Since the beginning of the movement, the pro-choice community has framed this fight in terms of women’s health. When I first began speaking out in 1967, it was in terms of the number of women being killed and maimed due to illegal abortion, and the movement has been doing that ever since. Blaming pro-choice activists for the political influence gained by the right-wing is not because we aren’t carrying the right message. It is attributable to the powerful, wealthy forces we have to fight; and the right-wing politicians and preachers who have found a gold mine in saying they are “pro-life.” The fundamentalist churches and the Catholics have literally poured millions of dollars into this battle; and have no qualms about endorsing candidates from the pulpit, yet the IRS does nothing about it. Not only that, under the Faith Initiative, the Feds have given over a billion (that’s with a B) dollars to these so-called crisis pregnancy centers run by anti-choice people who have the express purpose of propagandizing and deceiving unsuspecting women about abortion. The anti-abortion terrorists have blown up clinics, killed doctors and staff members, and threatened patients. A lot of people who are pro-choice are scared to express their opinions for fear of violence against them or their children, losing their jobs, or facing social ostracism. When I headed up the Oklahoma NARAL, people tried to run me off the road twice. I received personal threats. People left nasty notes on my windshield because of my pro-choice bumpers tickers. My car was covered with key scratches. I went to stores to buy office supplies for NARAL and they refused to sell things to me because I was buying this for an “pro-abortion” group. Forty million women have had legal abortions since 1973. In each of these abortions, other people were affected – the man who caused the unwanted pregnancy, parents, best friends, spiritual advisers, and so forth. So abortion has touched almost every family in this country either directly or peripherally. And the hypocrisy is rampant. My friend was the executive director of the local clinic, and endured almost most daily demonstrators at the clinic. She actually wore a bullet-proof vest to work during a period when the clinic was bombed three times. Yet several times, some of those very demonstrators came to the clinic dragging a teenage daughter for an abortion. The next day, they would be out on the line with the “Christian” friends denouncing abortion. So if the writer is blaming feminists because the right-wing is using abortion as a whipping girl, he or she has fallen into that age-old trap of blaming the victim.
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