Introduction
Women’s right to have control over their bodies has been declined, debated, and violated throughout the centuries around the world. Even though nowadays, the governments in many countries allowed them to terminate pregnancies in a safe clinical environment, some people still express negative opinions on this subject. Moreover, those who perform such a procedure often become targets of assault. People who commit acts of abuse against medical staff and women who decided to get an abortion, usually use threats, physical harassment, and intimidation tactics. Unfortunately, sometimes their actions are dependent on legislation that regulates the process of performing an abortion; in other times, attackers use laws to justify their behavior. This paper aims to analyze how abortion regulations affect this type of violence. The significance of this subject cannot be overstated since it generates considerable interest in human rights advocates. Nevertheless, even though in some cases, violent incidents are connected with abortion laws, for the most part, extremists rationalize their actions through religious or personal beliefs. Therefore, usually, their brutality has little to do with legislation.
The Controversy
The topics of abortion and violence that are committed by anti-abortion extremists are relatively new issues that create disputes and heated discussions across the globe. Generally, such debates are also related to the issues of women’s rights and controlling the population. It is argued that cases of violence against abortion providers prevent them from delivering healthcare. Moreover, the lack of opportunities for women to ensure the security of their bodies, including controlling their fertility not only contributes to inequality but also puts their lives in danger. After all, researchers note that the percentage of abortion-related deaths performed in a clinical setting is low as “the risk of death after an abortion at eight weeks of gestation or less is 0.3 per 100,000 or 3 per million procedures”. If such is the case, the question is why some people are opposed to the idea of a woman getting an abortion?
Unfortunately, in the United States, the subject of providing abortions is a problem that, for decades has been regulated by pro-life lawmakers, who mostly tried to restrict women’s access to the procedure. In this country, restrictions often make abortion impossible, and the actions of pro-life activists sometimes reach the level of extremism. Since the late 1970s, crime reports from the United States, Canada, and Australia regularly include news of arson attempts and violence against clinic staff. Gradually the society concluded that such crimes cannot be a result of the personal deviation of individual religious fanatics, but a dangerous political tendency. Furthermore, for a significant group of radical Catholics, pro-life activism equals social justice support, which aims to protect the vulnerable lives of infants from, as they might say, deaths.
Even though their ideological opponents, pro-choice activists are too concerned with social justice, their main focus is mostly emphasized on women’s access to medical care. For them, the free choice of a woman is the most important factor, not the right of the embryo. The conflict between pro-choice and pro-life has been going on since the 1960s when the authorities allowed abortions and set a deadline for pregnancy that a woman can legally terminate.
Another concern of theirs is to make sure that women live as equally as men in regards to body rights. According to Hauseberg, activists claim that women are entitled to the right to pursue careers and personal relationships without any discriminatory practices. By that, they mean regulations that restrict their behavior, including sexual activities and reproductive choices. These two ideas contradict each other, which sometimes end in incidents of harassment, which is mostly committed by those who are against abortion.
How Such Acts Are Committed
The strategies that are used by activists include many actions that can be considered a violation of human rights and even extremism. For instance, their tactics include following women to abortion clinics, walking alongside them although women express their discontent. Other harmful and disrespectful actions include chasing and pushing patients and medical staff. Vocal harassment is also apparent; for example, activists can violently express their point of view by calling doctors baby killers, accusing them of spilling the blood of innocent babies. In such cases, women can suffer from serious allegations. In addition, they often implore women to change their minds and to “not kill a baby”, otherwise she would be a murderer too and a mom of a dead child. Supporters of the pro-life movement often use psychological peer pressure by calling an embryo a child to appeal to the woman’s emotions. They distort data and provide unreliable sources while claiming that they conducted research.
In the worst scenarios, they commit offenses, such as illegal trespassing on the private territory, blocking entrances to clinics, death threats. In some cases, it can even be the destruction of property, vandalism, kidnapping, harassment, assault, or even attempted murder. Moreover, sometimes activists violate property legislation by committing arson. Even when it was made clear by patients or staff that they do not wish to hear this, anti-abortion activists would not give up their efforts. Pro-life protesters usually gather outside clinics, intimidate workers and patients, bringing psychological damage. Some researchers also note that there is a rapid increase in violence against abortion clinics. Some providers even complain that they get threatening voicemails and texts that included death threats, which made them scared for their lives. Such acts, unfortunately, are not limited to pushing or verbally harassment. The protesters conduct their activities online and in public spaces. As an example, Vickery presents a case of Charles Schwertner, a Texas Senator, who used his gavel to break a glass table while trying to silence a woman for testifying against an anti-abortion bill. It is argued that by conducting such actions, they are damaging women’s constitutional rights to an available health service.
The Reasoning
It is not hard to figure out the rationale behind these acts of violence. Activists are seeking to control the reproductive freedom of millions of women. To achieve their goal, they use violence and abuse as a tactic for implementing fear among people and abortion providers. Pro-life activists advocate a medical ethic based on Christian tenets. Thus, they concluded that the result of the work of physicians cannot be the death of a living creature. Pro-life ideologists demand to implement the law that would guarantee the protection of all forms of human life, including human embryos in the womb. The main ethical postulate of Pro-lifers looks like this: any abortion is murder because a person is a person not from the moment of birth, but the moment of conception. In some cases, anti-abortion activists equate to abortion even methods of contraception that do not allow a fertilized egg to attach to the wall of the uterus. Thus, their rhetoric suggests that any woman who has an abortion is a murderer and any supporter of abortion is a potential accomplice to the crime.
Those who participate in such actions usually defend the use of force with claims of justifiable homicide or the protection of others in the interests of protecting the life of the fetus. Moreover, support for anti-abortion violence can also be considered as a political weapon against women’s rights that is linked to the tolerance of violence against women. Anti-abortion demonstrators compare this medical procedure to murder, which means that they equate fetuses to babies. When the emphasis of this movement is put on protecting the vulnerable fetus from the so-called death; as a result, certain activists of this idea may use it to the extremes. By saying that they want to protect the fetus, they justify acts of violence and terrorism, if it means stopping abortion providers and clinics from giving their service.
In addition, some studies demonstrate that anti-abortion activists believe that they do not harass women. Instead, they interpret their actions as offering a choice to a woman who is about to commit a crime. According to Lowe, their forms of action are rooted in faith-based understandings of public witnessing. On the other hand, sometimes believers try to twist the understanding of women’s rights and claim to be the advocate, while not understanding that they bring harm to actual women. Cohen presents an example of David Reardon, who is an advocate against abortion. According to the study, he encourages his followers to present fetal protection as activism for women’s rights. Moreover, he justifies it by saying that movement should “always place our arguments for the unborn”. However, this point cannot be considered legitimate as it takes away the primary goal of protecting women.
Unfortunately, it would be difficult to control such cases of extremism due to a few amounts of available data on the activities and main reasons. Nevertheless, government regulations are needed to prevent such cases from happening. At the same time, lawmakers can also change the number of incidents by restricting abortion rights. However, even though it may satisfy anti-abortion activists, for the time being, it may harm women and cause a rise in the number of maternal deaths.
Why Is It Dangerous
Such cases of violence do not only cause serious harm to women and medical workers but also present a variety of dangerous consequences. For example, it makes the stigma around abortion stronger, contributing to the growth of negative cultural stereotypes around the procedure. Moreover, it discourages abortion providers from conducting their work, which can force clinics to shut down. It means that fewer women will get access to an abortion, which can lead to severe outcomes. They include unwanted babies, domestic violence, and even maternal deaths in cases when a woman decided to perform an illegal abortion. Such procedures are not done in a clinically safe environment and may endanger a woman’s life.
Another reason why violent acts of anti-abortion activists should be restricted or even prohibited is that with the strong stigma around this subject, more pro-life lawmakers can promote their legislation that bans abortion altogether. Such restrictions can also lead to criminal abortions. This mainly has to do with the fact that without access to this type of healthcare, women resorted to questionable and often deadly methods to terminate pregnancies. Therefore, anti-abortion harassment does not only cause negative physical and psychological harm in the short term but in the long run, leads to more deaths and violence. This type of extremist violence can restrain access to the procedure and threatens the lives of women and doctors who are dedicated to providing reproductive-healthcare services. For this reason, it is imperative to recognize the danger of such acts and to come up with means to regulate them.
Legislation
First of all, it would be interesting to see how American laws make the population perceive abortion providers in a certain way. The study by Britton et al. implies that abortion laws create a negative impression about the procedure and those who conduct it. Such a result proposes an idea that among Americans, there is a prevailing negative stereotype about abortion providers. For this reason, U.S. citizens are most likely to support restrictive abortion laws.
The U.S. has a long history of legislation regulating both abortion rights and the actions of anti-abortion activists. After all, this type of extremism, laws, and rates of birth and abortion are closely connected. For example, in 1994 President Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act as a response to a surge of violence following demonstrations at abortion clinics. This legislation makes acts of harassment in abortion clinics a federal offense and therefore forbids it. The definition of violence, including using force and threats, intimidation tactics, physical assault, and harm. The violation was punished by fines and jail time, depending on the severity of the offense. This new legislation was praised by abortion-rights activists because it acknowledged the problem and provided security for abortion providers and their patients. Moreover, due to this law, the number of harassment cases decreased significantly, which proves that it can be regulated by the government.
Nevertheless, this period was interrupted by the period of protests in the 2000s because the government considered changes in the abortion law. The anti-abortion protest has changed from extremism to political participation as restrictions on protest decreased, and both lawmakers and abortion-seekers responded to protestors.
In particular, the government spent more than a decade discussing partial-birth abortions, which is a highly intrusive procedure used to terminate late-term pregnancies. Even though in the past Congress tried to prohibit such operations in the 1990s, President Clinton These did not allow that. For this reason, until 2003, partial-birth abortions were considered legal according to the Supreme Court. However, Congress managed to ban it by legislation, which was signed off by President Bush Jr. Moreover, in 2007 the Supreme Court supported the ban, which marked a small victory for anti-abortion activists.
Researchers note that this change was also closely intertwined with an unprecedented rise in pro-life protesting. In addition, the number of cases of harassment also significantly decreased, although it would be more correct to state that the direct methods of violence changed to indirect, for example, bullying women online8. This result implies that the decline in violence, in general, may correlate with regulations that support the anti-abortion movement. Basically, the more the government restricts abortions, the fewer acts of harassment and extremism are committed by pro-life activists.
Nevertheless, in 2016 the satiation changed drastically when the Supreme Court decided to forbid legislatures from restricting abortion rights. Recognizing the dangers faced by abortion providers and women seeking health care, some federal and state lawmakers have created the laws in an attempt to protect them. The decades of governmental violations of a fundamental human right were restricted because limiting access to abortion due to ideological reasoning was no longer possible. Instead, legislatures were forced to get support from evidence-based medicine before imposing new laws. This event marked a positive shift for reproductive rights; however, it is argued that this rule may endanger medical workers who provide this procedure. In other words, if the anti-abortion movement takes its cue from the Supreme Court and shifts away from woman protection and back towards fetus protection, the consequences for the safety of abortion providers and clinics could be severe. The researcher explains this point of view by saying that previously anti-abortion activists relied on the belief that while protecting a fetus, they also protect a woman. After this new legislation, they cannot use this justification anymore, which would provoke the incensement of harassment.
How Activists Use Laws
Aside from committing acts of extremism and violence, anti-abortion extremists use legislations to bully medical workers who provide abortions. For example, researchers point out that sometimes protesters would provoke healthcare staff, cause a fight and then press charges for physical assault5. On the surface, this use of the law against individual providers differs from legislation that limits access to abortion. This distinction is mainly because such laws are not specifically intended for medical workers, but rather on the physical perpetrators in general. However, some doctors consider this type of harassment to be connected with legal restrictions on abortion. Cohen agrees with this point of view by demonstrating the results of the study which investigated the relationship between laws and acts of violence in different American states9. The findings indicate that in states with the most severe abortion laws, there is an increased number of cases of extremism directed at doctors in abortion clinics. Furthermore, the study also demonstrates that legislation restricting abortion is harmful not only for women, who are denied the right to control their bodies how they wish. It also negatively affects abortion providers who become targets of bullying and harassment.
Decreasing Violence by Legislations
Nevertheless, there is evidence that it is possible to reduce cases of violence. As an example, Penovic uses Australian legislation that regulates and restricts anti-abortion protests and harassment. According to these laws, a special zone should be established outside abortion clinics. In these spaces, any type of anti-abortion activity, including picketing and protests, is prohibited and punishable. These zones are usually referred to as “safe access zones” or “bubble zones” because they create a bubble around a clinic where the security of medical workers and women is guaranteed and protected by law. Moreover, the legislation also states that those areas should be at least 50 meters around a medical facility. The primary benefit of this law is that it is aimed to protect the privacy, integrity of abortion providers and patients. Moreover, it ensures that women have available access to this procedure without the risk of experiencing harassment. Creating a safe zone around a clinic is a good method to create a safe environment, where basic healthcare rights can be provided.
In Australia, this legislation seems to change the satiation positively since the number of violent attacks has decreased significantly. In addition, researchers note that it diminished stigmatization around the topic of abortion because recognized women as human beings who can make their own decision. Since activists were forced to keep their distance from clinics, targeting, intimidating, and harassing women became harder for them. As for medical workers, they expressed that with that law they felt safer providing their services as they had no fear while accessing their place of work.
Another important problem that arose from the legislation is the accusation by protesters. While secure access zones aim to protect the rights of people seeking access to premises where abortions are given, they have been declared an assault on the freedom of faith and freedom of speech of demonstrators. It is argued that safe access zones restrict activists’ rights to express their opinions in public gatherings. Nevertheless, such claims were not accepted since the law did not limit these rights but only required them to distance themselves from women and abortion providers. Nevertheless, even though it reduced violence committed by pro-life extremists, it could not solve all the issues regarding this subject. First of all, it ensured safety only around clinics; however, activists still can promote their views and bully women online. Moreover, they can still conduct their activities not far from medical facilities.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it would appear that even though legislation can, in some way, affect anti-abortion violence, the cases of harassment do not depend solely on them. While restricting rights to this procedure decreases the number of harassment cases, it denies women their fundamental right to their bodies. In addition, even when the government limits the opportunities for protesters to conduct their activities, such regulations are met with new protests and claims of human rights violations. Therefore, it would be safe to assume that the action of a pro-life movement, for the most part, relies on religious and personal beliefs, rather than on laws. Even though the activities of extremists cannot be fully regulated by law, it is possible to slightly decrease them. For this reason, the top priority for lawmakers should be ensuring the safety of clinical workers and women who consider getting an abortion. Another regulative measure could be implementing new policies that increase punishment for verbal and physical harassment.
Regardless of someone’s opinion abortion remains a procedure that should be protected by law since it provides a fundamental right for women to have control over their bodies. The acts of violence and harassment against another human being cannot be justified by law or religious beliefs. Therefore, women who consider getting an abortion, as well as healthcare workers who provide such service should not be afraid of getting harassed, violated, or murdered.
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