Race of Anti-Abortion Activists & Terrorists + Why We Need BlackFemale Leadership

Max B. Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Sun Aug 22 14:02:44 PDT 1999


I've noticed (through my activism and reading) that the anti-abortion movement is basically a white-led movement with overwhelmingly white activists (with a teensy-weensy sprinkling of black preachers and their followers). To my knowledge, all the known anti-abortion terrorists have been white as well. If anyone doubts this, go do clinic defense work. At the same time, about one third of the abortion clinic patients are women of color. This racial demographics of anti-abortion activists and clinic patients give rise to racialized sexual brutalization, reminiscent of slave owners' desire to make black women breeders and to otherwise deny them agency in reproduction. . . .

mbs: this accurately describes the scene in front of clinics involving pro-life activists

and clinic patients, but its broader applicability to race is something else again.

There's some romanticization of the leftward sympathies of minorities implied here.

It's easy to gloss over the cultural and social conservatism of minorities, especially

African-Americans and Hispanics, since the more overt racism of the Right tends

to drive them left, but opposition to abortion among minorities is much deeper than

a "sprinkling."

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