rozk | (no subject)

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Gakked from

tsubaki_ny this piece from Rolling Stone documents the tactics being used by Operation Rescue against Tiller's clinic and its staff. Tiller's killer was part of this sub-culture; what worries me, though, is that I can imagine similar tactics being used by anti-abortion fanatics in this country as well as in the US. My admiration for people who stand up to this sort of bullying knows no bounds.

Some while ago, I had a row with some of my animal rights supporting friends and said that the tactics they approve of against fox-hunters or vivisectionists could be turned against minorities or pro-choice forces any time. I fear I was right - Operation Rescue have moved on from picketing clinics.

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How is that behaviour not illegal? Surely it is criminal harassment?

That's one of the reasons (the many reasons) I am so profoundly grateful that we have gun control here.

A (male) friend of mine would volunteer to be "muscle" at a Washington DC abortion clinic. He would escort women through the gauntlet of anti-abortionists, sometimes taking the blows and spit of the protesters so the women would feel safer.

I think all protesters are scum (I once had a confrontation just for parking near a clinic though I was going elsewhere-unpleasant asshats!).

This is, alas, not new, though your friends may not have been aware of it: but at least in the U.S., the press doesn't report anti-choice terrorism as terrorism, because it's being done by, not against, white Christian men. This means the patterns aren't pointed out in the ordinary news stories. The papers quote the anti-choice people as saying they are "worried about a backlash" after this, but don't mention the years of right-wing incitement to murder, against which a backlash is long overdue.

I would like to point out as Official Parish Bunny Hugger that, along with the vast majority of people concerned with animal rights and welfare, I regard human as being animals too, and that violence cannot ever be justified (except maybe in genuine self-defence).

My point though is that the animal rights movement has increasingly engaged in the sort of secondary and tertiary picketing that the anti-abortionists are shown here as taking up. I am not accusing anyone of violence, just saying - and I am aware of my own responsibility here as someone who has kicked off demonstrations - that we should maybe think twice about tactics we would not like used on us.

We're dealing with what is essentially a single organisation based in Oxford and suggesting that what they're up to is the activities of the animal rights movement in general is like saying that dissident republicans in Northern Ireland are somehow representative of Irish Catholics in general.

In both cases, what we are dealing with is a few extremist bampots whom the mainstream would rather were duly convicted and locked up, or flee to some remote location on the other side of the planet, or something.

"outing" people is an interesting tactic,and I'm not sure I disapprove of it at all. It is nonviolent, and does not even threaten violence, so in that sense I don't instantly think "this is going too far" like some of the protests I see.

People who kill for a living DO have a case to answer. If someone is not ashamed of what they do then they can stand up and say so. Being able to keep a low profile and maintain the respect of those who would dispise them if they knew actually seems dishonest and reprehensible to me, and I'd be glad if this was never an option.

Oh, come on. We are talking about an emotive and distorted view of what a nurse or receptionist in an abortion clinic is doing, about a crowd of people turning up in a suburban street to yell at people.

And do not forget that the sort of anti-abortionist who does this is perfectly capable of turning up in your street or mine to express to our neighbours their anger with us for the things about us they happen not to like - our sex lives or my blasphemous novel or whatever.

Wouldn't you take to any relevant street and yell if you thought an issue was really, really important? I would, if I thought it would actually do some good.

It certainly is upsetting when people yell at me in the street for being or doing something they don't like. However, that's ultimately a price I'm willing to pay in order to live in a place where we have relative freedom of speach. Happily, one is equally entitled to yell back :)

Religious fanatics always horrify me. Anyone who is that certain about anything is dangerous.

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