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.

Read more »

Fierce, Joyous, Inspiring...A Movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy is Launched!



On Saturday, March 10th a new energy, a new defiance, and a new commitment to fight for the full liberation of women, were felt on the streets of New York City.   Beginning at noon in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral, proceeding on a tour of many sites which concentrate the oppression of women, and concluding in front of a strip club and porn store near Times Square; people of all ages, many nationalities, and all genders condemned the enslavement and degradation of women.

In Times Square

As people gathered in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral, beneath its towering spires and enormous brass doors designed to make humans feel small and humble, their faces were filled with both exuberance, but also hesitation. It is not typical to confront churches. In fact, it’s not typical these days to directly confront woman-haters of any kind. It is all too typical for people to complain in hushed voices or to send money and sign petitions to politicians in the hopes that maybe someone else will do something. So, it is understandable that this felt new to many people.

As people picked up signs and decked themselves out in stickers, I was reminded of something told to me by a self-defense instructor years ago. She made a point of taking the time to insist that all her female students learn to yell forcefully. She did this because women are so deeply socialized to be polite, demure, docile, quiet and agreeable that they have to learn to trust their anger when they are under attack.

"I Demand my Reproductive Rights!!
 I'm a Human Being!!"

I shared this story with the crowd and added, “Today, women around the world are under attack and we ought to be angry about that. We ought to be loud about that. We ought not to be the ones telling our stories in whispers and through tears while woman haters scream 'slut' at the tops of their lungs. Today, we are going to get in touch with our anger. We are going to yell at the tops of our lungs. If it feels funny at first, that's okay, keep at it. After a while it will stop feeling funny and will start to feel really fucking good. And then, it will be contagious. That is the point of today. We are taking it upon ourselves to defeat the war on women. We are changing ourselves in the process. And we are launching a new movement that wakes up and draws in others wave after wave until we win.”  Read more...

Read more »

"Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world..."

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

#5

"Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world. And in addition to all the other outrages which I have referred to, in terms of children throughout the slums and shantytowns of the Third World, in addition to all the horrors that will be heaped on them—the actual living in garbage and human waste in the hundreds of millions as their fate, laid out before them, yes, even before they are born—there is, on top of this, for those children who are born female, the horror of everything that this will bring simply because they are female in a world of male domination. And this is true not only in the Third World. In "modern" countries like the U.S. as well, the statistics barely capture it: the millions who will be raped; the millions more who will be routinely demeaned, deceived, degraded, and all too often brutalized by those who are supposed to be their most intimate lovers; the way in which so many women will be shamed, hounded and harassed if they seek to exercise reproductive rights through abortion, or even birth control; the many who will be forced into prostitution and pornography; and all those who—if they do not have that particular fate, and even if they achieve some success in this "new world" where supposedly there are no barriers for women—will be surrounded on every side, and insulted at every moment, by a society and a culture which degrades women, on the streets, in the schools and workplaces, in the home, on a daily basis and in countless ways."

Bob Avakian 

Chairman of the

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

BAsics 1:10

January 2012: Stand Up for Abortion and Birth Control!

Join us in Washington DC

in front of the Supreme Court
on January 23rd

(to counter the "March for Life")

starting at 11am

IT IS TIME!
January 22 and 23, on the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Decision which legalized abortion, come to DC to:

Stand up for Abortion and Birth Control

39 years after women won the right to abortion, this fundamental right is hanging by a thread.

• Nearly 90% of U.S. counties have no abortion provider.
• 2011 saw the greatest number of restrictions passed at the state level – parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, gestational bans, etc. – restricting this access even further.
• Doctors who provide abortions are hunted, terrorized and killed.
• And the stigma and shame cast on women who get abortions is greater than ever.

But that is not all.

Now, even birth control is under siege. Pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions. “Personhood” amendments seek to criminalize miscarriages and ban all contraception. And President Obama openly upheld Kathleen Sebelius's unprecedented decision to overrule the FDA and block the over-the-counter distribution of Plan B (emergency contraception).

The truth of the statement from the World Can't Wait is being born out with horrific and escalating consequences: “There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into 'leaders' who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.”

“But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn—or be forced—to accept. There is no escaping it: [this] whole disastrous course... must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it.”

Millions upon millions do not want to see women forced to bear children against their will. We must rely on ourselves.

If 2011 marked an unprecedented escalation in the assault on women's lives, 2012 must mark the launch of unprecedented resistance!

On January 22 and 23, as tens of thousands pour into DC in their so-called “March for Life” to further shame and enslave women, join us in standing up to demand:

ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY!


Fetuses are not babies.
Abortion is not murder.
Women are not incubators.

A woman who cannot decide for herself when and whether to have a child is not free. Forced motherhood is female enslavement. And when women – half of humanity – are not free, then no one is free.

contact: info@worldcantwait.org

Should a Woman Feel Sad About Her Abortion? Fuck No!

There is absolutely nothing wrong, tragic, unfortunate, or sad about a woman choosing to get an abortion. Nothing.

Why?

Because being forced to have a child against your will is enslavement. Period.

Why else?

Because fetuses are NOT babies. Fetuses have the potential to become babies, but until they are born they have no independent social or biological existence. They are a subordinate part of a woman's body. Any state, religious, or family intervention which forces – or even pressures – a woman into subordinating her life, dreams and health to incubating that fetus against her will is completely unjust and illegitimate. It is immoral and it is enslaving.

But what about her responsibility? If she didn't want a baby, shouldn't she have thought of that before she “opened her legs”?

This argument is wrong on at least four levels. First, this suggests that it is wrong for women to have sex and that they must be punished for doing so (while applying a totally different standard to men). Second, this approach treats children – who should be wanted and well cared for – like nothing more than a punishment to women. Third, this ignores the fact that getting an abortion when one is not ready or eager to have a child is taking responsibility. Finally, this ignores the fact that it is the very Christian fascists who are criminalizing abortion who are responsible for denying increasing numbers of women access to birth control and sex education (which makes it enormously harder for them to protect themselves from pregnancy during sex in the first place).

But what about when a woman is raped? Or if she really wanted to have a baby but there is something wrong with the fetus or a danger to her own life? Doesn't that make the abortion sad?

Again, fuck no!

If a woman is impregnated because of being raped, it is the rape that is the horrific crime – the abortion which prevents her from being forced to bear the child of her rapist is positive and liberating.

If a woman really wants a child but something goes wrong with the pregnancy, it is the medical problems that are the tragedy – the abortion that eliminates those dangers is positive and liberating.

*************************

Women are human beings, not incubators. A woman who cannot decide for herself when and whether she will have a child has no more freedom than a slave. Abortion is not something to apologize for, it is something to celebrate and defend. 1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her life, she is not wrong for doing so. It is time to declare loudly and boldly:

ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY!!!

Listen to the podcast on Atheist Talk radio Now!

Why do all the world's major religions have patriarchy and the enslavement of women at their core? 

And why everyone who cares about equality and liberation for women should fight against the shackles of religion:

Religion, Patriarchy, and Sexual Repression

Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists.

ATHEIST TALK RADIO

Abortion, Let's NOT Leave Religion Out of It!

Over and over and over again people tell me to leave religion out of the debate over abortion. "Many Christians believe in the right to abortion, at least in cases of rape or incest," I am often told, "So, why alienate them by bringing up religion?"

It is true that a huge number of people who identify as Christian also support the right of women to abortion. It is also true that an even greater number of Christians will get an abortion in a desperate situation even if they believe it is "wrong." However, we do ourselves NO FAVORS by leaving religion out of the debate over abortion.

The reason for this is that the movement in this country to restrict, criminalize, and shame women out of their right to abortion is entirely driven by religion. The Christian Bible in particular.

Here is how it works: According to the Bible, Eve (woman!) caused the fall of man when she tempted Adam into eating the forbidden fruit, gettiing them kicked out of the "Garden of Eden." This story is at the core of Christianity; there would be no need for Jesus to allegedly have died on the cross except to make up for this "original sin." But, that is not all. The human beings who wrote the Bible, their thinking shaped by the patriarchal society they lived in, weren't content with merely one myth that blamed everything on women.

In 1 Timothy 2:11-15, Paul insists: “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”

It is this biblical mandate that has animated the anti-abortion movement from its inception and which drives it today. This is why there is not a single anti-abortion organization that is fighting for birth control. Their motivation has NEVER been about "protecting fetal life." It has always been about insisting that women stay in their place; that wives "submit to their husband as their husband to the lord" (Ephesians 5:22, a commandment Michelle Bachman has upheld publically!) and make babies.

Of course, there are many people who oppose abortion who don't believe in this scripture. But that doesn't change the nature of the movement they are supporting or the retrograde, theocratic horror show it is fighting to impose on women. Every day is punctuated with new examples – Rick Santorum's opposition to abortion even in instances of rape, the arrest of women who have miscarriages, the assassination of the doctors who provide abortions, etc. -- demonstrating where the logic of restricting abortion is leading.

Confronting people with the theocratic core of the movement to end abortion is necessary to begin to win people away from the movement they are lending their support to. Either you should uphold that Biblical scripture and the world it would impose, or you should fight against it, including through defending women's right to abortion.

Aside from openly genocidal rationals (for example, the Nazis criminalized abortions for "Aryan" women), this Biblical mandate (or similar patriarchal mandates of other religions) is the only reason there is to oppose abortion. (Worth noting: there has been significant overlap between the genocidal and religious opposition to abortion, for example the Christian Ku Klux Klan was among the first to march against abortion in this country and there remain many Christian fundamentalists who invoke the spector of “auto-genocide” among white women.)

Once scriptural commandments and genocide are stripped away, there is no reason left to oppose abortion. Scientifically, fetuses are NOT children. Therefore there is absolutely no reason for anyone to have any moral qualm about a woman choosing to terminate a fetus. A fetus is a subordinate part of a woman's body. It has the potential to become human, but it is doesn't become a human until it is born and becomes an independent social and biologial being. That is why we mark our time as living human beings from the day of our birth.

Any society that does not wish to enslave women to their biological ability to give birth, that doesn't want to reduce women to human incubators, needs to uphold and defend and destigmatize women's right to abortion. If women cannot decide for themselves when and whether to have a child, they cannot be free. If women are not free, then no one is truly free.

Sure, bringing up religion may offend some people who support the right to abortion (or, who at least oppose criminalizing all abortions for all women). But, the truth is there has been a pro-choice majority throughout the whole period where abortion rights have been eroded, doctors have been killed, and women have been shamed. Any attempt to keep religion out of the debate over abortion, in order to hold together an alliance has passively allowed abortion to become increasingly more difficult, dangerous and stigmatized to access over the past two decades, is a losing strategy.

It's time to set different terms and to fight for a different dynamic.

Christians, like everyone else, need to be confronted with the horror of taking the Bible literally. They should be forced to decide where they stand in relation to this and where it leads, not in relation to some romanticized notions of fetuses as just smaller versions of infants (which is both untrue, and has nothing to do with the true motiviations of the movement against abortion). They should also be confronted with the science of reproduction. They should be challenged – and given the opportunity – to reject this scripture. If they do, whether they choose to continue to believe in Christianity (or another religion) in some non-literal way or whether they forsake religion altogether, they have a responsibility – like all the rest of us – to speak out against the horror of the Bible being enforced on society, including as it pertains to denying women the right to abortion and birth control.

For those Christians who still cling to their literal scripture, even as it is revealed for the Dark Ages nightmare it is, they should have to own up to what they are really promoting. Let's make them defend 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and all the other crimes mandated by their Bible (stoning non-virgin brides, killing disobedient children, killing homosexuals, blaming people's “sin” for falling ill, and more!). The more they are forced to own up to what they actually are fighting for, the more clarity others will have about who they want to stand with. Even if it ruffles some feathers at first, wouldn't this only work to the advantage of those who believe women are full human beings, deserving of the right to decide for themselves when – and whether – they will bring a child into the world?