Vol. 73/No. 23      June 15, 2009

The mayor and the antiabortion group Operation Rescue, founded in 1987 by Randall Terry, had backed the ordinance. Operation Rescue claimed it wanted to “rescue” the “children who are scheduled to die” at abortion clinics. Its leaders demagogically argued that women were responsible for many of society’s problems, arguing that if they would return to their “traditional” role there would be less unemployment, child abuse, and drug abuse.

Operation Rescue responded to the defeat of the ordinance by targeting Dr. George Tiller’s Women’s Health Care Services and two other local abortion clinics in what was billed as a six-day “summer of mercy.” The group’s leaders said it was not enough to rely on “the political process” to end abortions—“action” was needed.  
 
1991: rightists shut down three clinics
On July 16, 1991, the first day of the campaign, the rightists successfully shut down all three clinics. The next day, they stormed the church that Tiller attended and took over the service. One of the thugs grabbed the organist’s hands to stop her from playing while other thugs harangued the churchgoers.

The strategy of the leadership of women’s rights groups, trade unions, and civil rights organizations was to look to the courts, cops, and elected officials to keep the clinics open. Union officials said abortion was not a labor issue, ignoring that the assault on women’s rights is also aimed at the working class.

Sensing an opportunity in the lack of a combative response, Operation Rescue announced its stay was “indefinite.” By the end of the week, hundreds of rightist cadre streamed into Wichita from across the country. The group announced it would make Wichita “America’s first abortion-free city.”

The rightists stepped up their blockades of clinics and harassed volunteer clinic escorts, threatening them and vandalizing their homes.

In spite of a restraining order against blocking the clinics, the cops acted slowly. When they finally did arrest the “rescuers” they took their time, allowing the clinics to remain blocked for hours.

On August 20 Operation Rescue activists attacked the Women’s Health Care Services clinic. A few rightists blocked the car of a woman seeking care at the clinic, then dozens leaped over the gate and fence. Hundreds barricaded the entrance. They were finally stopped by cops before they were able to break into the clinic.

It wasn’t until August 24 that a public “Speak Out for Choice” rally was organized in Wichita to answer the rightist assaults. Five thousand attended. Young people and some workers began joining picket lines to defend the clinics.

The next day the rightists held a “Hope for the Heartland” rally that drew 25,000. They also won some support from small farmers. A “Rural America Speaks Out for Life” tractorcade drew 300 farm trucks, tractors, cars, and vans.  
 
Officials, cops, complicit with rightists
The rightist actions went on for weeks with the complicity of some local officials and the cops. Kansas governor Joan Finney spoke at an Operation Rescue support rally after police had made 1,500 arrests.

The actions Operation Rescue organized in the early ’90s—with its reliance on street confrontations and violence, its cadre of followers, and support from cops and Democratic and Republican officials—showed the face of incipient American fascism. Working people in the United States will face movements like this more often as class polarization sharpens in the course of the current economic crisis.  
 
Pro-choice forces countermobilize
While Operation Rescue did not succeed in permanently closing the clinics, the Wichita campaign put wind in its sails. Bolstered by its success, Operation Rescue and other rightists sought to close clinics around the country, including in Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and North Dakota. They also headed to Massachusetts and Rhode Island as a prelude to what they said would be national “Days of Rescue.” But they soon found out that they were not the only ones learning the lessons of what happened in Kansas.

An example of the growing resistance to the rightists took place Nov. 2, 1991. After Operation Rescue announced it was coming to town, 2,500 supporters of a woman’s right to choose gathered at dawn at four clinics in the Boston area.

Instead, 150 rightists hit a clinic in Cranston, Rhode Island, 45 minutes away where they quickly overwhelmed 30 people defending the clinic.

Some 800 pro-choice demonstrators, mostly students from Boston University, Harvard, Yale, and many other area colleges and high schools, quickly headed from Boston to Cranston and outmobilized the rightists. “We ran ’em out of Boston and we ran ’em out of here,” the students chanted as the cops escorted the rightists to their cars.

Spurred by the attacks, 500,000 people marched in Washington, D.C., in April 1992. It was the largest abortion rights action ever in the United States at the time.

Battles took place across the country over the next several years, including in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Buffalo, New York; and Melbourne, Florida. Clinic by clinic, supporters of women’s rights countermobilized and physically prevented the rightists from achieving their aims.

Under the pressure of the public defense of abortion rights, the cops and courts began arresting and sentencing more of the rightists when they blocked clinics.
 
 
Related articles:
Protests say: abortion is a woman’s right to choose!
Vigils condemn killing of clinic doctor in Kansas
Mobilize to defend abortion rights!
 
 
 
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