This attitude, in part shows a certain arrogance; the people of other countries patting themselves on the back for having such a sane and well run country and for having a group of politicians that would in no way fiddle their expenses or the system. It seems it is still easier to point out someone else’s failing other than your own. It also happily conforms to the stereotype of the disorganized Italians. This is just one example of the lazy pigeonholing of foreigners that almost everyone, to a larger or lesser extent, still tends to do unless they make a conscious effort not to.

If we go back to Italy, lesser-known is that whilst the number of changes in government was undoubtedly high, the Christian Democracy party was the largest single party in the parliament from 1946 to 1994 and many of these changes of government were really reshuffling of coalitions with the same Prime Minister being reappointed immediately. Even less well-known is the fact that the CIA were in part responsible for giving that party a boost and keeping them in power. This was done after the war, much the same as it was in Greece, to stop a communist/socialist alliance becoming elected.

Despite outside meddling, throughout the 50s and 60s the standard of life in Italy, as elsewhere in Europe, improved considerably for most people and it was in part due to the gains in this period that now many Italian families, and not necessarily only the well-to-do, have a second home, usually by the beach. The mess that Italy is in now means in fact that many people are trying to sell these second homes, but as everyone is in the same mess they are finding it hard to do so. These second homes are not however a sign of real wealth. So many Italians are now unemployed, underemployed or earning considerably less than the legal minimum wage that another of the stereotypes about Italians living at home with their parents for too long is becoming truer by the day.

Nowadays, the Italy joke has changed and it is difficult to think about Italy without its “crowning turd in the waterpipe”, Silvio Berlusconi. There is baffled incomprehension all round as to just how this man can survive scandal after scandal and still remain in his position.

Financial and political corruption, prostitution, any number of gaffes and yet he is still there. How is it possible?

Well, I have spent some time going back and forth from Italy and it is too easy to say that the answer is to be found in the lazy stereotypes of corruption and incompetence.

If I could compare with the UK for a moment not too long ago there was a megalomaniac PM who believed (or said he believed) that he was on a mission from God, who invaded several other countries, whose party was involved in corruption allegations (Formula 1 money, cash for access, cash for honours etc) and who most people professed to hate. He also consorted with other war criminals. And yet, this man won every election he entered. After the unnecessary and illegal wars and most of the sleaze, people were still voting for him. In part this was due to his cosy relationship with the major media magnates.

In Italy one of the obvious and oft-cited factors in Berlusconi’s survival is the fact that he controls the media of that country. This has been a major factor in his success. As well as owning the major private broadcaster (Mediaset), his government has the power of appointment over the state broadcaster (RAI). Sky were beginning to stick their nose into the market in much the same way they did in the UK, much to the annoyance of the Berlusconi, by buying up the football coverage. However, recent events have meant that Sky has been occupied elsewhere and there is less talk of this now.

Despite controlling most of the media, the coverage isn’t as crude as something like Fox News in the USA. When the Replublicans are in power Fox revert to the role of cheerleader, when it is the Democrats they are vicious watchdogs. In Italy it plays rather differently. The Berlusconi media do not run constant Silvio Our Saviour stuff, even if there are one or two rather crude examples of that. No, instead it is a constant attack on the opposition. This has led to an attitude in many Italians of “Silvio is an embarrassment, but the others are worse”. Although the specifics are different, this attitude is similar to the one that saw Britain’s Tony Blair consistently re-elected.

And in many places he is hated in the way that Blair was. For example, he has consistently talked about building an enormous bridge from the Italian mainland to Sicily. The polls in Sicily have shown that the Sicilians simply do not want this bridge for entirely sensible reasons. They don’t think it is a good idea to build a bridge between two earthquake zones, they would rather the money was spent on the roads, trains and general infrastructure in Sicily, they are proud of their island status, and finally, with things being the way they are in the South of Italy, they are not sure that the thing would be built properly without money being creamed off to some god-knows-where. Consequently, when someone threw a miniature model of the Milan Cathedral at Berlusconi and broke his teeth, the big joke on facebook was “ora un ponte se lo può fare ai denti” (now he can make a bridge for his teeth). There are also daily protests and mini-strikes that mostly pass without mention.

Whilst he is consistently mocked at home, the mockery and derision from the rest of the world towards him has in a certain sense actually helped Berlusconi. Whenever he is attacked on the BBC or in the major news media there is some statement about how this is an attack on Italy and not on him specifically. There was a period of diminishing returns on this strategy but the recent Merkel-Sarkozy affair has allowed for a reinvigoration of this tactic.

Apart from the media, the craven and/or greedy behavior of the opposition parties in Italy has constantly helped him to survive. Parties in his coalition have supported him in confidence votes despite criticizing him in public. In other cases, if one party has jumped ship from the coalition another one has jumped aboard in return for a few promises and therefore kept him alive.

The good news is that, he is on the way out. He will not survive another election. One of the reasons may not be politics or economics but in fact, religion. Much is made of Italy’s Catholic heritage but I am not quite sure how serious the majority of Italians take it. For example, if you go around any city in Italy you will find condom machines in plain sight outside of every chemist, and not short of customers. Divorce is for the most part not considered bad and abortion, while still controversial, is broadly accepted.

Abortion is though, still an important issue for voters and the parties must on some issues be seen to do what their base wants. For example, there was an enormous fuss made when the EU tried to have crucifixes removed from public school classrooms. The Italian government argued that these were a cultural and not a religious manifestation and should, therefore, be allowed to stay in the classroom. Berlusconi has pushed this too far however. The recent sex scandals are for a lot of people less important than the political, legal, and economic mess he has created or at least worsened. But a large part of his base came from voters of the now defunct Christian Democracy party, and they will not vote for him again in the light of these scandals.

Recent polls suggest that a quarter of the Italian electorate still support him but with the economic crisis worsening the last card he can play, “I’m a successful businessman, I understand the economy,” is not going to make win the game.

Who will come after him is the big question and unsettlingly it may well be the Lega Nord. The Lega are a far-right party that also wish for secession from Italy. At their rallies you can see England, Ireland and, unfortunately for me as a leftist independence supporting Scot, Scotland flags being waved. They maintain they have some sort of Celtic heritage. The fact that their politics are absolutely nothing like those being enacted by the Scottish government doesn’t stop some people making another lazy comparison in this, and this is despite the facts that the economic, cultural, political and historical situations are radically different. Also, it is debatable at this point how much of a desire they really show for secession. It is certainly shouted a lot at their rallies but as part of the Berlusconi government they seem to be more about following neocon economics with a shedload of racism thrown in than actual separation.

The left have a lot of work to do and there have been a few false dawns in their regard. Time will tell.

To finish, certain people should stop laughing at the Italians. The normal Italian person is Berlusconi’s victim, not his supporter. Even if he has been more supported in the past than he is now, the world is full of people who consistently vote against their own interests. One doesn’t need to look to far from home to find them.

In the specific case of Berlusconi, if I am in Italy and someone asks me about him then I always say that he is a clown but unfortunately he is not a harmless clown. Before the most recent round of scandals, Slavoj Zizek called him about right:

Berlusconi is a significant figure, and Italy an experimental laboratory where our future is being worked out. If our political choice is between permissive-liberal technocratism and fundamentalist populism, Berlusconi’s great achievement has been to reconcile the two, to embody both at the same time … This is perhaps the saddest aspect of his reign: his democracy is a democracy of those who win by default, who rule through cynical demoralization.
…
In today’s Italy, state power is directly exerted by the bourgeois, [and Berlusconi and the Bourgeouis] openly exploits it as a means to protect his own economic interest, and who parades his personal life as if he were taking part in a reality TV show.

As it happens, when he is gone, which won’t be long, like many of the people who have been kicked out of the Grande Fratello house, it seems he will have the chance to (re)start a music career.

Motherhood is a wonderful thing, a noble venture and perhaps the most important task a human being can perform; but it’s not the only wonderful, noble or important achievement that women are capable of.

Birth control was a revolution and the resulting, newfound reproductive sovereignty gave women more freedom and yes, more choices. That is why I have always been pro-choice.

Regardless of how much religious zealots, pro-lifers or chauvinists of the old patriarchal order try to make abortion the central issue of the day or the next presidential election, it’s simply neither and, to be honest, it’s not even the most immoral or destructive abortive process that affects our daily lives.

A thought is a living thing. It begins as an infinitesimally small electrical impulse. Coordinating synapses. Connective neurons.

If it’s allowed to thrive, it can become a way of seeing, a path to knowledge or a means of survival. If it’s allowed to live and breathe in the life of the mind, it can become an idea or an ideal and perhaps even evolve into a revelation.

Today, unfortunately, too many critical thoughts are willfully terminated before they are begotten. Our minds are pregnant with perceptions and understanding, but too many of our conceptions don’t survive to fruition. Too many of our intellectual offspring never see the light of day.

They say an abortion of the reproductive variety is performed every 30 seconds in America. I suggest to you that an abortion of the intellectual variety is perpetrated a million times every 30 seconds.

I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking I’m not going to pull this metaphor off. But at least you’re thinking. An intellectual concept is in play.

You and I are consummating a thought process, but you want to make sure the cerebration is healthy or acceptable to you before you allow it into your world. So be it.

Most opponents of reproductive abortion are religious. They believe reproductive abortion takes a life, prevents a life or generally interferes with God’s original commandment (the first instructions He ever gave us): “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Their claims may be correct or at least exhibit correctness, but their reasoning is stunted and hypocritical. Through conditioned naivete or mandated ignorance, the thought processes relative to this issue were aborted, lest progenitors be stuck with unwanted notions or demanding insights that they were not prepared to nurture.

Reproductive abortion does block and prevent a life and interfere with God’s first commandment. But anyone whose thought processes are not institutionally or piously aborted knows that birth control pills and condoms also block or prevent lives and interfere with God’s first instruction.

So if you’re on the pill or using condoms, sponges, diaphragms, etc., you can’t condemn abortion. All birth control measures are part and parcel of the same perceived sin. And, if we’re being honest, we shouldn’t be waiting till we’ve finished high school or college or until we’ve put a mortgage down on our first house either. God didn’t command us to just be fruitful when it was convenient.

The cognitive impulse you and I have pursued is now a growing thought process. Is it kicking yet?

If we can stave off our conditioned, critical thought-aborting tendencies towards ignorance, we can agree that birth control isn’t a bad thing. It can obviously be unpleasant and it may often be abused, but thought control is arguably worse.

We’ve been reproductively fruitful. The shape of our planet is a testament to that.

It’s time to be intellectually fruitful and multiply our critical thought processes, embrace independent cognition and nurture practicable, mortal insights instead of deferring to antiquated, default supernatural commandments.

Congratulations! We may just have created a new consciousness.

Gosnell is a well-known figure in Powelton Village, where his clinic is located, and Mantua, where he has a mansion on a hill, overlooking the Schuylkill River. Before opening his “baby charnel house” abortion mill, Gosnell operated the Mantua Halfway House. Even as he collected millions in government funding to rehab drug addicts, he dealt methadone. He even hired a noted artist, Joe Tiberino, to paint an anti-drug mural on the building where he sold drugs. At the Powelton clinic, Gosnell also dispensed pills illegally. Prescriptions were pre-signed, to be handed out by a 15-year-old receptionist. Hey, if Queen Victoria could push opium, and the C.I.A. ferry tons of heroin here and there, why shouldn’t this small time doctor drop a few tablets onto needy hands?

Mantua, also known as “The Bottom,” is a crime and drug ridden neighborhood. It’s curious that Gosnell, a millionaire, would buy a house there, albeit a Victorian mansion. He decorated it with oil paintings, hired Polish maids. Tall, well-educated and exercised, Gosnell belongs to a family that’s been financially comfortable for generations. The power and prestige of the black elite were undercut by racial integration, however. Your average black man could now enter a white restaurant, put his money in a white bank, open his mouth to a white dentist. Gosnell survived this sea change by selling drugs to his fellow blacks and by aborting or killing black babies. When white women entered his clinic, they were led to a cleaner area and treated with more consideration. As he explained, quite candidly, to his mixed race staff, “It’s the way of the world.”

Nearly half of all black pregnancies in America end in abortion. Whatever your politics, that should be an alarming statistic. (Worldwide, the highest rate of abortions belongs to the country of my birth, Vietnam.) A week before the Gosnell story broke, there was a news item about a Memphis high school where 90 girls were pregnant. High rates of abortions and teen pregnancies can only result in head and heart aches.

The sexual revolution coincided with better and more accessible methods of contraception, but as this sexual culture became all pervasive and entrenched, means for dealing with it responsibly have not always been available. Many poor women have no doctors, hence no birth control pills. Pregnant, they have inadequate or no prenatal care. Should they need an abortion, they must wait to come up with the cash. In Italy, home of the Catholic Church, where many nuns work in public hospitals and there’s a crucifix in every hospital room, abortions are performed for free. Why? Because they have universal health care.

Indicting Gosnell, the Philadelphia District Attorney stated, “Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago.” Casualties of his botched abortions were also routinely brought to local emergency rooms, yet no outside doctors intervened. In short, plenty of people saw what was happening, but they were either too callous, cynical or bureaucratic to care.

If bad, corrupt and neglectful government and atrocious health care are signs of third-worldness, then much of the United States is already there. We’re number three! Our brand of Third World is unique, however. We have managed to become both over and under developed. Unlike teeming Third World shanty towns, our slums are desolate and nearly devoid of street activities. Even before dark, everyone is bolt, chain and padlocked inside, watching 500 channels. Poverty always means the pettiest commerce, peddling and hustling, selling stuff and service from home or on the sidewalk, but this unregulated trade exists much less in America. With the strictest zoning laws on the planet, we basically outlaw survival on the lowest rungs. You can’t just set up a two table restaurant in your kitchen, offer candies and sodas on your stoops, or walk around mumbling, “Cigarettes, cigarettes,” though our poorest do try.

Recently, I sat in a bar in West Philadelphia, not far from Gosnell’s clinic. Within three hours, three men wandered in to sell incense, sheets of a Xeroxed, quite atrocious poem and (probably fake) Sex in the City perfume. Just outside Philly, in Chester, where Martin Luther King went to college, you can see men sell body oils, incense, clothing and nominal books on the sidewalks of its abject downtown. This mode of survival will spread, so the government should leave these tenacious Americans alone. What it shouldn’t neglect to do, however, is to protect our most vulnerable — and you can’t be more helpless than a newly born infant — from predators like Kermit Gosnell.

Several days have passed since this story broke, yet there’s no uproar from the mainstream or even alternative media. This is the biggest mass murder in U.S. history. Within walking distance of downtown Philadelphia, and merely six blocks from UPenn, a $40,000 a year, Ivy League school, hundreds of babies were butchered as government officials looked the other way. With failure and depravity on so many levels, there has been no national mourning or soul searching. That, in itself, is a tragedy.

My mom and dad say I can move a trailer in next to theirs whether Bocephus marries me or not. They’ll help in any way they can. But I don’t want to marry that idiot. I half think he got me pregnant on purpose. And I definitely don’t know if I’m ready or mature enough to bear or raise a child. I need to finish school. I probably should try to go to college.

I decide to get an abortion, but the state’s new abortion laws treat me like a criminal. The Bocephuses in the Oklahoma state legislature have decided that if I want to terminate my pregnancy, I have to see an ultrasound and listen to a doctor tell me about my fetus’s heart and lungs and limbs. It doesn’t matter whether or not trusting a Bocephus got me into this mess. And if wouldn’t matter if he raped me or was my own brother. I have watch this video and they get to treat me like a criminal.

I’ve thought about it a lot and I think I’ve got my head around it. I think I’ll go through with the abortion and then leave this crappy state, but first I have some questions.

How come Bocephus isn’t being punished for lying to me? And how come he isn’t required by law to sit and watch the ultrasound? He’s the one who was in such a God-awful hurry. And he probably thinks he’s got me right where he wants me. That scarlet letter from that book in English is still only for women. It just stands for a different word.

The Bocephuses in the state legislature may think there needs to be a law like this to make girls like me think twice before getting an abortion, but they’re wrong. I get it. Pro-lifers want a woman to think about what she’s doing, preventing a life or ending a life. They want me to feel a cramp of conscience, but they’re wasting their time. I already do. And I already know that what I’m going to do makes me kind of like a monster in their eyes. But I ain’t the only one.

Before a doctor or pro-lifer decides what I should or shouldn’t do with my body, shouldn’t he or she have to watch a video of an illegal, back-woods abortion? And before the Bocephuses in the state legislature decide I have to watch film of the fetus that’s just barely inside me, shouldn’t they have to watch a video detailing the death and infertility rates caused by black-market abortions?

And if a young, struggling, three-quarters educated girl like me has to be held to some kind of higher standard, why shouldn’t everybody be held to a higher standard?

Why don’t the Bocephuses post pictures of seagulls covered in oil at every gas pump so you can see what you’re doin’ every time you buy gas? Why don’t the Bocephuses put pictures of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch at the grocery checkout stands so you can see what you’re contributing to every time you carry out your Pringles and Jif in plastic bags?

Do the military people who operate the Predator drones have to see pictures of bloody and maimed Afghan babies before they launch fresh attacks? Why didn’t the American people get the chance to watch young Muslim men being waterboarded over and over before the Bocephuses at Fox News told them it wasn’t torture?

And as we listen to coal industry bosses trying to convince us how safe coal power is, how come nobody shows actual video or pictures of black lung disease? How come smokers don’t have to watch video of what smoking does to their lungs? How come drinkers don’t have to watch video of what drinking does to their livers.

Here in America, we’re all killing or dying in one way or another and it’s our God-given right. But when foolish, unwed Sooner girls try to make decisions concerning their own bodies, that’s a sin. I’d rather have an abortion any day than raise a baby in Oklahoma.

Contrary to media reports last week, the “Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments” or HB12, which previously also applied to miscarriages caused by “reckless” acts, was never “withdrawn” by its sponsor, Republican Representative Carl Wimmer (who is crafting similar “model legislation” for other states). After the governor expressed concern over “possible unintended consequences,” of the legislation as written, Rep. Wimmer swiftly introduced a new version, titled “Criminal Homicide and Abortion Revisions” (HB462), which omitted the word “reckless.” Gov. Herbert signed the new bill and vetoed the old one.

In a letter to legislative leaders on Monday, the governor wrote: ”I appreciate the willingness of Representative Wimmer to reevaluate the impact of potential unintended consequences arising from the inclusion of ‘reckless’ behavior in HB12. HB 462 is more consistent with the true intent of the legislation and addresses those situations in which the termination of a pregnancy is intentional and is not conducted at a physician’s direction.”

Nevertheless, women’s and civil rights groups say the new, just-signed version of the bill is just as dangerous.

“We are still passing legislation which seeks to criminalize women for their actions,” Marina Lowe, legislative and policy counsel for the ACLU of Utah, told AlterNet. “The language is still problematic.” 

The original bill, which passed the Utah House and Senate a few weeks ago, attracted widespread condemnation and even international attention. But organizations like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood say most media coverage is missing the larger issue.

“Everyone’s focusing on the bill, but no one is talking about how we got here,” Melissa Bird, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Council in Utah, told AlterNet. “I’m thrilled the media have picked this up, but we need to start from the beginning.” 

Starting from the beginning means revisiting the case of a 17-year-old girl from Vernal, Utah, who was seven months pregnant last May, when she paid 21-year-old Aaron Harrison $150 to beat her up after her boyfriend threatened to leave her if she didn’t terminate the pregnancy. 

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Harrison brought the girl to the basement of his parent’s house and attacked and kicked her, leaving bruises on her stomach and a bite mark on her neck. The baby survived the assault, was born in August, and has since been adopted. 

Harrison, who faced 15 years in prison, pleaded guilty to second-degree felony attempted murder, but instead got up to five years, after District Judge A. Lynn Payne sentenced him under Utah’s anti-abortion statute, saying a charge of third-degree “attempted killing of an unborn child” better fit the facts of the case, according to the Tribune. 

In June, the 17-year-old girl, whose name has not been released because of her age, pleaded no contest to a second-degree felony count of criminal solicitation to commit murder. Juvenile Court Judge Larry Steele ordered that she be placed in the custody of Utah Juvenile Justice Services until she turns 21, but she was released in October after the judge said that, under state law, “a woman who solicits or seeks to have another cause an abortion of her own unborn child cannot be criminally liable.”

That’s when Rep. Wimmer stepped in.

“The judge is absolutely stretching,” he said after the ruling. “There’s no way the judge believes the Utah Legislature left open this loophole [in the law]. I guarantee it will be closed this next session.” 

Rep. Wimmer introduced the Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments bill on December 14, and the Criminal Homicide and Abortion Revisions bill (minus the word “reckless”) on March 4. Both bills passed overwhelmingly, on February 24 and March 5 respectively, with little debate. 

Democratic Senator Ben McAdams, one of just four of 29 senators who voted against both pieces of legislation (three Democratic female senators voted for both), says the revised bill still sets a dangerous precedent that would “open up a Pandora’s box” of unintended legal consequences that will be hard to reverse. “Even the word ‘knowingly’ will result in unintended consequences,” he told AlterNet.

Planned Parenthood’s Melissa Bird says the same questions that so alarmed the bill’s earlier critics still apply to the rewritten version that was just signed into law.

“What happens to women who are in abusive relationships?” she asks. “What happens if a woman threatens to leave the abuser, falls down the stairs and loses the baby? What if the abuser beats the woman and causes a miscarriage? Could he turn her in? Who would the prosecutor believe? What happens if a drug addict who’s trying to get clean loses her baby? Will she be brought up on murder charges?” 

Rep. Wimmer claims such women would not be prosecuted because they didn’t knowingly act to terminate their pregnancies. But Bird says that is not necessarily the point.

“Even if the prosecutor doesn’t take the case, nothing precludes a woman from being brought to the attention of law enforcement in the first place,” she said. “What we’re doing is driving women underground and preventing them from getting health care and prenatal care.”

To put this in human terms, had Rep. Wimmer’s bill been on the books last spring — and had the 17-year-old’s fetus not survived — she would have faced a prison sentence of 15 years to life. Rep. Wimmer says he’s OK with that because the teenager has to face the “consequences of her barbaric actions.” 

“It’s pretty rare for a politician to openly support jail time for girls who have abortions, no matter how desperate they seem to be” a 40-something abortion provider who asked to remain anonymous, told AlterNet. “This is extreme. Mark my words. If they can get away with this, they will try to make abortion illegal in the state of Utah. People need to wake up.”

‘No One Wants to Defend Abortion’

Rep. Wimmer, who is a conservative Christian, makes no attempt to hide his anti-choice agenda.

According to his Web site, as chairman of the Utah Family Action Council, “we are continually working to pass pro-life legislation which will weaken Roe v. Wade. Abortions should be reserved for extreme cases only.” 

Upon learning of Rep. Wimmer’s planned legislation to put girls and women behind bars for “reckless” miscarriages, Planned Parenthood’s Bird called his office.

“I said, ‘Don’t do this until we sit down and talk,’” she told AlterNet. “There wasn’t a real willingness on the part of not only our elected officials, but also our local media, to find out how this young girl got into the circumstance she was in. I was trying to start that conversation, but nobody was willing to go there.”

“Yes, it’s mortifying,” Bird continued. “But should we be passing a law like this when we’re not even willing to talk about how she got pregnant? We do know she was living in poverty. We know she was from an incredibly rural part of the state and had no access to sex education or reproductive health care services.”

For activists and family planning advocates, this gets to the crux of this issue.

“Even without this legislation, I wouldn’t say throwing women in jail for having miscarriages is outside the realm of possibility,” says the Utah ACLU’s Marina Lowe. “The larger issue is whether or not our young people have access to information and services, especially people in remote parts of the state.” 

Planned Parenthood closed its clinic in Vernal, Utah 10 years ago. Three clinics offer abortions in Utah — all located in Salt Lake City, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Vernal. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for sexual and reproductive health in the United States, 93 percent of all Utah counties have no abortion provider. 

“This is a nationwide problem,” says Dr. William Adams, 74, an abortion provider who runs the Mountain View Clinic in Salt Lake City. “I became an OB/GYN in 1973, the year abortion became legal. Since then, it’s only gotten worse,” 

“I see women from southeastern Idaho, western Wyoming, and occasionally some from eastern Nevada,” Dr. Adams told AlterNet. “They don’t have providers there.”

Dr. Adams says Utah’s legislation is extreme, but not unexpected.

“Nothing really surprises me anymore,” he said. “What saddens me is the fact that no one wants to defend abortion, not even the women who have one. We’re not even teaching our kids how to be responsible so they won’t get pregnant or get STDs.”

Chlamydia More Likely Than Chicken Pox In Utah

Ironically, just three days after Utah’s House and Senate overwhelmingly passed Rep. Wimmer’s Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments bill, the Senate refused to even debate legislation that would have allowed teachers to provide comprehensive sex education to students who had their parent’s permission. Current state law says teachers can’t advocate or endorse the use of contraceptive methods or devices, according to Bird.

“If you teach about chlamydia, you’re allowed to say, ‘This is a condom and this is chlamydia.’ The law would have allowed teachers to say, ‘If you’re having sex, you can use a condom to prevent chlamydia. Abstinence is the best way, but if you’re not abstinent, use a condom.’” 

Every day in Utah, 12 teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 become pregnant. Chlamydia is the number one most reported communicable disease in the state, according to the Utah Department of Health. In 2007 there were 5,721 newly reported cases; 3,748 of those cases (66 percent) were diagnosed in individuals between the ages of 15 and 24. In Utah, you’re more likely to get chlamydia than chicken pox or the flu. 

“Young girls are getting chlamydia and they’re not learning about it until they might be infertile,” Emma Waitzman, an 18-year-old senior at Salt Lake City’s West High School, told AlterNet. “That’s morally wrong.”   Waitzman has spent the past year working to get comprehensive sex education in Utah schools by organizing students, confronting conservatives, starting a Facebook group for Comprehensive Sex Ed in Utah, attending legislative hearings and meeting with legislators. She’s told legislators about girls who had to switch schools because of unwanted pregnancies. Another girl she knew had gonorrhea of the mouth. 

“We talked to legislators who said, ‘If you really want to share the information, then do it yourself,’” she recalls. “We said, ‘No, it’s not our responsibility. It’s yours.’ I couldn’t believe a grown man was saying this to me. Are we going to have to teach ourselves?”

A statewide poll conducted in September found that 67 percent of Utahns believe comprehensive sex-ed would “likely reduce the number of unintended teen pregnancies.” The poll was paid for by Planned Parenthood.

Waitzman says the students at her school aren’t politically active, but this issue has raised awareness and interest.

The same applies to parents, says Lori Harward, founder of PTA Parents for Comprehensive Sex-Ed.

“This is a very hush-hush issue in Utah,” Harward told AlterNet. “Even my good friends get defensive when I talk about it.”

Although she is religious and prefers teaching abstinence, Harward says it is irresponsible not to provide students with comprehensive sex ed.

“It’s time to speak out,” she said. “We’re a predominantly LDS [Latter-day Saints] state. It’s conservative here. I am LDS myself. I go to temple. I totally believe in this church. I believe in abstinence only, but I have four girls and I would be a fool to think that all of my children are going to choose abstinence. I grew up in this state and almost everyone was having sex. Let’s get real.”

Parents and students in favor of comprehensive sex education showed up on the day the Senate was supposed to debate the bill late last month, but instead of being asked to share their opinions and concerns, they were ignored. “I felt so disrespected,” says Waitzman. “Is this what politics is about?” 

Despite that disappointing experience, she organized a March for Sexual Education on Saturday in Salt Lake City and plans to continue the fight. “The bill is still alive in the House. We can’t give up. I have a feeling that they would like us to just go away, but that’s not going to happen.”

First published at AlterNet.

Over the past two months, right-wing extremists have assassinated an abortion doctor in Wichita, Kansas, murdered three policemen in Pittsburgh, and killed a security guard while attempting to shoot up the U.S. National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

While all of these incidents appear to have been carried out by so-called “lone wolves” — right-wing extremists steep in movement politics but acting on their own initiative — all three killers have ties to, or have been involved with, radical right-wing organizations.

Scott Roeder, the alleged killer of Dr. George Tiller, has been identified with the right-wing Freeman movement, and was apparently related to the Army of God, one of the 1990s most radical anti-abortion groups.

According to friends of Richard Poplawski, the man accused of ambushing and murdering three Pittsburgh policemen, the killer was worried that the Obama Administration was poised to ban guns, a charge that has been repeatedly made by right-wing columnists and conservative hosts of talk radio programs. “If a total collapse is what it takes to wake our brethren and guarantee future generations of white children walk this continent, if that is what it takes to restore our freedoms and recapture our land: Let it begin this very second and not a moment later,” Poplawski wrote on a white supremacist Web site under the name Braced for Fate, the Anti-Defamation League recently noted. James W. von Brunn, the 88-year-old white supremacist who allegedly took a rifle into the museum and killed security guard Stephen T. Johns, an African American, was steeped in anti-Jewish, anti-Black and anti-immigrant hatred, was a Holocaust denier who had deep roots in the white nationalist movement.

The Wichita assassination and the Holocaust Museum attack occurred a month or so after the release of a report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which warned of the possibility of an uptick in violent activities by right-wing extremist groups.

The report pointed out that the election of America’s first African American president, the sharp economic downturn, rising unemployment, and unfounded rumors that the administration of Barack Obama would be pushing for stricter gun control regulations, could fuel a resurgence of “right-wing extremist groups,” bringing with it a spate of homegrown terrorist activities.

The DHS assessment, titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” — originally ordered up by the Bush Administration — pointed out that “Right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.”

“The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s [during the Clinton administration] when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers,” the assessment read.

“Proposed imposition of firearms restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of right-wing extremist groups . . . The high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by right-wing extremists in anticipation of restrictions and bans in some parts of the country continue to be a primary concern to law enforcement,” the report stated.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Sara Kuban said the assessment was one in an ongoing series published by DHS “to facilitate a greater understanding of radicalization in the United States.” An earlier report had focused on possible violence by left-wing activists.

“DHS has no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but right-wing extremists may be gaining new recruitments by playing on their fears about several emerging issues,” Kuban pointed out.

Release of the DHS assessment incurred the immediate wrath of a number of right-wing talk show hosts, commentators, and columnists. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson pointed out that “some conservative commentators tried mightily to paint the memo as an underhanded attempt by the Obama administration to smear its honorable critics by equating ‘right wing’ with ‘terrorism.’”

A group spearheaded by some of America’s largest Religious Right groups — acting under the name No Political Profiling — released an ad that claimed the DHS report, “declared law-abiding citizens who express their First Amendment Rights as: ‘the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.’”

Jeffrey Mazzella of the Alexandria, Virginia-based Center for Individual Freedom was among the first who called for the firing of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Mat Staver, the founder of the Orlando, FL.-based Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian legal operation, decided to “match fire with fire.” In a move both political and entrepreneurial, Staver invited supporters to get an official laminated, wallet-sized (“personalized with your name”) complimentary “Right-wing Extremist” card, “and Take a Stand against the New Administration’s Attack Machine.”

While originally pointing out that the card would be sent free (he now is apparently asking for a specific donation), Staver noted that “there are expenses associated with this national campaign, so any financial support you provide will be greatly appreciated and put to immediate use in advancing and protecting our precious liberties.”

In response to the criticism, the DHS pulled its report, promising to come up with a revised edition. Thus far, there has been no revised edition.

In a recent piece posted at PolitickerNY.com, Joe Conason pointed out that the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that “authorities have discovered more than five dozen terror conspiracies by far-right groups, including militia outfits, neo-Nazi gangs and others claiming that their cause is above the law,” over the past fifteen or so years. “The Oklahoma City bombing was only the most notorious and tragic of those plots, which have cost lives, damaged property and infringed on our safety and freedom,” Conason noted. “The late Dr. Tiller, who was shot on an earlier occasion, was the eighth U.S. abortion provider murdered since 1977. At least 17 others have been targets for attempted murder.”

In its spring 2009 report, the SPLC, an Alabama-based watchdog group tracking hate groups for 30 years, found more than 900 hate groups — including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, and Black separatists — currently operating in the U.S., an all-time high.

“Right across the board, extremist groups are thriving right now,” says Mark Potok, Director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. Potok, who attributed the rise in the number of hate groups to a number of reasons including the election of Obama and unresolved immigration issues, pointed out that “We’re looking at a kind of perfect storm of factors that really favor the continued growth of these groups.”

Responding to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, Attorney General Eric Holder sent federal marshals to protect doctors, nurses and abortion clinics from possible attack. But that may not be enough. And, in the aftermath of the attack at the Holocaust Museum, it remains to be seen how many people will be applying for Mat Staver’s “Right-Wing Extremist” card!

Meanwhile, as a guest on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program recently pointed out, protesters in front of health clinics across the country have been emboldened by Dr. Tiller’s assassination, and have been cranking up the rhetoric and violent threats. And, the announcement on Tuesday, June 9, by the Tiller family that the Wichita clinic would be closed permanently, is an indication that homegrown terrorists have won another round.

The American anti-choice movement was ecstatic, claiming it represented a tremendous victory for “life.”

In cruel reality, it was anything but.

Completely overlooked was the grim fact that, throughout the impoverished Third World, clinics and other entities offering females vital medical attention were also, frequently, the only sources of health care for the general populace.

Thus, when U.S. assistance dried up, those facilities often either dramatically reduced what already inadequate help they were giving — in areas well beyond just women’s issues — or had to close their doors altogether.

We can only guess how many tens of thousands of people, sick from many causes, either suffered grievously or died because of this objectively destructive policy decision.

Thankfully, Barack Obama immediately reversed Bush’s horrendously wrong-headed prohibition, restoring hope to multitudes around the planet.

But anti-choice zealots, typically bereft of reason and rationality, are now viewing our new President as a facilitator of “murder”!

Their misplaced horror over what Obama did was doubled when the White House also rescinded a Bush-era proscription against embryonic stem-cell research, which is key to possibly finding cures for a host of diseases ravaging the human species.

All the anti-choicers can focus on is their fetish-like belief that even a simple zygote can and should be equated with already-born, living, breathing, socially functioning souls suffering in myriad, painful ways by the millions because progressive socio-politico-economic-scientific notions that would be their salvation are thwarted…by powerful reactionary forces of which the “pro-life” cause is a pivotal component.

We’ve all seen how this de facto barbarism works in our own country.

Women or girls who find themselves pregnant against their wishes and then seek abortions are deemed selfish and irresponsible at best, or full accomplices in murder at worst. Their alleged ethical failing is counterpoised with the heavily emphasized innocence of the “baby,” never mind if it’s just an early-stage fetus.

Always absent from this facile fixing of blame is the possibility, very real in countless instances, that the pregnancies in question might be the result of outright criminal rape, or that reprehensible male exploitation of females for sexual use, the “you’ll do it if you really love me” quasi-crime of date rape.

But we’re not supposed to think of such things. They’d rather have us just drive down the highway and be propagandized by those big billboards of cute babies well past birth happily playing with a top or a ball, in a cynical deception that they’re synonymous with what’s “killed” when a desperate female elects to have an abortion.

And don’t worry about the fact that, even before our current economic meltdown began taking a terrible toll on U.S. living standards, a new American baby was born into poverty every 33 seconds.

That circumstance is in no small measure the result of how conservatives, so piously devoted to embryonic life, commonly abandon all concern for life after birth, as it ought to be properly manifested in governmental/societal programs that would eliminate overall poverty, erase male-female income disparities, guarantee affordable day care and health care, or reverse any of countless other incredibly burdensome injustices that, combined, are a leading reason for females asserting, “No way can I have a baby now!”

Clinging to untenable positions wildly at odds with reality is the anti-choice movement’s sad hallmark, along with incendiary rhetoric that leads to violence against abortion providers.

Comprehensive sex education and ready contraceptive availability would unquestionably result in far fewer unwanted pregnancies, plus a great lessening in AIDs and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The very mechanism that would largely obviate much of their almost hysterical abortion concern, quite incredibly, is actually rejected by the anti-choice movement.

Clearly, abortion absurdity and intolerance need to be firmly resisted.

As anyone who just stops to think for a moment can quickly grasp, it isn’t right for somebody else, for whatever imagined reason, to force another person to not have (or have, for that matter) something so personal and difficult to decide upon as an abortion.

It has to strictly be a matter of each pregnant individual’s own decision, based on her assessment of all factors bearing on the situation.

There should be no Taliban-like moral imperialism that effectively demands, “I know what’s best, and you’ll do as I say!”

No deranged “justice” that kills those who actively prioritize women’s rights and health by appropriately and quite morally acceding to females’ pained need to obtain abortions.

We can respect, however, those who wouldn’t have abortions themselves, out of principle, but who are themselves tolerant enough to permit others to reach a possibly contrary decision regarding their own pregnancies.

May we speedily move forward to the badly needed enlightenment that this whole question unquestionably deserves.

Newman is president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which for years has targeted the Wichita, Kan., abortion clinic of Dr. George Tiller. Seven years ago, the group even moved its headquarters to Wichita–the better to harass Tiller, his employees and his patients, up close and personal.

But now Dr. Tiller, one of a small number of doctors anywhere in the U.S. who would perform late-term abortions, has been murdered–shot in the face (to avoid his bullet-proof vest) as he attended church on June 1, allegedly by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder.

And Newman is concerned about a PR disaster–since it’s hard to call your movement “pro life” when it assassinates doctors.

Newman’s regret, of course, isn’t for Dr. Tiller. It’s not for the employees of Women’s Health Care Services, who still face harassment at their homes, where Operation Rescue blankets their neighborhoods with pictures of aborted fetuses.

Nor does Newman care about Tiller’s patients–the women (some of them children) who were victims of rape and incest, or whose pregnancies faced medical complications and fetal abnormalities. These women and their partners were often forced to run a gauntlet of Operation Rescue protesters just to enter Women’s Health Care Services and exercise their legal right to choose abortion.

No, Newman’s worry is that the murder of Dr. Tiller has ripped the mask off the “pro-life” movement and exposed an ugly truth–just behind the “respectable” front that preaches “saving babies” is a group of violent fanatics who are determined to put an end to women’s right to chose abortion “by any means necessary.”

In any other context, a movement that carried out the kind of violence the anti-abortion movement has over the past two decades would be called what it is: terrorist. But most of the media–not to mention politicians–refuse to do so.

The double standard is striking. In May, when a group of men were accused of plotting to carry out bombings of two Bronx synagogues and to shoot down military aircraft, the media featured screaming headlines about “terrorism” on U.S. soil, and politicians promised the public would be protected. This was despite the fact that the alleged “terrorists” never had access to weapons, nor harmed a single person or engaged in a single act of violence.

The modern U.S. anti-abortion movement, on the other hand, has a long and terrible record of bombings, arsons, acid attacks and vandalism at clinics across the country–and a string of murders to answer for.

As the National Abortion Federation web site details, “Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, there has been an organized campaign by anti-abortion extremists which has resulted in escalating levels of violence against women’s health care providers.”

The first reported clinic arson in 1976 has been followed by more than 200 other arsons and bombings. Beginning in the early 1990s, some anti-choice activists began injecting butyric acid–which produces a rancid, vomit-like odor–into the walls of clinics. There were approximately 100 separate acid attacks on clinics between 1991 and 1998, causing more than $1 million in damage.

Between 1998 and 2002, 654 letters purporting to contain anthrax were sent to clinics. In November 2001 (just after the September 11 attacks, and in the wake of real anthrax attacks that killed five people), anti-abortion activist Clayton Waagner sent more than 500 fake anthrax letters to various clinics. Though none of the letters turned out to contain real anthrax, clinics were shut down in some cases.

If Scott Roeder was the man who murdered Dr. Tiller, as police allege, he is far from the first to kill an abortion provider in the U.S. Including Dr. Tiller, at least four abortion providers have been assassinated [2] by anti-choice extremists since 1993.

That year, Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside a Pensacola, Fla., clinic. The following year, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed by former minister Paul Hill outside another abortion clinic in Pensacola. In 1998, anti-choice extremist James Kopp killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home in Amherst, N.Y.

Clinic staff and others have also been killed or injured in attacks–like the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., clinic, in which nurse Emily Lyons was maimed and off-duty police officer Robert Sanderson killed by bomber Eric Rudolph.

Dr. Tiller was long targeted for death by the anti-choice movement. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, who was later also convicted of multiple clinic arsons and acid attacks.

Scott Roeder himself has a history of targeting clinics. Recently, he was caught two weekends in a row–the second being the day before Tiller’s murder–allegedly attempting to put glue in the locks of another Kansas clinic, Central Family Medicine. But when clinic staff called the FBI to report the vandalism (and provide a description of the suspect, complete with car license plate number), they were reportedly told by the FBI that there was nothing that could be done until a grand jury could be convened.

These actions are designed to prevent women from exercising their legal right to an abortion–and to frighten doctors and clinic staff from providing care. If that doesn’t qualify as terrorism, then what does?

Some anti-choice activists, like Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman, condemned Dr. Tiller’s murder and publicly professed that they “abhor violence.” But others couldn’t hide their glee at Tiller’s killing.

Randall Terry, the founder and former president of Operation Rescue, staged a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where he denied that the anti-choice movement is responsible for Tiller’s death–but added that Tiller “was a mass-murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

Regina Dinwiddie, who protested at clinics alongside Scott Roeder, told CNN that Tiller’s slaying was “absolutely” justified. “He forfeited his life by taking the lives of innocent children,” she said.

Talk radio host Steve Deace had the gall to compare Scott Roeder to the 19th-century abolitionist John Brown. “Maybe the fact that we have a lawless society that has not protected these babies from infanticide created the Scott Roeders of the world, who in very John Brown-like fashion, illegally took matters into his own hands,” Deace said.

Not surprisingly, there are warnings that more violence could be on the way. Speaking to the Associated Press from his jail cell on June 7, Scott Roeder warned, “I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal.”

Colorado Right To Life spokesman Bob Enyart told the Los Angeles Times that abortion providers “should expect that violence begets violence.” In particular, Enyart had strong words for Dr. Warren Hern–a colleague of Dr. Tiller’s in Boulder, Colo., who has heroically pledged to carry on providing women with access to late-term abortion.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “the constant threats with which [Dr. Hern] has lived since 1973 have transformed his life into a series of security measures: sleeping with a rifle, scanning rooftops for snipers, wearing a protective vest.”

But whether they publicly denounce violence or not, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest an ideological connection–if not more–between groups like Operation Rescue and the more violent wing of the anti-abortion movement.

After he was arrested, authorities searched Scott Roeder’s car and found a Post-It note with the name “Cheryl” and a phone number. That number belongs to Cheryl Sullenger–the senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue–who, after first denying ever having spoken to Roeder, acknowledged speaking with him on several occasions (though never about anything substantial, she claims).

In a statement claiming that Roeder had no affiliation with Operation Rescue, the group stated, “Operation Rescue has diligently and successfully worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see to it that abortionists around the nation are brought to justice. Without due process, there can be no justice.”

Yet there was nothing peaceful or legal about the clinic firebombing that Cheryl Sullenger planned in 1988. Though it was not carried out, Sullenger spent two years in prison for her role in conspiring to bomb the Alvarado Medical Center in California.

So Operation Rescue abhors violence…but employs a convicted terrorist?

Like other anti-choice groups, Operation Rescue claims to be peaceful, but it does everything in its power to make life a living hell for abortion providers and clinic staff. As a 2004 report in Rolling Stone details, the group targeted everyone connected to Dr. Tiller, however casually–using tactics that seem to invite the potential of violence without necessarily crossing any legal lines.

For example, Sara Phares, an administrative assistant at Dr, Tiller’s clinic, was sent a letter by Troy Newman suggesting she should “quit her job and repent her sins.” A week later, hundreds of Phares’ neighbors were sent postcards with pictures of aborted fetuses that accused Phares of “killing babies like these.” The cards listed Phare’s phone number and home address.

That was followed by Operation Rescue protesters appearing at Phares’ home, according to Rolling Stone:

They parked a tractor-trailer across the street, plastered with 20-foot-long images of dismembered fetuses. From its speakers came the kind of sweet, tinkling music that lures children from their backyards in pursuit of Dreamsicles. One protester, a somber man in a tan windbreaker with a three-foot crucifix thrust before him, performed an exorcism on Phares’ front lawn, sprinkling holy water on the grass to cast demons from the property.

Such tactics are designed to skirt the line of what’s legal–whipping up anti-choice sentiment and putting providers and clinic staff in the crosshairs, but allowing groups like Operation Rescue to claim they had no responsibility.

Former evangelical anti-choice activist Frank Schaeffer was one of the few who admitted that the anti-choice movement “helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.” As Schaeffer commented on the Huffington Post following Tiller’s murder:

The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as “murderers.” And today, once again, the “pro-life” leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I’d like to say on this day, after a man was murdered in cold blood for performing abortions, that I–and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church–all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.

Years ago, Troy Newman took out a full-page ad in the Catholic newspaper The Wanderer. In it, he declared: “Wichita isn’t big enough for George Tiller and me.” Looks like Newman finally got his wish.

If Troy Newman and his ilk are responsible for whipping up hatred, they are aided and abetted by the mainstream media and the politicians who applaud their cause.

Few in the press (a notable exception being MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow [6]) have been willing to call out the anti-choice movement for encouraging, promoting and creating a climate where this terrorist violence is okay.

Instead, for years, Fox News‘ Bill O’Reilly, repeatedly attacked Dr. Tiller on the air, referring to him as “Tiller the baby killer” and hurling outrageous lies–for example, that Tiller would “execute babies for $5,000 if the mother is depressed.”

During a 2006 show, O’Reilly said: “[I]f I could get my hands on Tiller…well, you know. Can’t be vigilantes. Can’t do that. It’s just a figure of speech.”

After Tiller’s murder, O’Reilly joined the chorus of those trying to wash their hands of the violence [7]. Instead, O’Reilly insisted that he was being persecuted. “When I heard about Tiller’s murder, I knew that pro-abortion zealots and Fox News-haters would blame us for the crime,” he said, adding that the “far left is exploiting, EXPLOITING, the death” of Dr. Tiller for political gain.

O’Reilly, true to form, then reminded viewers that Tiller was responsible for destroying “60,000 fetuses who will never become American citizens.”

Naturally, there was no mention of the campaign of domestic terrorism engaged in by the anti-choice movement over a period of decades. In O’Reilly’s world, you’re only a terrorist if you’re non-white and a Muslim.

O’Reilly’s attitude is hardly unique. On the campaign trail last year, for example, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin repeatedly invoked the name of former Weather Underground figure Bill Ayers as a “domestic terrorist” to try to smear Barack Obama because of his casual association with Ayers.

But when NBC News reporter Brian Williams asked Palin, with running mate John McCain at her side, “Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition, Governor?” she refused to say yes.

“There’s no question that Bill Ayers, via his own admittance, was one who sought to destroy our U.S. capitol and our Pentagon…that is a domestic terrorist,” she told Williams. “Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans, or facilities that–it would be unacceptable. I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word ‘terrorist’ there.”

Such rhetoric isn’t surprising given that the modern Republican Party has depended on a base in the anti-choice Evangelical Right–which openly brags about setting Republican “values.”

But if the Republican Party has openly embraced such anti-choice zealots, the Democratic Party has been spineless in calling them out for it. Instead, the Democrats have constantly preached that “Middle America” wants “middle ground” on the question of abortion.

Thus, in April, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on right-wing extremism acknowledging, in a footnote, that groups opposed to abortion might be among the extremists. That’s hardly a shocking statement in light of the movement’s history of repeated violent actions.

Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the report at first–but after anti-choice groups protested vociferously, she said the section including anti-choice activists should not have been included.

That kind of weak-kneed response is, unfortunately, all too typical of the Democrats, who spend more time talking about finding “common ground” with anti-choice activists than fighting to defend abortion rights and abortion clinics.

Now that the anti-abortion forces have been exposed as preachers of violence and hate, in the wake of Dr. Tiller’s murder, activists should seize the opportunity to push back.

Why are women’s health clinics across this country forced to install video cameras and hire security guards? Why are doctors forced to wear bulletproof vests, and patients forced to struggle through a gauntlet of protesters?

If abortion remains legal, then why has the anti-choice movement been able to get away with creating a climate of terror that prevents physicians from practicing, and women from exercising, their legal rights? And why have the Democrats been so willing to accept every restriction on a woman’s right to choose–from parental consent laws to mandatory waiting periods to forced ultrasounds.

This isn’t “common ground.” This is losing ground.

We need to build a new movement for abortion rights that fights to change the terrain of the debate–and pressures the government to hold the anti-choice terrorists accountable for their violence.

Tiller was one of the few remaining doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions. His murder is the culmination of a decades-long campaign against both him and Women’s Health Care Services, the clinic he operated.

In June 1986, Tiller’s clinic was bombed — no arrests were ever made in that case. Last month, the clinic was vandalized, with wires to security cameras and outdoor lights cut. The building’s roof was cut through, and downspouts were plugged, leading to flooding that caused thousands of dollars in damage. Tiller had reportedly asked the FBI to investigate.

In 1993, anti-abortion fanatic Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon attempted to murder Tiller, shooting him in both arms. Shannon remains behind bars, convicted of attempted murder and charges stemming from at least six arson and acid-attacks at clinics in Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho.

According to press reports, a suspect in the murder is in custody, though not charged–he is 51-year-old Scott Roeder of Merriam, Kan. Roeder was allegedly a member at one time of the anti-government militia group known as the “Freemen.” In 1996, he was reportedly found with bomb components in his car trunk.

In a comment left on an anti-abortion Web site two years ago, someone with the same name wrote: “Bleass (sic) everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp.”

Tiller is the fourth abortion provider to be gunned down by “pro-life” extremists since 1993.

That year, Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside a Pensacola, Florida, clinic. The following year, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed by former minister Paul Hill outside another abortion clinic in Pensacola. Hill had reportedly been “inspired” by Shannon’s attempted murder of Dr. Tiller the year before.

In 1998, anti-choice extremist James Kopp killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home in Amhest, N.Y.

As well, there have been dozens of clinic bombings, arsons and other attacks that have injured or frightened staff and volunteers across the country. This includes the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., clinic in which nurse Emily Lyons was maimed, and off-duty police officer Robert Sanderson killed by bomber Eric Rudolph.

The immediate aftermath of Tiller’s death included predictable statements from anti-abortion groups claiming that this murder does not represent their movement.

The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue was among those that mercilessly harassed Tiller in life, only to feign surprise and concern at his death. “We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down,” the group said in a statement on its Web site. “Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice.”

Yet Operation Rescue’s director Troy Newman moved the headquarters of the group’s operations to Wichita in 2002 specifically to target Dr. Tiller. The group launched a “Year of Rebuke” campaign in 2004 that targeted what it termed Tiller’s “collaborators” — anyone with political, professional or social ties to the doctor.

The “Year of Rebuke” included plans for protests at the home of every employee at Tiller’s clinic. Typical of the campaign were hundreds of postcards showing mangled fetuses that were sent to the neighbors of clinic employees like Sara Phares. As author Kimberley Sevcik noted in a Rolling Stone article “One man’s God squad“:

[The card read], “Your neighbor Sara Phares participates in killing babies like these.” The postcard implored them to call Phares, whose phone number and address were provided, and voice their opposition to her work at the clinic. Another card soon followed. It referred to Phares as “Miss I Help to Kill Little Babies” and suggested, in an erratic typeface that recalled a kidnapper’s ransom note, that neighbors “beg her to quit, pretty please.”

One of Phares’s neighbors, a federal agent, called her at work to warn her. “Just be careful, ma’am,” he said. “You never know what kind of nuts these things will draw.”

Founder and former head of Operation Rescue Randall Terry didn’t even pretend to be sorry about the murder. “George Tiller was a mass-murderer,” Terry told the Associated Press. “We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.”

Terry’s real concern was for the renewed scrutiny that the assassination might bring on the anti-choice movement. He told a reporter:

I am more concerned that the Obama administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions…Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

While a far-right fanatic may have pulled the trigger, the truth is that the “respectable” right–and the state of Kansas — put a very large target on George Tiller’s back.

Fox News blowhard Bill O’Reilly repeatedly attacked Tiller on air, referring to him as a “so-called baby killer” and the clinic as a “death mill.” In segments he called “Tiller the Baby Killer,” O’Reilly hurled wild accusations:

In the state of Kansas, there is a doctor, George Tiller, who will execute babies for $5,000 if the mother is depressed. And there are rapists impregnating 10-year-olds who are being protected by abortion clinics. It doesn’t get worse than that.

Tiller was also forced to defend himself against trumped-up criminal charges brought by the state. This March, he was acquitted on 19 counts of performing illegal late-term abortions in 2003. Jurors took just 45 minutes to find Tiller not guilty of failing to secure an independent second opinion, which, under Kansas law, is needed to perform late-term abortions.

The court case against Tiller was brought by then-Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline–an abortion opponent, who later lost re-election and has since become a law professor at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.

Given this kind of harassment, it’s not surprising that the number of physicians willing to provide abortions — in particular late-term abortions — has dramatically declined in U.S. in the past several decades.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2005, 87 percent of all U.S. counties (with 35 percent of the U.S. female population) lacked an abortion provider. Just 20 percent of providers offered abortion services after 20 weeks — and only 8 percent of all abortion providers offer abortions at 24 weeks.

This, combined with recent statistics from a Gallup poll, show a troubling shift to the right in attitudes on abortion in the U.S. According to the poll, for the “first time, a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.” The poll found 51 percent describing themselves as “pro-life,” up seven points from a year ago.

As SocialistWorker.org columnist Sharon Smith noted:

Since [Bill] Clinton’s election in 1992, the anti-abortion crusade has remained defiant while the pro-choice movement has been in steady retreat. This is the only way to understand how a small but dedicated army of religious zealots has managed to successfully transform the political terrain in its favor — and why a figure as ridiculous as Randall Terry is now regarded as legitimate within the political mainstream.

Dr. Tiller’s violent death at the hands of an anti-abortion extremist should be a wake-up call to supporters of the right of women to control their own bodies.

Despite the rhetoric — adopted today even by mainstream abortion rights groups — that “no woman wants to have an abortion” and that abortion should be “safe, legal and, above all, rare,” the truth is that some women do desperately need and want to have abortions, and they shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for it.

That was something Dr. George Tiller understood — and ultimately gave his life for. As a statement from Tiller’s family following his murder emphasized:

Our loss is also a loss for the City of Wichita and women across America. George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality heath care, despite frequent threats and violence. We ask that he be remembered as a good husband, father and grandfather, and a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, words came flowing forth from every conceivable direction. The media reported, longtime anti-abortion activists “condemned,” but few apologized for years of hate speech directed at Tiller.

In the hours following the murder of Dr, George Tiller, and the subsequent condemnations from Religious Right leaders, I remembered Jerry Falwell’s notorious post-9/11 remarks, blaming feminists and the ACLU, among others — and the uncomfortable flip-flopping that followed. It was clear that his comments represented what he was thinking. Yet it was also clear, as he tried to backtrack and apologize, that he realized he had monumentally goofed.

I was reminded of those wretched Falwell maneuverings on Monday evening while watching Frank Schaeffer — the son of the late Francis Schaeffer, one of the founding fathers and most revered figures on the Christian Right – point out during his appearance on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show that the condemnations of Tiller’s murder issued by leaders of the Christian Right seemed forced and empty.

The statements from anti-abortion leaders basically covered the same ground: they condemned the murder, expressed compassion for Tiller’s family, and hoped that the perpetrator would soon be captured and brought to justice.

“He reaped what he sowed”

It was left to Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, to pick up Falwell’s rhetorical baton. At a news conference at the National Press Club on Monday, June 1, Terry plainly stated that Tiller “was a mass murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

Terry said that Tiller would be remembered as “one of the villains of history.” “I grieve for Dr. Tiller because he left this life, perhaps without proper preparation to face God,” Terry said. “The thought of him leaving this life with blood on his hands for having killed so many thousands of children and not having been prepared to meet his maker is a dreadful, terrifying thought.”

Terry appeared to be verbalizing what other, more “respected” Christian Right leaders couldn’t. Since Terry has been outside the mainstream for years, he had the license to say whatever he wanted; the more extremist his rhetoric, the more national media he would receive. For Dobson, Perkins, et al, they had the political realities to reckon with.

Sharing the blame

For Frank Schaeffer, the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Live to Take it All (or Almost All) of it Back, and who had for years been privy to the backroom conversations of Christian Right operatives, the condemnations were a sham. Schaeffer dramatically opened an op-ed piece in the June 2 Baltimore Sun by writing: “My late father and I share part of the blame for the murder of Dr. George Tiller . . . ”

He pointed out how his father had “compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler’s Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion.” And Frank Schaeffer also noted, quoting from his own book:

“Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which, when taken seriously, lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed.”

While Schaeffer stated that abortion “should be legal,” he also believes “that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development.” Nevertheless, he recognizes that “the same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as ‘murderers.’ And today, once again, the ‘pro-life’ leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words.

”The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I’d like to say that I, and the people I worked with in the pro-life movement, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.”

Common Ground?

Sometime during the day after Tiller’s murder, I received another condemnation in my in-box. This one was from Faith In Public Life, an organization working hard to establish “common ground” amongst conservative and liberal religious leaders. (Thus far, I have been agnostic about “common ground” efforts.) The headline read “Religious Leaders Seeking Common Ground on Abortion: Condemn George Tiller’s Murder, Say Act Offends Us All”:

In reaction to the tragic murder of Dr. George Tiller, religious leaders and groups who hold different views on the legality of abortion, but a shared commitment to working towards common ground solutions to reduce abortions by addressing its root causes issued the following statement this morning:

“We were shocked and saddened to hear that Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his church yesterday morning. Such violence is an affront to the teachings of all faith traditions and an attack on civil society. Houses of worship have served as sanctuaries providing a safe harbor even in times of widespread violence for millennia — that this act took place in Dr. Tiller’s church where he was serving as an usher on Sunday morning only underscores its abhorrence. We condemn it, and we pray for Dr. Tiller’s family, church and community.

“As people of faith working to create civility and common ground on abortion, this reprehensible attack reminds us of our moral obligation to respect the humanity of those on both sides of this issue. Wherever we stand, this act offends us all.”

The statement was signed by a host of religious leaders.

In this e-mail, Faith in Public Life asked if I had any questions. This was my (immediate, angry and not all that articulate) response:

In my mind, the statement does not go far enough. Why haven’t these highly respected religious leaders that are condemning the murder of Dr. George Tiller at the same time, also condemn the hate talk that is spewed daily against abortion providers by a number of so-called Christian groups?

What good is merely a condemnation of the murder if it doesn’t try to get to one of the reasons that ordinary people commit such acts — the hate speech (calling doctors baby killers or even calling the president a baby killer) that drives people to it. Keep in mind that even James Dobson and Tony Perkins have condemned the murder. What good is a condemnation of Tiller’s murder if the hate speech that often inspires — perhaps even drives — one to commit such murders is not also condemned?

Your thoughts?

No response yet.

Infidels, non-believers, berserkers, in short, followers of Islam had gained control of the Holy Land and our armies were proving helpless against them. Though most of us had only heard of the fabled Holy Land , we were continuously exhorted that it was worth dying for. The people there had the wrong beliefs. It’s like they weren’t even people at all.

Across the land a cry rang out and the simple people, the children, the innocent and guileless rose up to take the matter into their own hands. Surely their purity of spirit and true faith in the Lord, our very Christian god, would overcome the heathen whereas our weaponry had not. The sheer power of our unwavering belief in the rightness of our Christian god would surely be enough to overcome any lesser beings’ superstitious hocus-pocus over their tawdry talismans.

So we massed, in our anger and our righteousness, first to Genoa , then eventually around to Marseilles, where in 1212, two kindly merchants at tremendous personal sacrifice agreed to help us in our final leap of our noble crusade, and so, like lemmings we boarded their ships . . .

Never to be seen again. Sold as slaves the thirty thousand European peasants and youth who took part in the fabled “Children’s Crusade” disappeared from history into a fate generally imagined to be “worse than death.” And those two “kindly” merchants of Marseilles, the Halliburtons and Raytheons of their day, were in cahoots with the bogeymen Muslims all along and sold the questing Christians for a clear eyed profit. In some versions of their legend, the merchants are later captured and hanged for a plot to kidnap a king, but that would be in a world where the wicked get punished and the kind are redeemed.

A place decidedly not the Obama America of 2009, where banks are rewarded for impoverishing the rest of us and religious war in the Holy Land is still framed to demonize the Muslim. Though Muslim religious extremists are blamed for inciting violence in the name of their vision of god, America steadfastly and incrementally has retrofitted our military to march onward as Christian soldiers. Because, after all, our Christian religious intolerance is so much more sanctimonious and thus justified than any other religion’s zealotry.

Now with the stage duly set by last week’s news item of Muslim guys plotting to launch RPGs at a synagogue, this week a Muslim convert guy is accused of shooting up recruiting station in Little Rock . And in the same time and news cycle, ironies of ironies, in the latest of what is appearing to be an inexhaustible series of right-wing gun users intent on lighting up America like it was their personal amusement park, an abortion doctor has been shot and killed in his own church in Kansas, by yet another right-winger following orders from his minister du jour, in this case Bill O’Reilly.

As the day to day gun violence of American life begins to approach Bruckheimer-esque levels, I think it is safe to say, or rather unsafe to say, that the shooting war for the post-Obama America has now openly begun. And, as the summer thrill season heats up, it seems our box office isn’t the only aspect of the public arena enthralled by angels and demons.

Of course the advantage the rest of Europe had in 1212 over America today is that the Christian fanatics and opportunists who comprised the thirty thousand or so that took part in the crusade walked out of their society, not among it. The Holy Land was a lot farther away from their day to day life than the religious war that is on the edge breaking out right here at home, in racially and religiously mixed America .

Also, modern day America is a whole lot bigger than Europe of the early 1200s and even though Christianity is in decline here, and thus feeling embattled, there are still millions more American Christian zealots ready to kill for their love of man, with most of them living near most of you.

Good luck, America , welcome to Marseilles 1212. Simply follow the kindly merchants who will lead you on your way. Perhaps your faith will set you free . . .