Constricting women’s rights is the goal of some of these hate groups
Dr. Tillman’s funeral is today. I hope that this extremely brave physician and great man is held up by the community which he served for decades.
The FBI released a statement that they are looking into this murder. It may not have been committed by one man. I applaud the FBI and the Justice department for stepping up to the plate. Melissa Harris-Lacewell has been on my radio show several times before. She has written a excellent piece on this homegrown terrorist movement. After the video is her great post that was printed in The Nation this week.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
I believe the murder of George Tiller was an act of domestic terrorism whose aim was not only to assassinate a single man, but also to frighten a generation of doctors and to shame and terrify women and families who are making difficult choices. While the murderous rage of Tiller’s assassin is not representative of the broader anti-choice movement, I believe that the anti-choice community operates with a totalitarian impulse that generates a culture of terror rather than a culture of life.
Hannah Arendt suggested that totalitarians generate terror in part by cultivating profound loneliness among their targets. Loneliness locks human beings in isolation and hampers discourse, connection, and shared experience. When we believe we are alone and misunderstood we cannot form the bonds necessary to organize and resist. There are few experiences more lonely and isolating than facing an unintended pregnancy or facing the need to terminate a desired pregnancy in order to protect maternal health. The anti-choice discourse labels the women and families who chose abortion “baby killers.” It is a strategy that dehumanizes these women and the doctors who care for them.
The strategy is effective because abortion still carries tremendous social shame in addition to its personal psychological burden. Activists for reproductive rights have a hard time convincing women and families who have terminated to be part of a movement that protects the right to terminate. Many understandably prefer not to be publicly associated with the stigma and potential violence that comes with standing up for choice.
It also works because abortion, like all American healthcare, is profoundly shaped by structures of privilege and access. Wealthy women in urban areas with private insurance who have long term relationships with physicians have more access to privacy and to termination services than do other women. Poor women, teenagers, rural women, women suffering with domestic violence, and uninsured women are much more likely to have to risk some level of public scrutiny of their decision to seek an abortion. They cannot request a D&C from their private provider, they must seek out a clinic. Even during the dark years of back alley abortions when all women seeking abortion were at risk, it was the most vulnerable women who carried the heaviest burden of infection, illness, and death. (more… )
