This #RoevWade anniversary, celebrate the activists who are working within their communities to ensure no one is forced to continue pregnancies. I'd like to add a little sparkle and shine to those who don't get recognized often enough for doing this work:
Catholic women working within their churches, schools, and universities! Catholic women use birth control at the same rates as everyone else. Speaking out under an all-male hierarchy is brave, necessary work. Thank you to @Catholic4Choice@HyasForChoice and others. <3 you.
@Catholic4Choice@HyasForChoice Nuns who have been bullied by the Vatican for 'not being anti-abortion enough' and who continue to focus on social justice concerns like increasing access to healthcare and helping poor people anyway, thank you very much.
@Catholic4Choice@HyasForChoice People who are having hard conversations with their non-progressive-type family and friends about why abortion restrictions hurt people, and how they have hurt them.
@Catholic4Choice@HyasForChoice Abortion providers -- not just doctors (awesome folks, thank you!) -- but nurses, administrative assistants, operations experts, patient advocates and others who do the work on the frontlines and face threats to their bodies and lives for doing it.
@Catholic4Choice@HyasForChoice Clinic escorts who put patient comfort and safety first, helping to shield them from anti-abortion threats and insults from the sidewalk. These people stand outside rain, sleet, or shine, and get up EARLY on the weekends to affirm the right to abortion when people need it most.
@Catholic4Choice@HyasForChoice Security professionals who work to ensure abortion providers, facilities, and patients are safe, a real challenge since the "pro-life movement" has made abundantly clear that killing all of us is activism to be tolerated or, depending on who is talking, celebrated.
@Catholic4Choice@HyasForChoice U.S.-based colleagues who are working to ensure that our internal American anti-abortion/white supremacist movement doesn't destroy access to abortion and family planning overseas. Great orgs doing this work: @genderhealth and @GlobalJusticeC
Abortion rights folks had been trying to warn you for so long. Because society failed to take the anti-abortion movement (a totalitarian movement) seriously, now it's everyone's problem. Let's settle in for a chat about anti-abortion fake clinics, also now everyone's problem. 🧵
Anti-abortion fake clinics exist to mislead and shame people seeking abortion care. They also form the backbone of the anti-abortion movement's power. Don't be fooled into thinking these are grassrootsy efforts. They are not. (More on that later.)
Anti-abortion fake clinics are often called crisis pregnancy centers, or pregnancy resource centers. Some also call them fake women's health centers or anti-abortion centers. They often choose deceptive names like "A Woman's Choice" to make themselves seem like abortion providers
The struggle for abortion rights and for racial justice are deeply interconnected. I would like more white people who are interested in abortion rights to deepen their racial justice analysis for the abortion issue specifically.
Controlling gender and sexuality + reproductive oppression operate in service of white supremacy by working to increase the supply of white babies. It is also intentional that the people most hurt by this "pro-life" approach are people of color, especially Black women.
In fact, the modern anti-abortion movement as we know it exists because right-wing operatives were looking to pivot from segregationism as their wedge issue as it fell out of favor in the early '70s.
There are two things happening at once with regards to the role and prominence of overt anti-abortion hatred in right-wing politics, and it's important to pay attention. This will have broad-reaching implications for the longterm politics of abortion. (THREAD)
FIRST: It has long been the case that Republicans who want higher office bend over backward to be the biggest, loudest, most cruel anti-abortion leaders they can be. One example is South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who absolutely wants to be president. abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSto…
SECOND: Right-wing groups who are trying to win elections for a variety of candidates more broadly know the expected actions of the Supreme Court on abortion are unpopular and a losing strategy. This, I believe, is why CPAC is not hosting a single panel on abortion this fall.
This is the perennial story about women in power — Senators, CEOs, non-profit leaders, editors, and now, vice presidents. Women are presented as too weak, too strong, too indecisive, too bullying. It serves to push out the good women leaders we have, and intimidate rising women.
In particular, this odious statement from someone too cowardly to use their own name is so sexist and racist I’m going to spell it out in detail:
1) “refuse” relies on racist and sexist tropes against Black women who are presented as non-compliant
There is no such thing as a pro-life feminist. And thank you, I majored in Women's Studies and was literally a national officer for the National Organization for Women.
When a would-be justice asserts "life begins" at fertilization they are arguing for Constitutional personhood, a term that makes abortion and birth control illegal. It means even the potential of pregnancy has more constitutional rights that the actual people who can be pregnant.
Tbh, however, #BigProLife is not actually obsessed with the law but rather what they can use the law to get away with. Provisions to send abortion providers to jail are routinely written into anti-abortion laws.