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Date written: March 10, 1995
Revised May 5, 1997
NOBODY'S BODY BUT MINE:
Clinic Terrorism Part 1
by Beth Grimes
People who call themselves pro-life insist that a fertilized ovum is a baby with an unequivocal right to life. What they claim is that the ovum has a "right" to use a woman's body as a life support system, with or without the consent of that woman.
Does any creature, born or unborn, have an inherent right to use someone else's body? Of course not. Whose body is it anyway? A woman has a right to say "yes" or to say "no" to a pregnancy, a right to say "I will decide. IT'S NOBODY'S BODY BUT MINE!"
Any woman who has ever been unwillingly pregnant knows all too well what it's like. She's worried. She's anxious, fearful. She's desperate. She feels like a trapped animal.
Now that abortion is legal and safe, she can escape the trap of involuntary pregnancy and enforced child-bearing. She can escape, that is,if, she has medical insurance or medicaid funding;if she is over 18 or there are no parental consent laws on the books in her State; if she can get to a clinic that's close enough (as of 1990 83% of the counties in the United States did not have an abortion provider);if there are no State-imposed "waiting periods" or other restrictions which would involve so much time and travel and expense that she may find it impossible to manage them.
These barriers to a woman's access to abortion are the reality for many who need these services. But the most formidable barrier of all, the barrier that may very well send American women back to the pre-Roe v. Wade days of back-alley abortion with all its danger is plain and simple anti-choice, woman-hating terrorism
.
The August 1993 issue of the Free Press, carried a column entitled Making the Connections Between Racist Terror and Abortion Rights. The information in it came from Turning the Tide, a publication of People Against Racist Terror. The column made the connections between John Burt of Rescue America and the Ku Klux Klan.
To review that information, Burt had been a "grand dragon" of the KKK. He claimed that he had been "born again" and was no longer a racist. (Yeah, right.) His new self-selected title was that of "Lay Preacher". The mainstream anti-choice movement willingly accepted Burt's new "kinder and gentler" self-designation and welcomed him into its ranks. They apparently had no trouble ignoring his racist past and his violent and aggressive actions as regional director of Rescue Americathe group which had led the anti-choice protests at the clinic where Dr. David Gunn was killed.
The December, 1994, issue of Turning the Tide, brings new information about anti-abortion terror. According to Tom Burghardt of Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR), the most dangerous and violent of the direct-action anti-choice groups in the country is Missionaries to the Preborn. What makes MTPdifferent from other "rescue" organizations such as Operation Rescue or Lambs of Christ is the full-time commitment of MTP
.
MTP cadres focus their attention on a particular city -- sometimes on a specific clinic within the city -- and stay there for an extended time, showing up at a targeted clinic every day it's open. They use all means available, including violence, in order to create a maximum number of problems for health care providers and to prevent women's access to reproductive services.
The chilling truth is that they have been very successful in accomplishing their goals. Since its inception in 1990 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, four of Milwaukee's nine women's clinics have closed because of MTP's relentless attacks.
According to BACORR, MTP members are probably the authors of portions of the notorious "Army of God" manual. Information received from People for Choice in Modesto, who had gotten a copy of the manual, reveals that the stated aim of the AOG is to "drive the abortion industry underground.." In response to a question,"by what method?" an AOGspokesman replied, "Explosives, predominately" and added, ".first by destroying the structures where the...crimes are being committed. Second, by disarming the persons perpetrating the crimes by removing their hands, or at least their thumbs below the second digit."
Certainly, terrorism is not too strong a word for what these people advocate.
Missionaries to the Preborn have their national office in southern California. Clinic staff and defenders in the State are advised to watch out for these terrorists and to insist on help from law enforcement agencies.
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