The Pro-Choice movement will lose without a change of strategy.

Here we go again. The protests at abortion clinics are being renewed.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20090817/NEWS01/708179958

Operation Rescue is mobilizing and re-doubling its efforts. A "tragic murder" seems to have energized these people. Meanwhile, doctors and clinic workers probably aren't going to be able to take this much longer. People of Dr. Tiller's unwavering bravery and dedication are hard, no, impossible to replace. For the rest of us trying to defend choice, it is demoralizing that such a man ended by getting shot, after nearly thirty years of unabated harassment, there was no victory at the end for rights, or for women.

If we stay on the defensive, there is no end in sight. For radical anti-choicers, they make a life of threats, harassment and incitements until somebody in their hellbent hordes gets up the guts to shoot or throw a bomb. It's a matter of mentally grooming somebody to commit murder, and, in their radicalized environment, ultimately somebody will volunteer.

The fact is, their reward is simple and focused: close the clinic, remove the doctors and the health workers from the field. They'll do this clinic-by-clinic, doctor-by-doctor, worker-by-worker.

We allow them freedom to reach these goals, because we limit ourselves simply to defending the clinics. Therefore, the protesters are allowed the freedom to go home, to rest, to go to their churches and hear how wonderful and righteous they all are, and to raise their families. There are enough of them to where somebody else takes their shifts when particular ones need to rest. Pro-choice people don't have this luxury. They have fewer personnel, simply because just defending a clinic doesn't appear to need that many volunteers. They do not recruit for any permanent movement-- except maybe to show up at a demonstration when a state legislature is considering some anti-choice law. Meanwhile, we pro-choice people take the strategy of manning the parapets until the barbarians give up the siege.

This isn't going to end well for us, nor for Choice. We have to recognize this, or we will lose.

The Pro-Choice movement, in my opinion, cannot be won if we think of it as a single issue. We have to think of pro-choice as a larger war against religious radicalism, and there is no doubt that this is what we are faced with. Now, I'm not saying that anti-choice is necessarily a religious position, it may be justified in non-religious ways, but the radical anti-choicers are motivated by radical Christianity. There is no mistake about this. Religious radicals dominate the movement. Certain churches and congregations are the spawning grounds for anti-choice radicals.

So, like abortion clinics, there are strategic targets to the anti-choice movement as well. A tit-for-tat strategy would dictate that we should take the fight there. Look for the Congregations behind the protests, often times, I believe, there will be one main one and some associated ones. Take some pro-choice protests there, and expose these criminal organizations for what they are doing and saying and don't stop until they are closed. Block the entrances of people trying to go in and tell them of what bloody-minded, cowardly, murderers the congregants are. Don't let them go home, don't let them rest, don't let them congratulate each other. Treat them as they treat other people.

Show the gory, Mel Gibson picture of Jesus scourged or bloody depictions of the crusades to show their actual mentality is not peaceful. Have some operatives inside, find out where the anti-choice meetings are, usually at somebody's home, and then disrupt them, or protest them, or plant disinformation. Meanwhile, you don't leave the ministers or priests alone about it. Don't let them get any sleep until they leave the ministry, or if they are less radical than that, expel the real radicals.

Meanwhile, promote moderate churches. I'm not a member of a church myself, and I am agnostic, but despite what Atheists would say, people have a right to religion, but radical sects no matter what religion are no better than violent anarchists or criminals. There can't be a successful movement against Christianity or all religions, public opinion will never go for it, but we can have success against radical sects. Exposing the radicals to different opinions instead might have some good effects alone.

I do wonder if the Pro-Choice movement can get the volunteers for these counter-attacks, but have we even tried? Getting volunteers to defend clinics is a very narrow goal, needing few volunteers, so we may have to illusion of being outnumbered. The problems are mostly psychological. People who are anti-radical usually don't have fanatical devotion, and the right to an abortion (a part of the right to choice) is not positively inspiring. Usually this right is something that somebody will need once in their lives, so they don't miss it until they can't have it. It will never sound as liberating as the right free speech or affordable health care.

We will have to find a way to do it, though. The Pro-Choice movement cannot succeed in isolation from the wider issue: promoting freedom, rights, and liberalism, which entails fighting radical religions, for whom obedience, and not rights, is closer to their idea of freedom. In Catholic school, I remember a priest teaching our class who had a certain Orwellian phrase about freedom: "Freedom is freedom to obey God." There is so much wrong with that saying.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to begin such an enterprise? Please comment or mail me.

I don't agree with linking it to the pro-choice movement. There are a lot of "conscientious objectors", so to speak, from the religious communities that will sway to the wrong side of the abortion debate if we make it about religion instead of the rights and well-being women. I do think undermining the crazies are long-past the point of necessity, but it should be done in and of itself and not specifically in the name of pro-choice.

It must do something radical. Moreover, to have any motivation to confront radical sects, one must identify and use the hot issue at its fault-line. Choice is that issue more than other. It has been noted in stories that the Anti-choice movement is also anti-birth control, and from there, it is connected to the abstinence-only sex-education, to virginity balls, and to the totally numb-skull notion of "renewed" virginity. Then it connects to women's rights in general. It is the same people who believe all of this. In the broader sense, it's an social conflict on rights versus obedience. Rights are supposed to be endowed by the creator, that's the cultural approach. But what of obedience to that Creator?

These are all based in radical Christianity. Also, these aren't programs that are supposed to "work" in the way one normally thinks of working. It doesn't matter to the radical Christians if abstinence-only actually reduces teen pregnancies and STD's. It's a matter of having a nation that obeys God, so that God won't get angry and smite the nation. That is the reasoning behind it. If they outlaw abortion, and there are back alley abortions as a result, then it is a matter of individuals sinning. However, if the nation legalizes abortion, then its matter of the whole nation sinning, and God punishes nations for their sins in the Bible all the time. It's the most common theme in the book.

So, separating Choice from the broader issue is not really a natural thing. It is really a flash point issue in a far broader conflict, whether we think it is politically practical to treat it that way or not.

So, I don't know that the Pro-choice movement can win or even survive without a connection to a broader movement, at least an implied one, the way radical Christianity is connected with the anti-choice movement. I also wonder if the opposition to radical Christianity can get off the ground without the issue focus found with Choice.

reproductive rights. Most women don't even give a damn, and think they have ALWAYS had the right to birth control and access to abortion.

Lack of education has destroyed this country. And it's our own damned fault.

We'd rather watch Survivor and eat cheez doodles than exercise our brains.

Falling into their language was a trap from the beginning.

That has a certain, simple, straightforward appeal, but, you see, that isn't quite accurate. We are not for abortion, but only that the woman have abortion as a legally, safe, and available option in a pregnancy that is unwanted, and that, if she take that option, she be respected for it.

So, what is a straightforward, one or two word description of this? People have wracked their brains over this. Given that in four decades, nothing else better has presented itself, it would be a work of genius to come up with something better. We should hold contest, and offer a scholarship to the winner.

Can you think of something then? I haven't given up, I'm still trying.

but I would also like to point out that I don't think abortion is wrong. I don't think it's murder. I think it's a perfectly fine option. Much as I liked Al Gore, I intenesely disliked his statement that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. I don't think abortion is immoral or wrong and I don't think a zygot is a person. I don't mean this for you - it's become a generally accepted meme now - but I have absolutely no problem with abortion and I'm not the least bit ashamed to say so.

Though sometime in the late term, I think it becomes a person. But women and doctors don't just have late term abortions unless there is something radically wrong-- such as the fetus not having a brain. In which case, it isn't a person, either.

No, zygote isn't a person, and the statement "Life begins at conception" is so wrong in so many ways that you could write a whole dissertation on all the conceptual mistakes and moral negligence it takes to declare it.

Avoiding the term pro-abortion is not just a matter of whether you feel it is morally right. Say, if you eat meat, would it be fair for a vegetarian to call you "pro-slaughterhouse?" Or would you think it's fair for them to say you eat meat because you love slaughter? Or, if you believe that you should put down a suffering animal, would it be fair to say you're all for the destruction of animals?

So, even if we both agree that it is right, you must also agree that abortion is also neither pretty nor inspiring, but really, it's onerous, troublesome and as grotesque as any other surgery, or bodily discharge. Not only that, the procedure itself is otherwise pretty trivial.

Therefore, what is really at stake?

The way I would describe the issue: the woman is a real person with rights, and the fetus is neither. The woman has to have the complete right to chose when an if she is going to reproduce. If a person is deprived of the choice of whether to reproduce, they have no rights. Period. If the woman does not have reproductive rights equal to a man, then all of her rights relative to the man are unequal, and her life can always be controlled by a man or by men. Meanwhile, if her reproductive rights are limited by the state, it implies that male reproductive rights are also limited by the state.

To be perfectly frank, also, reproduction is so central biologically, that if a the state doesn't respect them, than no other rights are safe. Also, if the State can recognize an absurdity, such as a zygote is a person, without the necessity of consciousness, and that its rights are superior to the woman who contains it, and its interests supersedes hers, how many slippery slopes does this create?

Anti-choicers will argue that it has nothing to do with dominating or controlling women, and maybe it isn't. The problem is that they are certainly driven to make the legal system conform with their dogma, and they consider rights for women to be an impediment to this purpose. God creates life, a life is created after sex, I hear it has something to do with the sperm meeting the egg, therefore, life begins at conception. To enforce anything less than that might insult God.

Back on the term. I have to go for a while, however, I think you'll right, and I'll try to think of something.

That ought to really blow a few minds and fuses!

It doesn't matter what we call it...the RW crazies are going to pervert whatever name we'd choose, to their own advantage.

In fact, I think that choosing another name would be a signal to them that they've won yet another "battle".

And really, I like the idea of "Pro choice" being the opposite term to "Anti choice" because that's what their stance is all about. Treating women like second class citizens...children...animals...by denying us our rights to choose.


And I don't think sitting around arguing about the viability of a fetus, or when a zygote becomes A Life is productive either. People can argue till they're blue in the face...till eternity...and nothing at all is accomplished.

Personally, I think the only point to be made to those people is

Fuck you...mind your own damned business and stay out of mine.

Maybe not in those exact words, but something close.

;)

Saudi Arabia and Iran might suit them.

I agree with the sentiment, but its useless.

It's more complicated than that, particularly among the under-30 crowd.