The following text is from a flyer distributed by Refuse & Resist! at the Emergency Action for Women's Lives, April 22, 2001, in Washington, DC. You may also download a PDF version.
Over the past few months the battle over whether the national agenda of repression will get worse for the people has intensified. Executions of death row prisoners who lacked adequate legal representation are coming faster and faster, but opposition to the death penalty, and to the execution of revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, is growing. Police brutality, racial profiling, and imprisonment are epidemic, but the world watched youth in Cincinnati respond with great anger and determination after police killed yet another unarmed Black man. Unprecedented levels of repression await protesters opposing the F.T.A.A. on both sides of the border, yet many thousands of youth are building a movement to resist the "sweat-shopping" of the world.
A big part of this repressive agenda is based on controlling women’s lives by restrict-ing abortion access, creating a climate of shame and fear by calling abortion "murder". The same authorities forcing motherhood on women who have unplanned pregnancies are also denying youth honest education about sex, and censoring art and music are making their "morality" into law.
Abortion providers are isolated and stigmatized in more ways than ever - from murder to bogus lawsuits to criminal prosecutions. Dr. James Pendergraft, an African American doctor from Florida was prosecuted by the federal government and now faces 30 years in prison, because he is an outspoken provider of late-term abortion who demanded that the local government help protect his clinics. Dr. Leroy Carhart of Nebraska put his career on the line taking the fight for late-term abortion rights to the Supreme Court and has been under constant threat from the anti-choice movement. Currently a doctor in Michigan faces jail time for per-forming a late term procedure, and state legislatures continue to try to ban later term abortions.
Though abortion is still legal in the United States, more and more women are finding it inaccessible. The "law of the land" is not Roe v. Wade but the more restrictive Casey Supreme Court decision that excludes young women, poor women, and women of color from the fundamental right to control over their bodies. 32 states have active laws mandating parental involvement in young women’s decisions to have an abortion. Only 16 states provide funding for poor women to obtain abortion services.
It is going to take a movement of resistance to change this repressive climate. Refuse & Resist! sees all the attacks on the people connected and works to build a move-ment against all of them. It is unique in uniting youth, students, working people, profession-als, artist and prominent figures in a common effort to build a climate, culture and community of resistance - where people refuse to accept or be complicit in crimes against the people. Refuse & Resist! initiated the annual Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. We work every day to support and defend those who make "choice" possible. Without choice women can not be free to live and plan their lives.
Contact the Reproductive Freedom Task Force of Refuse & Resist! at RFTF@refuseandresist.org to find out how you can help defend abortion providers and change the political climate to beat back the whole repressive agenda.
[revised 5/02/01]
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