Connecticut forum discusses strategy in women’s abortion rights movement

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HARTFORD, Conn.—The shocking May 31 murder of Dr. George Tiller, one of a handful of U.S. physicians still performing late-term abortions, provoked a sober discussion of strategy among pro-choice advocates here. A June 25 Socialist Action forum entitled “The Murder of Dr. Tiller and the Fight for Abortion Rights” drew over 50 people, mostly female, to hear Jillian Gilchrest from Connecticut NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League), Gretchen Raffa from Planned Parenthood, recovery-room nurse practitioner Kazia Luce, and Socialist Action spokeswoman Alissa DeRosa. They gathered to remember the contributions of Tiller and to join in producing an assessment of the battle ahead.

The forum opened, as have many Tiller memorial meetings around the country, with the reading of testimony from the Kansas physician’s grateful patients, several of whom mentioned his mantra: “Trust Women.” Tiller was known not only for his courage in continuing to provide second and third-trimester abortions after being wounded in both arms by an antiabortion shooter in years past, but also for his expressions of support for women’s rights. These sentiments, often expressed in unconventional ways, were celebrated by the women in the audience, many of whom donned buttons with the Tiller quote: “Until one understands the heart of a woman, nothing else about abortion makes any sense at all.”

Tiller was a special target of the right because he was an unabashed supporter of feminism. The anti4 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2009 (Above) Anti-abortion protest at the June 6 church funeral of Dr. George Tiller (left) in Witchita, Kan.

abortion movement, he asserted more than once, was not really motivated by concern for unborn children, but by the desire to control women and to control their sexuality.

Jillian Gilchrest, the Executive Director of Connecticut NARAL, lectured directly on the difficulties of speaking as Dr. Tiller spoke in the current political climate. Although NARAL takes credit for electing two pro-choice candidates to the Connecticut legislature last year, she said, since the first election of George Bush, it has become more difficult to speak openly about abortion. In order to overcome the reticence, Connecticut NARAL has moved to organize discussions in the more private small-group settings provided by house parties.

Gretchen Raffa, Community Organizer for Planned Parenthood in the state, began her presentations about strategy with an emotional recounting of her own experience with the antiabortion right. A bomb scare at her clinic once forced patients to recover after surgery outside on the sidewalk.

Raffa’s experience was not unusual. Since 1977, according to NARAL, anti-abortion vigilantes have directed 5800 acts of violence at abortion providers and attempted 143,000 disruptions of clinic activity. And since 1993, eight clinic workers have been murdered. This violence, Raffa asserted, along with aggressive organizing by people who oppose a “woman’s right to control her reproductive destiny,” has put the pro-choice movement on the defensive. We carry on the abortion political discussion “without talking about the woman,” she said. Everything is discussed except “how women feel.”

Rarely mentioned, she stated, is the fact that women need the right to have abortions as part of their regular reproductive health. The discussion should not be about “reducing the number of abortions,” but about listening to women and knowing that “no matter what, there is a need for abortion.”

Luce, a nurse practitioner who works in several clinic recovery rooms, developed this theme further. Any strategy or language of compromise with the right, she argued, is not in the interest of people who support women’s reproductive choice. “Anti-choicers,” she said, “do not want compromise. They want to control our bodies and control our sexuality and that is that.” Positioning ourselves as a group that wants abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare” is not the most effective approach, she suggested. Our main argument instead, Luce contended, should be that abortion is a basic health requirement and right.

The decision by some of the most important pro-choice organizations to publically identify with the reactionary idea that abortions be reduced, as if the procedure were a disreputable choice instead of a normal part of women’s medical lives, is not slowing the drastic decline in pro-choice sentiment among the U.S. population, argued Alissa DeRosa from Socialist Action.

In 1973, at the height of the second wave of U.S. feminism and the unapologetic abortion rights movement that won Roe v. Wade, 75 percent of the population registered support for abortion rights. A recent Gallup poll, on the other hand, found that only 53 percent of those asked said that abortion should be legal “in certain circumstances.” The main reason for the decline, according to De Rosa, is that the anti-abortion forces are regularly mobilizing, presenting their arguments, indicting women, and becoming legitimized as part of the mainstream discourse. “We, on the other hand,” she said, “are nearly invisible.”

It has been five years since the 2004 March for Women’s Lives and that is far too long.” Pro-choice activists, De Rosa continued, need to build a living, breathing movement of mass educational campaigns that reach the grassroots. “Why are we not putting resources into the effort to mobilize students and the vast majority of working women in their own defense in massive demonstrations?”

We cannot, in the absence of mass actions, expect that sophisticated legislative and electoral campaigns will keep abortion accessible, De Rosa asserted. Obama’s speech at Notre Dame, which reassured the anti-abortionist politicians that his administration would not end the right of physicians to refuse to perform abortions and would continue to seek to reduce abortions, is proof of that, she said. n