Three Years Later: Remembering George Tiller — Recommitting to the Fight for Women’s Lives

Revolution #271, June 10, 2012

by Sunsara Taylor

On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller was assassinated as he acted as an usher in his Wichita, Kansas church on a Sunday morning. Dr. George Tiller was a hero. Dr. Tiller’s commitment to women went far beyond merely providing abortions to women, as essential as that is. Dr. Tiller withstood years and years of targeted harassment, threats, and terror directed at him and his family. When his clinic was firebombed, he posted a sign outside during its reconstruction which read, “Hell No, We Won’t Go!” When he was shot in both arms during a previous assassination attempt, he went immediately back to work.

Not only did he provide abortions, he provided late-term abortions. These types of abortions make up only 2% of all abortions but are some of the most essential; women who seek them tend to be those who discover a life-threatening problem late in the pregnancy or women who were unable to get abortions earlier due to being extremely young and/or extremely poor and/or in places with extreme restrictions to abortion access. Women traveled from around the world seeking out his services.

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Conservative, my ass, these people are Nazis

Revolutionary Communism and the Liberation of Women -- WE NEED TOTAL REVOLUTION!    

#6

"As I have said a number of times: These reactionaries should not even be allowed to use 'conservative' to describe themselves. We should say, 'Conservative, my ass, these people are Nazis.'"

Bob Avakian 

Chairman of the

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

BAsics 1:26

Out of Denial and Into the Streets – International Women's Day 2012

Women the world-over are facing a growing assault on their lives, their rights, and even their recognition as full human beings.


In the U.S., Catholic Bishops have turned women's basic right to birth control into a national controversy. At least twenty percent of U.S. female soldiers are sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. Every moment we are bombarded by images of women's bodies, half naked and half starved. And strip clubs, which serve up the subordination of women to men in the living flesh, have become so mainstream that annually men spend an estimated $16 billion dollars on them (as compared to the $4 billion they spend on baseball).


In the Congo, tens of thousands of women have been so brutally raped they can no longer hold their bladders or bowels. From Moldova to Thailand and beyond, millions of girls and women are sold as sex slaves. Throughout the world, fueled by the massive dislocations caused by imperialist development as well as imperialist wars, Islamic fundamentalism is rising with its “honor” killings, forced veiling, and hatred of women. And from China to Honduras to Silicon Valley, the near-slave labor – and sometimes outright slave-labor – of women and girls has disproportionately fueled the growth in cheap manufacturing.


These are not “just a bunch of different bad things happening to women."  These are but a few of the many fronts in an all-out war on women. While the forms this takes may appear different – or even unrelated – a common rope is tightening around nearly every dimension of the public, social, political, and intimate lives of women.

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Challenging People to Think: Activism for Atheism

[Originally published in On The Issues Magazine - fall issue on activism]

by Sunsara Taylor

People generally think of activism as something you do. But activism aimed at changing how people think is equally important. There is, after all, a profound connection between what people think, as well as how people think, and what they are willing – or not willing – to do.


In particular, the belief in god and the specific content of the world's major religions constitute huge shackles on people's minds and, as a result, on their behavior. Every major religion is highly oppressive, especially toward women. Religion has led people to take actions that are harmful to humanity; religious faith interferes with rational thought, and, religion frequently stands in the way of people's willingness to throw themselves into the struggle for liberation in the actually existing material world.

This, then, is the story of how, in the course of my revolutionary struggles – I am a communist revolutionary -- I came to activism on behalf of atheism.

Seeing Holes in the Cloth

I didn't come from an atheist background. Actually, I grew up a deeply believing Christian. As a little girl, I even read my Bible at night to my stuffed animals (so concerned was I for their eternal souls).
Religion interferes with rational thought

My Christian convictions initially dampened my own activism. I can remember the feeling of profound disorientation that arose when I first defended an abortion clinic in North Dakota back in 1995. I had longed to stand up in support of abortion doctors since the assassination of Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola in 1993. But at my first clinic event, I was confronted by Father Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, on the other side of the barricades. I didn't know of all the ways he had whipped up an environment that led to doctors being killed; all I saw was his white collar, a symbol, which, to me, conveyed absolute moral authority. His presence on the other side and his direct challenge to me -- including through the use of the scripture -- shook me deeply.

Afterward, I struggled for months to sort this out. This process eventually led me to cast off belief in Christianity and in god altogether. I found no material evidence for the existence of god, although most people are indoctrinated with and surrounded by religious belief. Believers say that they accept the idea of god on faith, but there is tremendous historical evidence that every myth about god is man-made.

I became more outspoken about atheism as I saw how believing in things that one doesn't understand is not harmless: it interferes with rational thought, keeps people ignorant and causes real suffering.

For example, while organizing resistance to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years, I frequently encountered Christian fundamentalists who were convinced that George W. Bush had been chosen as president by god. The fact that Bush had lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was irrelevant to these fundamentalists because, they insisted, he was acting on higher truths than those of mere men.

People's religious beliefs also keep them from taking effective political action, even in the face of screaming outrages. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I made several trips to New Orleans. Residents of the Ninth Ward shared stories with me of being trapped in the floodwaters, discovering deceased loved ones upon return and wondering what had become of their still-missing neighbors. However, more than a few of these residents disregarded my suggestions of resistance against the government's criminal response because, they insisted, the real cause of the hurricane was their own sinfulness.

Of course, there are many people whose religious beliefs motivate them to struggle against injustice. I have worked with and learned from many of them over the years. I certainly don't think belief in god should be a dividing line in the fight for a better world.

At the same time, the content of the major world religions -- Christianity no less than any other -- is horrifically oppressive. The Bible was written by human beings who lived in patriarchal, slave-owning, agrarian societies before the development of science. Consequently, the Bible is saturated with the ignorance and prejudices of their times. For example, the Bible insists that women obey their husbands as the lord (Ephesians 5:22); that homosexuals be executed (Leviticus 20:13); that disobedient children be stoned to death (Matthew 15:4), and that slaves obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5). Upholding these Bible myths is upholding enslavement and oppression, and is very harmful to real people in the world today.

Beyond the harmful content, taking things on faith stands in the way of seeking to understand the real world causes for why things happen and the real world possibilities for radical change.

Exposing People to A Different Way

My activism for atheism involves explaining what atheism is -- many people around the country have never been exposed to atheist thinking at all. I engage in panels and debates at university campuses, in community forums or on the radio. In 2009, I appeared on a Black talk radio station in Atlanta. Some callers debated me fiercely over scripture, others felt they had the space to announce their own atheism for the first time, but almost everyone thanked the host for bringing them a perspective they'd never heard on Black radio before. At times, my advocacy on atheism taken me right into the thick of religious zealots. In 2006, I attended a stadium rally of tens of thousands of Christian youth who were preached to by Navy SEALs, Franklin Graham and George W. Bush himself (via a letter). I went with a group of revolutionaries to learn more, to write about it and to directly challenge the youth to get out. Much to my surprise, in the middle of the event, my face was projected onto the huge JumboTron screen that showed a television debate I'd done with the group's leader, Ron Luce. Suddenly, my anonymity disappeared and I felt the "battle cry" crowd look at me as the personification of the devil. Still, just in the last month -- all these years later -- I received a copy of a letter from someone who met us at that rally, had since broken with fundamentalism and now wanted to do something better in life.

In championing atheism, I am not merely giving people new information (as important as that is). I am challenging people to think with a different method. I prod them not to follow someone just because of the person's claimed religious authority and not to accept things on faith. Instead, I want people to evaluate things based on evidence, to ask questions (including about what I am saying), to seek answers in the material world and to put their energies to transforming this world. "Oppressed people who are unable or unwilling to confront reality as it actually is, are condemned to remain enslaved and oppressed," wrote Bob Avakian, author of Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World. I seek not merely to "balance" my commitment to "unchaining the mind" with my commitment to "radically changing the world," but to working for the best possible dynamism and mutual reinforcement between those two interrelated missions.

I came to the fight for atheism as part of my larger commitment to the liberation of humanity through communist revolution. My approach of engaging people around atheism differs from that of other activists who are building political resistance but insist that any debate over religion just "gets in the way." It also differs from those who are single-minded about atheism and look down on those with religious faith as if they are stupid or have no insights.

Fighting the attacks on women driven by Christian fundamentalism

Taking up the fight for atheism has especially strengthened my ability to fight for the liberation of women. When I stand in defense of abortion clinics, whether in Mississippi or Colorado or elsewhere, I see pro-choice people, particularly young women, go through the same kind of disorientation that I felt when I first heard "my" bible used against me. I am able to help them see that they are up against human authorities -- both the patriarchal humans who wrote the Bible and the patriarchal humans who are wielding it to terrorize doctors and shame women -- not up against the "word of god." Not everyone casts off her belief in religion, but a seed is planted, and the young women feel a weight lifted to have this question addressed head on.

On the flip side, I struggle for the atheist community to put more energy into fighting the attacks on women driven by Christian fundamentalism. After giving a talk on this subject at an international atheist conference, women thanked me and shared their stories of abortion. One young woman burst into tears as she explained that even though she grew up pro-choice and been active in the atheist movements, she'd never heard anyone say that abortion was okay. She had begun to feel like there must be something wrong with her for never having felt remorse about her abortion.

People who are atheists can do more to open people's minds. For one thing, they can come "out" about it. Many people have never met an atheist and are denied the opportunity to consider it for themselves.

Atheists can challenge people to confront the passages in the Bible or other religious texts that command injustices. Ask, "Would the world be better, or worse, if those commandments were followed?" It is not an insult to challenge people to cast off beliefs that are not founded in reality; it is an insult to think that anyone is incapable of coming to understand the material world without the lens of religion.

My Thoughts on the Secular Student Alliance Conference

Last weekend I got to spend a couple days at the http://www.secularstudents.org/ conference. Anyone who has checked out the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic (Draft Proposal) from the Revolutionary Communist Party – with its emphasis on really promoting science, intellectual ferment, atheism, and the unfettered search for the truth (as part of an overall economic and social system that is meeting people's most basic needs and overcoming past oppression and inequalities) – should get pretty readily why communists would value a group of critically-thinking, religion-bucking, science-promoting students like this. Add to that the fact that Christian fascism is a real and growing force in this society right now and it seemed especially important to be in the midst of this secular gathering.

Challenging the authority of religion, exposing the non-existence of god(s), creating a community where atheists are not shamed or isolated or bullied, taking on the encroachment of religion into the state, defending and fighting for the scientific understanding of evolution, thinking critically and enabling others to learn how to do the same... these are but a few of the things that the SSA is involved in that are both significant in their own right and have significant implications for the success of any revolution worth making.

One of the main things I did at the conference was promote Bob Avakian's new book, Basics. Not surprisingly, there were many misconceptions about communism but also much concern about the state of the world, the environment, and whether there could be a better future. Shout out to everyone who got a copy. We do not have to accept a world in which the vast majority of humanity is locked in ignorance and squalor! But whether or not we get out of this world depends in no small part in whether or not people get into BAsics; You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics!” To lift just one quote from BA that is particularly relevant to the question of religion:

“The notion of a god, or gods, was created by humanity, in its infancy, out of ignorance. This has been perpetuated by the ruling classes, for thousands of years since then, to serve their interests in exploiting and dominating the majority of people and keeping them enslaved to ignorance and irrationality.

“Bringing about a new, and far better, world and future for humanity means overthrowing such exploiting classes and breaking free of and leaving behind forever such enslaving ignorance and irrationality.”

WHO ATTENDED?

The students who turned out were from all across the country, but it was particularly interesting how many of them came from more isolated areas – small towns and campuses in Kansas or Ohio or Alabama or Minnesota. They are sticking their necks out to publicly disclaim belief in god. Many of the students told stories of tremendous bigotry they have encountered not only from other students but also teachers and administrators. Some are estranged from their families.

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A Waitress's Abortion Story

Last night, after a beautiful march in support of abortion rights, a group of close to twenty of us went out for food and drink. About half way through our evening, our waitress asked us why there were so many of us together and what the occasion was. In response to our answer, that we were in town to defend abortion rights and Doctor Carhart, she immediately opened up about her own abortion story.

First, our waitress thanked us immensely for being in town. She explained that her mother had worked at abortion clinics and, despite the two crosses that hung around her neck, she was extremely strong in favor of abortion rights. Then, she explained her own experience. She had been on Depo-Provera for over a year and correspondingly hadn't gotten her period in that entire period. Anyway, she got pregnant before her periods had resumed. Because of the hormonal disruptions that were caused by, and still mellowing out in the wake of, taking Depo, her pregnancy felt different to her than her first (she also has an eight year old son). Additionally, due to these same hormonal fluctuations, when she finally tested herself at home for pregnancy, at two different times the test came back negative.

When she finally sought out a doctor to understand what was going on with her body and discovered that she was, indeed pregnant, she was more than four months along. The clinic that she visited for this information would not perform an abortion at this point in a pregnancy and so she sought out searching for a clinic that would. This search led her to Dr. Carhart and his Germantown clinic.

This is when she got very passionate in her story. She described being followed and harassed by some freakish anti-abortion lunatic as she searched around the shopping center where Carhart's clinic is located. Just when she thought she had ducked out of sight and shook this crazy fanatic, the woman jumped from behind a corner and started haranguing her again. The anti-abortion woman repeated many of the lies we have heard so frequently out here at the clinic in the last couple of days. That Dr. Carhart allegedly doesn't practice compassionate, scientific, and safe medicine. That abortion is murder. That this woman was doing something tragic and sinful by seeking an abortion.

Our waitress was, righteously, furious! She spoke bitterness about this as other tables went unattended. A torrent of pent up anger and defiance. Plus, she was extremely articulate about it. Many women would swallow that kind of shaming and try not to revisit it. Even this woman probably wouldn't have spoken it unless she knew that she was among others who not only supported abortion as a right, but also had sacrificed to step out and take this struggle on frontally.

Think how many millions of women there are in this country who are suppressing this kind of fury. Suppressing their defiance. Not knowing that there are others who would support them, or others who would be moved by them speaking out. Think how many others, having never heard this kind of defiance at all, are instead choking on a shame they shouldn't be feeling. Guilt that has been hurled at them at the doors of abortion clinics, in the churches on Sundays, by the politicians cutting deals about healthcare and the budget over the bodies of women and their right to abortion and birth control.

Think of how much could change – how many women and men could be mobilized if there were always the kind of visible and uncompromising presence that we have been here in Germantown the last couple of days already. Think how many would begin to question and to join in challenging the subjugation they've been swallowing and suffocating under for no legitimate or morally defensible reason.

In just a few days, with just a few dozen women traveling from across the country, we have seen a taste of this. In just one dinner at a random restaurant having greasy food and a couple of beers we scratched the surface of the potential that exists.

Now is the time for everyone to begin talking about their abortion stories unapologetically. Bring it out of the dark and out of the closet. Defy the shame and the stigma. Lets celebrate and defend the lives and the value of the female human beings who choose abortion to continue their lives in the ways they are ready and want to live them. Lets celebrate and defend the doctors and staff who risk everything to make that possible. Lets create a situation where those who stalk women, who kill doctors, who legislate the lives of women into smaller and smaller corners and greater and greater shame feel that they have to hang their heads and attempt to defend their hateful lunacy.

Thanks to those who have turned out in Germantown! Wake up call to all those across the country! This is the time to step to the front lines.

Abortion On the Line – A Time for Rage, Not for Lobbying!

In May of this year, Dr. George Tiller, one of the most courageous abortion doctors in the country, was assassinated. Two weeks ago, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a version of health care reform that includes an amendment, Stupak-Pitts, that would deprive women of health care that covers abortion if they receive any form of government stipend or tax break. While a similar amendment was narrowly defeated in the Senate, the final health care bill is yet to be determined.

Taken together, these events represent an escalation in the legal and extra-legal assault on women's right to abortion beyond anything under the Bush Regime.

Yet, precisely at this moment when an outpouring of rage and defiance is most needed, the silence and capitulation of the pro-choice “movement” is almost as stunning as it is deadly.

This movement has channeled people into the dead-end of relying practically on the Democratic Party and ceding the moral high ground and political initiative to Christian fascists.

In response to the Stupak amendment, the nation's most recognized pro-choice organizations – Naral, Planned Parenthood, NOW, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and others – formed a coalition and called for a “Day of Action” in DC. But, for reasons they didn't explain, they canceled their outdoor rally at the last minute and focused entirely on lobbying. The Democrats all already know that Stupak will cause women to suffer and die. What they – along with everyone else – need to know is that the pro-choice majority is no longer satisfied to just come begging for our rights.

The name of their coalition, “The Coalition to Pass Health Care Reform and Stop Stupak,” is itself quite revealing. Note that their lead slogan is to “Pass Health Care Reform.” Only secondarily do they mention “Stop[ping] Stupak.” And nowhere do they demand a repeal of the woman-killing Hyde amendment which banned federal funds for abortion and is the precedent that Bart Stupak is claiming. All this is keeping precisely within the logic of the Democratic Party and almost guarantees capitulation. Even Louise M. Slaughter, the co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, voted for Stupak-Pitts in the name of passing health care reform!

Unfortunately, this defensive and losing dynamic is not new.

In 2006, the governor of South Dakota signed a complete ban on abortions. The pro-choice coalition that formed (which included Naral and Planned Parenthood) did not expose this as the viciously anti-woman measure that it was nor did they seize the moral high ground against it. Instead, they ran television ads which argued merely that the ban “went too far” by failing to make any exception for rape, incest and the life of the woman. These ads also called for people to "honor and protect human life, reduce the number of abortions.”

Stop and think about that. If you have actually argue that women who are raped or whose lives are in danger ought to have access to abortion, you are arguing with people whose view of women is nothing more than sex objects or breeders. Even worse, you are arguing on their terms! And, the idea that pro-choice people who donated to stop this ban ended up underwriting ads against abortion and for the idea that fetuses are “human life” to be “honored and protected,” is truly sick!!

Finally, the pro-choice movement not only has distanced itself from abortion, it has distanced itself from the doctors who provide abortions – even when they have been under deadly assault. Harkening back to Dr. Tiller, it is notable that despite the outpouring of nearly a thousand supporters from around the country to his funeral, the leaders of Naral, NOW, and the Feminist Majority didn't even bother to show up.

This type of “leadership” is worse than nothing at all.

The problem is not that there is a lack of pro-choice people who would flood into the streets to protest. The last time they were called on to do so (in 2004) more than half a million descended on DC. Nor is the problem mainly, as some now argue, that a whole generation has grown up without the harrowing memories of botched illegal abortions. While these kinds of visceral memories certainly can lend urgency and passion to pro-choice people, the real problem is that for decades the energies of the pro-choice majority have been consistently squandered, suffocated and channeled into dead-ends by pro-choice “leaders” who long ago slavishly subordinated themselves to the Democratic Party.

The real problem is that, because of this, two generations have grown into a world where it is far more common to hear a passionate defense of the so-called “rights” and “dignity” of frozen embryos than it is to hear an unapologetic defense of the right and dignity of women being able to decide for themselves when and whether to have children.

The real problem is that for decades the lunatic Christian fascists have consistently mobilized while the pro-choice “movement” has remained largely passive and straitjacketed in the Democratic Party's dynamic of capitulation.

The fact is, as much as some Democrats may disagree with banning abortion, they are a ruling class party. Their allegiance to maintaining the stability of U.S. capitalism-imperialism is much greater than any principles they have on behalf of women or any other oppressed group they seek to appeal to for votes. They desperately want to avoid the fall out from actually mobilizing the forces necessary to go up against and defeat the Christian fascist movement more than they want to avoid fascism itself. As for the Christian fascists, they actually make up a very important core of the ruling class and are quite eager to mobilize their social base into a fascist frenzy. This dynamic, if left on the terms of the ruling class, will only get worse.

Barack Obama and the Democrats are wrong when they say we can or should seek “common ground” on abortion.

What “common ground” can there be with a movement whose aim is to enslave women to our reproduction and force us to bear children against our will? What “common ground” can there be with a movement that will stop at nothing – not terror and assassinations or faulty science and woman-killing legislation – to deprive women of the ability to be more than breeders? As bad as a ban on abortion would be, it would not stop there. There is not a single “pro-life” organization that upholds birth control. The very Catholic Bishops who pushed Stupak-Pitts consider birth control “intrinsically evil.” Groups like Human Life International praise the anti-abortion laws in El Salvador, where miscarriages are investigated by the government and women are thrown in jail if they get an abortion.

The right to abortion is central to women's role in society and there is nothing “tragic” about it. Fetuses are not babies and abortion is not murder. Without being able to decide for themselves, free of coercion, shame or danger, when and whether they will have children, women have no more freedom than slaves. When half of humanity is oppressed, all of society suffers.

It is long past time a different dynamic be set. It is time for the pro-choice majority to unchain themselves from the craven political calculations and capitulation of the Democratic Party. It is time to unshackle our energies from the pro-choice “leadership” that has tied itself to that Party. It is time to go back into the streets. It is time for the millions of women who have had abortions to come out and speak openly and defiantly about this, to lift the shame and to challenge the stigma. It is time for doctors who provide abortions to be cherished and protected. Not only must Stupak-Pitts be defeated, abortion and birth control must be expanded and celebrated. Abortion must be available on demand and without apology. Women are human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every sphere of society together with men, we must not be enslaved to our reproduction.