friend who's had an abortion, just after she got it done, it fucked with her head a little. You feel happy after buying candy, you feel like shit after buying an abortion.
but the woman and her doctor.
Abortion: On demand, no questions asked.
"Getting an abortion shouldn't be as easy as buying candy."
Excuseaay-Fucking -Moi? What kind of callous, unfeeling, heat-like-a-peach-pit asshole makes that kind of assumption?
Only some dick-end that's never had to run a gauntlet of screaming assholes/holy warriors who're waving pictures of aborted fetuses in their face & throwing blood/paint on them.
I mean, really. What an absolutely douchebaggy thing to say.
And would you want women like these to have children in the first place? They don't sound particularly maternal.
This in to way relates to Tiller's murder, but from a purely logical perspective that graph about number of abortion providers over time by itself says little about access to abortions in the US.
Reason: You could just as easily infer from that that Americans have become proportionately more responsible about birth control over the past 25 years, and thus the need for abortion providers per capita has decreased significantly. After all, that case would probably look exactly the same on a graph.
Also interesting that on that graph the number of hospital providers appears to have decreased significantly while small and large nonhospital (clinic?) providers has remained about the same. You could take that either way--that the market is saturated by the independent providers and so hospitals have just been dropping the service, or conversely that it isn't worth the PR hassle to hospitals while other providers see enough profit to stay in it.
If your assumption from that graph is based purely on the physical distance to the nearest provider then it's also questionable whether access has decreased so much--after all, if the abortion clinic doesn't have a waiting list, the surface area of the US hasn't increased regardless of population change, and so the distance to the nearest non-hospital provider would have remained approximately constant.
Note: I am NOT implying that any of the above is true. I'm just saying that that single statistic doesn't necessarily back up that fact, and could be evidence of a far more positive trend if you chose to interpret it that way absent other facts.
Now, the fact that one third of people providing the I assume medically vital role of late-term abortionists in the country were just murdered IS more statistically meaningful.
though it's a bit hard to do the math on it. It could just be that reduction in abortions is because they're harder to get it. Hard to get the causation. However, anecdotally what I hear from people in the movement is that it is a lot harder to get abortions, especially late term ones, than it was in the past.
at what point, do we as citizens PUSH BACK? how many rational people must be murdered by irrational cristian taliban terrorists before we push THE F back? what will it take to make us go where they congregate and tell them, en mass.... screw with us again... and see what happens? WE MUST GO TO THEIR CHURCHES AND PICKET OUTSIDE..on sunday morning with bull horns and make their lives miserable......TO THEIR ORGANIZATIONAL OFFICES... WE MUST GO TO THEIR SOCIAL CLUBS... AND MAKE APPARENT THAT THEY WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTROL US. we must show them if they think we are weak or scared... they are wrong, and that terrorism isnt going to work. we must take matters into our own hands... a lot of police and prosecutors are closet christian taliban right wing thug stormtroopers and they secretly support the christian taliban. we must tell them to BTFO or suffer... and mean it. we must go to the abortion clinics ourselves and blockade them. a hundred people at a time. organize a local group to thwart them with loud noise and water and anything else that is legal to use against them to get them to go away. the right for a human being to choose is too important for us to sit by and say... "oh what a shame".... EFFIN DO SOMETHING. there are more of us than them.
The progressive movement doesn't have the stones.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely 100% agree with you. I honestly don't think people here get it: The enemy can win because they're willing to sacrifice.
One thing I learned in school: A bully won't stop bullying you if you "ignore them" or go and report them to a teacher. A bully will leave you alone when you turn around and knock the ever-lovin' shit out of him.
They're not going away, but it looks like the pro-choicers are tucking their tails and running.
Now, before any of you who are clinic escorts jump on me for the beatdown, I don't include you. You are on the front lines of this and you are so very appreciated.
I'm talking about the people who will bitch about a problem, but do nothing about it. And I don't exclude myself from this. I'm as guilty as anyone of not saying to myself "WTF are you gonna do about it"?
You do realize that there are a host of other, non-terrorist reasons that these trends could occur.
For instance the dramatic drop after 1982 may have been, at least, in part due to a decline in the demand for abortions. If I recall correctly, and I may not, that was approximately when the AIDs crisis happened, which seems like a very likely time that people would start using more condoms.
Other declines could also have occurred as a function of better, improved birth control methods such as the birth control patch, etc. etc.
Not saying that's the case, but it's more than a little irresponsible of you that you didn't even consider this as a possibility, don't you think?
question, don't you think? However, the decline in abortions, absolute and relative, really took off in the early 90's, about 11 to 12 years after the drop. You can see a chart here. Also, as I noted above, what I hear from my friends in the movement is that it has gotten harder, and that the average age of providers has gone up significantly. Younger doctors have not been replacing retiring doctors. In part this is because, outside of the NY system (which changed recently), abortion is not taught as part of the basic curriculum in most schools. And, as noted in the post, well, if you want to do abortions, especially late term ones, you are subject to a great deal of harassment.
The answer, as with most things, is probably a mix of factors.
not sure why that happened. Anyway, yes there are probably multiple factors. Detailed response not possible at this time, I'll just note that the people I know in the pro-choice movement, do say that access is getting harder every year, especially for late terms, that the age of providers is getting older, and that they are not being replaced, and it's not primarily due to demand. # of abortions has dropped, but it's hard to determine if that's due to a real reduction in demand, or a reduction in supply. In particular, the biggest part of the drop in #s happened in the early nineties.
Do you think females should be able to get/use contraception?
Do you think people have the right to decide what is in their best interest?
Do you think one group should be able to tell another what they can or can't do?
And finally, what will you say when women die from getting a backroom illegal abortion?
Are you under the impression that I'm not pro-choice? What gave you that impression?
Of course I believe in the right to contraception, the right to self determination, and so on. What will I tell women when they die from a backroom abortion? Well, there aren't really words, are there? I'd provide a link to some of my past writing, but last time I put a link in, the system killed my comments, so yeah, maybe not. Search on "ian Welsh, the cost of forgetting life before roe" for my opinion on that.
As an aside, the # of metropolitan counties without an abortion provider has risen from 47 to 69% since 1978. The non-metro # has risen from 85% to 97%. The percentage of providers who provide 24 month+ abortions dropped from 13% in 2001, to 8% in 2005. So not only are there less providers, less of those provide long term abortions. (Guttmacher, 2005)
My apologizes. I see that your link has returned.
I caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared for awhile.
And the photo of the baby threw me.
Most times, people who post a link like that, they're not too friendly.
I myself am against late term abortions unless it's threatening the life of the woman.
Personally, I'm against abortion after 8 weeks. But that's just me. But I do think that it's none of my biz what people do. I do feel that people should make this decision for themselves. Without any outside interference.
I don't like abortion. But I feel it's a choice that no one has the right to interfere with.
I's a shame that the clinic's are dwindling.
It's funny, the religious right say that they are pro life. But yet, they kill to prove their point.
Now I see some preacher is praying for Obama's demise.
This is lunacy.
... is attributable to the availability of "office" type procedures such as RU-486? I realize these office procedures are no substitute for the later term procedures Tiller was performing, but wouldn't they cut down on the need for abortion specialists?
Because you can bet that anti-choicers have probably worked as hard as they can to take that option away from women. A lot them don't even want us to have emergency contraceptives!
are pharmacists!
For the love of God, stop calling these people pro-life, call them what they are, anti-choice.
When you refer to that end of the spectrum as pro-life, it makes the other end the pro-choice seem as if they are against life. I am sick and tired of the all the press even the "liberal" press using the right wing's slogans for this subject. People who are for choice are pro-life, the life of the mother!
...tomorrow...mosques? Bookstores? Music shops?
Where will it end? Or will they keep going till the made the country (and the world) safe for "Christian" folk from everything considered "harmful"?
(And these days, that includes everything...)
...including all those "other" Christians.
Why don't we see these wingers protesting divorce attornies?
The number of women in the US seeking abortions hasn't changed much in the last 30 years. We still see over 25% of women having an abortion in their lifetime. There are over 1.2 Million abortions performed in the US each year by probably fewer than 10,000 practicing doctors (no layoffs in this industry, and I would urge all medical students to seriously consider becoming an OBGYN and/or abortion provider).
A lot of patients are young and single. An almost equal number are married and are getting an abortion due to a serious genetic defect. Others are getting one because the pregnancy has become a risk to their health.
Here in New York, the access to abortion is as it should be in every major US city. The protesters think the abortions happen at the PP office downtown. They do not. PP refers patients major hospitals in the city for either D&Cs or D&Es. No one protests outside the hospitals. No one knows who the patients are. No one knows who the doctors are. It's like the Underground Railroad here in the big apple.
One one hand, that's great because no one gets hurt on either side of the issue. On the other hand, it is a shame that it has to happen in secret. If more women spoke-out about their personal abortion experiences, their would be more acceptance of abortion as a legitimate and necessary component of family planning.
When doctors see a protester coming in to have a procedure done, they don't say anything. Privacy is respected no matter who the patient is. But it would do this country a lot of good if we got abortion out of the closet.
http://www.wmm.com/filmCatalog/pages/c693.shtml
It would be nice if women could speak out, but some are beaten by their own husbands for even saying the word "abortion."
Chalk one up for domestic terrorism. It's a crying shame. We should demand that DHS crack down on these groups. And if the peaceful anti-abortion crowd doesn't want to be seen as a terrorist organization, they should come clean and help the authorities root out the dangerous fringe elements.
The chart says nothing about the "success" of anti-abortion violence.
One could just as easily argue that global warming is causing a decline in abortion providers. And since when is burglary "abortion violence"?
Let's stick to rigorous thought, and leave magical thinking to Intelligent Design proponents.
They don't burgle for profit - they burgle to disrupt and vandalize the clinics. At the clinic where I used to escort they glued the locks, cut electrical wires (the lineman said he hoped it had thrown the guy across the street) set fires, threw paint, etc. etc.
would be for the Justice Dept to announce that all crimes against abortion clinics and providers will henceforth be treated as cases of domestic terrorism, charged under the Patriot Act. Perhaps being indefinitely jailed without Habeas Corpus, stiff sentences may lead some to reconsider their "action plan" A further benefit might be to educate the right-wing wackos about the consequences of draconian legislation when the shoe is on the other foot
My understanding was before Roe V Wade widespread death from back alley abortions wasn't all that common. Orphanages were full, doctors would secretly perform abortions and were professionals, some states allowed it, some didn't and in these last two cases it basically rode on the electorate whim. Some had laws against abortions, but didn't really enforce them. But unfortunately, that could become a subject of blackmail.
you're basically endorsing an overturn of Roe V. Wade as a federal mandate and tossing it back to the states with your comment.
Proof is in the pudding. Bottom line. Terrorism works
where terrorism is a viable political strategy.
Anti-Abortion Terrorism Chalks Up Another Success
What the H3ll would you expect.
If your mantra is to murder the doctors**********?
The entire debate over the abortion procedure really boils down to this:
The "pro-life" faction would like our government to be able to somehow force a woman to bear a fetus to term against her will.
The "pro-choice" faction realizes that a woman simply cannot be forced to bear a fetus to term against her will.
That is the bottom line.
I really haven't heard any "pro-life" folks describing exactly how they are going to force all of these women to bear fetuses to term against their will, but I'd just love to hear how they plan on doing it...
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