A woman's place is in the struggle: Right to life

September 10, 2003
Issue 

Inside the walls of Florida State Prison on September 3, Paul Hill, who shot and killed a doctor and a volunteer escort at a Pensacola abortion clinic in 1994, remained unrepentant until death. Hill, the first US anti-abortion terrorist to be executed, told reporters on September 2 that he was happy to be a "martyr to the cause".

"If you believe abortion is a lethal force, you should oppose the force and do what you have to do to stop it", were Hill's last words. "May God help you to protect the unborn as you would want to be protected."

Outside the prison, his message was being heeded by 50 anti-choice fanatics gathered for a candlelight vigil. "Abortion doctors commit premeditated, cold-blooded murder 10 or 20 times a day", Catholic Reverend David Trosch told the Orlando Sentinal. "What Paul Hill did was absolutely justified."

Far from supporting Hill's execution, pro-choice activists appealed to Florida governor Jeb Bush to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, fearing that Hill's death could trigger a new wave of violent attacks against abortion clinics.

Bush refused to act on the petition. "I'm not going to be bullied", he told a September 2 press conference. "I'm not going to change the deeply held views that I have on the death penalty because others have deeply held views that disagree."

The irony of a self-proclaimed "pro-life" activist committing murder, and then being killed as punishment, seemed lost on Jeb Bush.

Hill's attack came at the height of a terror campaign against abortion clinics. From the mid-1980s, anti-abortion fanatics began blockading clinics, sparking battles between hundreds of "Operation Rescue" attackers trying to close down the clinics, and hundreds of women trying to ensure access by holding well-organised picket lines.

Anti-choice terrorists like Hill targeted abortion clinics with 1500 incidents of arson, bombings, acid attacks, gas attacks, assaults on clients and staff and sniper attacks. Anti-choice provocateurs pasted up "Wanted for murder" posters, which included doctors' photos, addresses and phone numbers. Several doctors and clinic volunteers were killed in this sustained terrorist campaign.

The proportion of doctors willing to perform abortions in the US fell steadily. In 1993, 23% of clinics had staff resign because of the intimidation.

But women fought back. Outmobilisng the fanatics, they won many of the battles. Nearly 1 million women marched in 1993 to demand that abortion access be defended. Under this pressure, US President Bill Clinton's administration supported the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinics Act, which made it a crime to use force to limit access to reproductive health services.

The National Organisation of Women successfully launched a class action suit, using federal anti-racketeering legislation, charging anti-choice thugs, who had attacked a clinic with acidic gas, with extortion. The combined force of increased feminist mobilisation and legal penalties slowly forced the fanatics to retreat somewhat.

But they did not go away. In the Feminist Majority's 2002 survey of violence against abortion clinics, clinic blockades, death threats, stalking of staff, and invasions of clinics showed that they all had increased. Twenty-three per cent of clinics reported experiencing severe violence, up from around 20% the year before. Seven per cent were blockaded, up from 5%.

An appeal court has recently overturned the use of anti-racketeering legislation to penalise anti-choice terrorists. US President George Bush is slowly trying to stack the Supreme Court with anti-abortion judges.

Anti-choice extremists claiming to support the "right to life" have no concern for human life. Those killed by Hill — 69-year-old Dr John Britton, who was working during his retirement to ensure women could control their own fertility, and the 74-year-old volunteer escort James Barrett — were thinking, breathing humans with family and friends.

Hill and his fellow fanatics' goal is to force women back into the traditional roles of mother and homeworker by denying them the right to decide not to have children.

Hill's execution, continuing this cycle of death, will make nothing better, and possibly a lot worse. The confidence boost given to the misogynist brigade under an openly anti-abortion US president is resulting in more violence against abortion providers, legal attacks on the right to choose abortion and a growing corporate media backlash against women's rights. An anti-choice martyr is not going to help.

Dan Hollman had driven more than 1600 kilometres, in a van plastered with pictures of bloody fetuses, to be outside the prison for Hill's execution. "I haven't killed anybody yet", he told the Orlando Sentinal, "but I believe [abortionists] deserve to die."

BY ALISON DELLIT

From Green Left Weekly, September 10, 2003.
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