This is the New Abortion Strategy Activists are Trying

Abortion rights activists rally outside the Supreme Court, March 4, 2020 [Jacquelyn Martin/AP]

By Anne Rumberger

During the presidency of Donald Trump, conservative Christian pro-life groups have been mobilizing large crowds outside clinics, and training a new generation of enthusiastic activists to eliminate abortion rights across the U.S.

One way they’ve managed to do this is by co-opting the language of racial and social justice. For example, influential millennial anti-abortion activist Lila Rose has said that “abortion is a leading killer of Black lives in America” and anti-abortion billboards targeting Black women began appearing around the country in 2010, including one in New York’s Greenwich Village with the message, “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” Other anti-abortion groups like the mostly Catholic-affiliated Red Rose Rescue, which appeared in 2017, are reboots of militant organizations from the late 1980s and ‘90s such as Operation Rescue, a group known for invading and blockading clinics.

In the past few years, there has been a disturbing escalation of intimidation tactics, clinic invasions and other activities aimed at disrupting services, harassing providers and blocking women’s access to abortion care. The National Abortion Federation documented an increase of incidents of obstruction of health care facilities from 3,038 in 2018 to 3,387 in 2019, as well as 123,228 reported picketing incidents and 1,507 incidents of trespassing. An unclassified report released this January from the FBI predicted violent threats and criminal activity against abortion providers will only continue to increase.

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it has become apparent to people across the progressive political spectrum that the courts will not offer protection. Further, it is clear that the mainstream strategy for protecting abortion rights — pro-choice legislation, court injunctions and relying on police to keep clinics safe — has not succeeded in many parts of the country. Despite a pro-choice President-elect Biden entering the White House next year, abortion access is increasingly being determined by individual states and the courts and is already out of reach for many poor and rural women.

It’s worth noting that some mainstream reproductive rights organizations have tried to curtail certain emerging forms of pro-abortion rights activism. After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, anti-abortion protesters launched a national day of action against Planned Parenthood, directing activists to mass outside of clinics. When pro-choice activists prepared to defend the clinics, Planned Parenthood asked them not to, citing the stress that dueling protests could cause patients.

But this argument rests on the faulty assumption that clinics are not already politically charged spaces. And it has played a role in stifling a militant reproductive freedom movement that could potentially be mobilized in huge numbers to protest abortion restrictions and support other targets of the pro-life movement, especially the LGBTQ community.

The majority of Americans support legalized abortion. Many people are outraged by the wave of state-level abortion restrictions and terrified of losing the tenuous protection afforded by the Supreme Court. The only way to prevent a well-organized and vocal minority of zealots from further eroding access to abortion care is to out-organize them and not cede terrain.

Opposing anti-abortion activists outside of clinics is an important part of drawing attention to widespread support for abortion and of building an organized movement that utilizes the power of coordinated direct action to demand big changes in our health care system. When we counter-protest outside Planned Parenthood’s clinic in New York, for example, we draw the attention and solidarity from people in the neighborhood who support abortion rights, and were unaware of the nasty intimidation happening right around the corner.

While a Democratic presidential win is welcome, our dreams of health justice and free abortion will only be a reality if we fight for them.

— Anne Rumberger is an activist with New York City for Abortion Rights and the NYC Democratic Socialists of America Socialist Feminist Working Group.