by Lina Thorne |
In the same week that Trump notoriously announced, “the country is full,” in another escalation of attacks on immigrants, the Trump/Pence regime and other fascist forces also escalated steps toward their goal of overturning the right to abortion. As many have pointed out, if the territory of the US was actually overflowing with people, there would be an urgent need to stop any more pregnancies – but of course this is ludicrous. The point is that this obsession with forcing “real American” women to bear children against their will is entirely consistent with a program of expelling and blocking entry of immigrants – particularly non-white people from countries that Trump calls “shitholes.”
A coordinated war on abortion rights is being waged at the federal and state level, with the aim of overturning Roe v. Wade and criminalizing abortion altogether. Take the Trump regime’s efforts to completely destroy Planned Parenthood. Through changing the rules on how organizations that receive family planning funds from the federal government (through Title X) are allowed to refer patients to abortion services, they are able to move millions of dollars to anti-abortion groups and away from Planned Parenthood.
While the overwhelming majority of abortions happen early in the first trimester, the anti-abortion propaganda has focused on later abortions with a calculated disinformation campaign (for a reality check see: I’m an OB/GYN and infanticide is not part of abortion care. Here’s why.) When rallying in El Paso a few weeks ago, Trump led the crowd into a frenzy with disturbing allegations that abortion providers induce birth and then murder breathing babies. Last Friday, Trump hosted a screening of the film Gosnell, a “documentary” designed to further confuse and frighten people about the already extremely stigmatized and misunderstood but extremely common practice of legal medical abortion. The new anti-abortion film “Unplanned,” an unexpected box-office success, has further muddied people’s understanding. And Lindsey Graham introduced his federal ban on all abortions after 20 weeks bill (for something like the fourth or fifth time).
This plot, however, is just the preface to seizing the fascists’ long hoped-for Holy Grail – overturning Roe v. Wade itself.
Recently, the governor of Ohio signed a bill into law, which essentially bans all abortions – a flagrant challenge to Roe v. Wade. Much discussion of this and similar bills (Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Texas, Florida, Missouri, and Tennessee have all passed or are considering approving so-called “heartbeat bills”) have focused on the ability of an ultrasound to detect a heartbeat – which can happen as early as 1-2 weeks after a missed period, when the fetus is around 0.5” long and still has a tail (most people don’t even know they’re pregnant that early). The Ohio law contains no exemptions for abortions necessitated by rape or incest – and, like other similar statewide bans, is designed to provoke legal challenges that could go to the Supreme Court to ultimately trigger the overturning of Roe v. Wade. None of these laws has gone into effect yet because they’re illegal according to existing law, but they will wind their way through the judicial system and attempt to reach the Supreme Court in order to change the existing law.
In fact, more than 250 anti-abortion laws have been proposed at the state level across the country this year. Contrary to the narrative that the new Democratic-controlled Congress is reining in the regime, the fascists who have kept their eyes on the prize understand that the judiciary has been, and still is, being remade by the Trump/Pence regime, capable of fulfilling their most fervently held goals: to pull American society back to the 1950s and lock people – especially women – into a situation where they are helpless to control the most basic and fundamental circumstances that affect their lives. Ultimately, they’ll be coming for legal contraceptives as well… and then gay, trans, and gender non-conforming people’s rights to be themselves and love who they want to. If you’re looking for clues on how this works, read The Handmaid’s Tale.
In Texas, Christian fascists recognize that it will only be possible to truly turn society’s clock back that far through state terror and violence, and introduced a bill that would classify abortion as murder and potentially serve women with death sentences for having abortions. The legislature’s hearing included testimony from hundreds of people (more than 400 people were on the list) in support of this bloodthirsty law, driven by the Christian fundamentalist belief that “God’s wrath” will come down on those politicians who won’t get behind it.
While fascists lay the groundwork for criminalizing abortion, there are some things that need to be repeated, again and again:
- Abortion is not murder.
- Fetuses are not babies.
- Women are full human beings, not incubators (or Handmaids).
- 1 in 4 women in the United States will have at least one abortion during her child-bearing years.
- Without control over our own bodies, women can’t be free.
- There is not a single anti-abortion organization that supports the use of contraceptives (birth control or condoms).
At its core, the anti-abortion movement is a fascist, white supremacist movement that has used violence and terror to murder and intimidate abortion providers and women throughout the country, carrying out bombings and attacks from Birmingham to Buffalo. It’s no shock that explicitly Nazi groups have found friendly ground to operate in the mass mobilizations of the anti-abortion movement. Now, with the Trump/Pence regime in power and Trump’s appointees Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, both long-time anti-abortion activists, on the Supreme Court, fascists of various stripes smell victory. Taking this right away from women is crucial to bringing about the kind of society and future these fascists want to cement in place, in which white supremacy, male supremacy, Christian supremacy, and American supremacy are unquestioned and unchallenged.
The only way out of this nightmare is mass action in the streets that ultimately drives out this fascist regime. As the Refuse Fascism Call to Action states, “We must confront the reality that the world as we have known it is being torn asunder. This requires getting out of our comfort zones and not allowing our differences to stand in the way of rising together in an unprecedented, unrelenting mass struggle to confront the danger of a Trump/Pence fascist America.” For the future of women and all of humanity, we must fill the streets in a sustained, nonviolent mass movement that demands, “This nightmare must end. The Trump/Pence regime must go.”