Pro-Abortion Activism: The Most Dangerous Type

All Apologies, Again.

Many apologies to BAMF readers. Both of our current contributors are working on long-form pieces that make consistently generating content in a timely fashion for BAMF challenging. Your favorite contributor, Dr. John Wolfe, is working on a theoretical book that I'm not authorized to disclose much about here while teaching Marxism to our potential future comrades. I recently finished my first novel and irresistible internal and external pleas and demands to edit it and send it out into the world to find its place call day and night. Now allow me to proceed. 

Oh, wait, one more preamble. We've established that the terms used in abortion rhetoric are outdated and ineffective, and, yes, I am painstakingly working toward an entirely new, updated, rhetorically effective lexicon, as previously proposed. Let's try a few terms and phrases on for size to see how they suit us. Feedback about the various terms and phrases employed is more than welcomed; it is solicited and appreciated. Please comment below on any of the many I throw around, as I flail and struggle to develop more useful, relevant terminology to describe precise and nuanced positions and procedures, thereby destroying the gossamer that obscures the actual function of abortion in our society* - which is not to punish some whore for having sex by forcing her to reproduce - but which is to terminate life-endangering parasites in a safe manner at the discretion of the host. This is a social good, as any leftist and/or logician knows. Okay, let's go.

Abortion rights activism is the most dangerous kind of activism.**

This said, there must be a distinction made here, early, between Being (Perceived As)/(Identifying As) Something - such as a gender, an ethnicity, a race, a threat, a nationality, a follower of a religion, an adherent to a political ideology - and Being Someone Attempting To Protect Someone/Something Who/That Is/Are (Perceivied/Identify As) Something. Do not mistake the point: Being a black man, wearing a burka, following Islam, being LGBTQ, being a woman, being a child, existing as an abortion clinic, and providing abortion in the US*** is more dangerous than attempting to protect such intensely persecuted groups/things. So, there are those who are in danger, are discriminated against, are casually murdered at a frighteningly accelerating rate, are stalked, harassed, kidnapped, held captive, coerced, raped, tortured; and there are those of us who notice, become aware of, and become passionate about creating and/or guarding a safe place for the persecuted to exist, deterring and confronting threats of encroachment upon these entities' being, existence, and presence. Here we will focus on the dangers of Being Someone Attempting To Protect Someone/Something Who/That Is/Are (Perceivied/Identify As) Something. 

While there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that pro-abortion activism is the most dangerous type of activism, particularly in this relatively new age of surveillance,***** which seems to have lead to heightened suspicion, fear, propaganda, and video evidence of the spectacle of violence and pain that we watch seemingly on loop, building callousness and numbing our empathy toward those being beaten, kicked, dragged down a street, shot dozens of times, immobile bodies lying around as mundane as chairs around a kitchen table. You've read and/or heard about the latest (and historical) atrocities against women and against abortion providers (because how could you not have?). I have faith in you, dear reader, comrade reader, under-informed reader, male reader, misogynist reader, Reddit brocialist reader, liberal reader, overeducated underpaid academic reader, and all the rest. You know, if not exactly then at very least generally, what's happening to those some of us try to protect. The information about these incidents surround us, permeating the culture we cannot escape, everything we see, hear, read, absorb always already contains it.

The vested interests that protect the control of women's reproductive choices and bodily autonomy (as well as that of nonhuman animals, which we ought to revisit another time) are the powerhouses of capitalism. They rule the world. The military needs disposable bodies to exploit. The tech world needs disposable bodies to exploit. The fast food industry needs disposable bodies to exploit. The Church, all sects of Christianity, and all other religions need disposable bodies to exploit. The propaganda disseminated by these mega ideological superstructures is unparalleled - excluding that of the meat, dairy, and egg lobbies, which is older by 25 years or so and therefore may have a little more pull if the two were ever to bump heads, but luckily for both the contradictions between them are obscured and indeed absolutely integral to the perpetuation of capitalism as we know it in the West because they all rely on exploitation of others' reproductive systems, forced gestation and natalism, and disposable bodies capable of perpetuating the cycle, i.e. viable female reproductive systems.

Casual Pro-Coerced Natalism vs. Pro-Coerced Natalism Terrorists: Thin Line or Nonexistent Line?

The requirements to oppose uterine autonomy for women are minimal. Christian. Muslim. Parent. Man. Woman. Humanist. Child. Woman who has had an abortion. Person who wanted to coerce a woman to gestate and reproduce their own genetic material but she terminated the dangerous parasite. Person who wanted to force a woman to gestate and reproduce someone else's DNA but she chose uterine autonomy instead. The statistically nonexistent woman who has had an abortion and regretted it for various nuanced reasons, apparently often tied to how "planned" the menstrual interruption was. A woman who wanted to gestate and reproduce but subverted the life-endangering reproductive condition due to any number of circumstances. In short, the criteria to be ideologically pro-forced gestation and pro-forced reproduction are very few. 

Interestingly, not alternately but additionally, the requirements to be a danger to repropponents/repro-opponents are only slightly more stringent. The differentiating factors here seem to be:

1.) An unquestioning, unwavering belief that embryos and fetuses are equal to a reproductively capable woman based on some esoteric value scale (probably and usually based in the  teachings of Christianity but not necessarily actually addressed in any version of the text on which their claims are ostensibly based) and, therefore, the subversion of a nonconsensual germination is equal in moral Wrongness to murder,

2.) An extreme sense of entitlement to impose those beliefs by any means necessary on anyone perceived to be defying them, often embodied by a small-town sheriff mentality with an inner dialogue similar to "Welp, if no one else is going to handle this blight on our reputable little town, then I'll saddle up my horse, ride in and shoot those bandits myself," and

3.) A lack of fear of consequences. 

As we've seen numerous times, even as a pro-coerced natalism terrorist is cuffed and taken into police custody (never shot because he's always already a white man), he shouts, "I did it for the babies!" or some similar illogical claim, uncertainty of his actual motives somehow remains, manifesting in media coverage and widespread cultural sentiment. He is labeled mentally ill, an extremist, a loose cannon, an anomaly, a rare exception to the myth of the passive, silent supporters of nonconsensual hostism, when in actuality the passive, hidden supporters of forced hostism create and enforce the ideological conditions under which he is able to carry out these deadly deeds and meet these three criteria. This self-styled small town sheriff cleaning up the bordello whores who must be forced into natalism to rectify their engagement in sexual intercourse only has the three elements that distinguish him from the pack of passive pro-forced birthers thanks to the passive supporters themselves. The ones who donate to the innumerable pro-forced insemination organizations; write articles and books on the evil of anti-natalism; silently pray in self-righteous groups outside of clinics alongside bullies who shout at and stalk pro-uterine autonomists (and who are prone to turn into terrorists) without ever reprimanding or questioning their aggressive tactics; give pro-forced reproduction speeches at churches; distribute anti-uterine autonomy propaganda; and utter negative, inevitably slut-shaming words about a woman who removed herself from a toxic reproductive situation. These are the ones who build, maintain, and encourage the conditions for the terrorist to develop the three necessary elements that set him apart from the gentle lamb of God innocents. Meanwhile, many of them (sometimes not so) secretly praise him and consider him a lifesaving hero. Scott Roeder is a hero to them, and I'm willing to bet something of value to you his commissary comes in as quickly and thickly as George Zimmerman's bail money and support fund did. Why fear consequences when there is a (sometimes not so) silent army of supporters out there ready to watch your horse gallop away to boldly battle a grave evil that could turn our hellbound world around and set it on the Right track?   

What's at Stake

Anyone who dares defy the unending threats are targets in constant danger. Our spouses, children, homes, vehicles, employment, personal information (as far as that exists in this Surveillance Age), and our very lives themselves are perpetually in imminent danger, and we have no way to predict when an attack might happen. As though the ever-present pro-forced birth ideology that permeates all aspects of our culture weren't an effective enough threat, the Internet has made the stalking and murder of interrupters of reproductive labor far easier than in days of yore, or even since the advent of social media. This causes providers to flee from state to state to protect their ability to help women obtain critical and safe medial termination of unwanted parasites, to guard their loved ones, to save their own lives. Clinicians are often bullied and intimidated into quitting jobs, making their lives and livelihoods precarious, as well as causing high turnover at clinics, one of Operation Rescue's stated goals since at least 2004, disrupting the availability of anti-germination services women need. Clinic escorts - volunteer or compensated - are frequently frightened out of helping comfort and protect patients after encountering one of the many threats. So while seemingly scripted and staged legislative battles over defunding major non-natalist and women's healthcare providers and other skirmishes over rules, buffer zones, age limits, waiting periods, and so on might seem important and interesting intellectually, abstractly, from afar, the Real Battle is in the trenches. And every Leftist should be involved in this trench warfare, presuming solidarity is still one of our core shared values, something I deeply hope we all deem necessary for any kind of movement toward communism.  


Notes:
* There are likely other functions of abortion in our society, which seem worth examining another time. 

**There are two probable exceptions to this claim: Animal rights activism and environmental activism. This is due to the nature of governmental infiltration and surveillance of those two aforementioned types of activist circles, a phenomena non-natalists have yet to systemically experience (that we know of). Small town police harassment and other such diffuse, annoying, largely uncoordinated efforts often impede anti-natalists' work, but any comparison between that and the intense scrutiny and demonization faced by animal rights and environmental activists, respectively would be inaccurate. Here are some links if you need proof: http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/about/
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/june/ecoterror_063008
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/schuster.column/index.html

*** It should always already be assumed that this post (and blog in general) focuses on conditions in the US, the place with which I am most familiar and within which I am most aware of the dangers, biases, daily life, and other nuances that even as a citizen of the world, a traveler, and a reader, I cannot speak as accurately about.

**** A historically unprecedented surveillance of women, as revealed here

***** We are not presently addressing the common (liberal) cop-out of "exceptions for rape and incest" that exhibits an absence of critical thought with which were are sickeningly overfamiliar. BAMF should address that at some point. 

A somewhat of sad/ironic/meta sidenote on this post: There is a two to three paragraph narrative-style section missing from the middle that concretely describes exact circumstances and encountered tangible threats, as well as the consequences and outcomes thereof. However, due to the topic of the post I removed it because it could possibly reveal "too much," thereby endangering myself and others, our livelihoods, our very lives. J. Wolfe said, "It is less strong in the sense that the personal narrative gave the piece greater rhetorical weight. The argument is, I think, not affected." That comforted me to an extent, and I hope he is correct. Perhaps this sidenote bolsters any "rhetorical weight" that may have been lost due to the omission.