Blue Thoughts From a Red State

(Ed note: To help our readers get a taste of what life can be like in Red State America, Jesse Nathan’s “Blue Thoughts From a Red State” will be a regular feature in Beyond Chron. A Berkeley native who moved to Kansas as a teenager, Nathan reports to us from his home in Lawrence, Kansas)

While I am not a part of the Christian Right, do not believe Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson have much worthwhile to tell me, and I do not support Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, I consider myself “pro-life.” Confused? Consider this: I am so pro-life that I cannot bear to see the United States return to an era in which women died routinely as they desperately tried to administer back-alley, coat-hanger abortions. These women’s lives were constantly endangered by policies that restricted abortion access. I cannot support any policy that allows such death. Thus, I am pro-life.

In Kansas, as nationally, this is often a difficult distinction to make. Most people—even progressives—have so completely internalized the frame the Right-wing has placed on this issue that they will offer you a rather befuddled look if you tell them you are both pro-life and pro-choice.

But...how...you mean...huh?

To be pro-choice, apparently, means you cannot also be in favor of life. And if you are not in favor of life, you will likely be painted with a host of other labels ranging from baby-killer to Satan-worshiper. This kind of framing is exactly the type of misleading effort anti-abortion rights activists have engaged in for years. These activists long ago decided their strategy would be two pronged, including both direct attack (by framing the issue as one of life versus individualism) and a persistent but backdoor attempt to undermine the legal weight of Roe v. Wade. Examples of both efforts have surfaced in Kansas in recent months.

Abortion-rights controversy is not a new debate in Kansas, even though the place is thoroughly conservative, save for a few pockets of blue sparkling in the Northwest of the state. According to the state health department, during 2003, Kansas doctors performed 318 abortions, 11 of them on women who carried fetuses considered “likely to be viable outside the womb.” In 172 late-term abortions that year, however, “the fetus was not considered viable,” officials indicated.

Doctor George Tiller, of Wichita, whose clinic has been picketed for years by organizations like Operation Save America (a particularly repugnant collection of conservative Christian hacks), continues to offer a full-range of abortion services—despite efforts to label him anti-life. Tiller says, “make no mistake, this battle is about self-determination by women of the direction and course of their lives. Abortion is about women’s hopes and dreams. Abortion is a matter of survival for women.” Despite this obviously pro-life, pro-women, pro-choice stance, Tiller has been the subject of intense harassment—including persistent threats and even a 1993 assassination attempt perpetrated by known anti-abortion gunman Shelly Shannon.

Framing Tiller and others like him as “killers” is only half the strategy, however. In March of last year, Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline—a man who won the office by less than one percent and who openly declares that Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned—subpoenaed the medical records of more than 80 women who received late-term abortions in Kansas in 2003. Hence, the second part of the modus operandi for anti-abortion activists was again revealed as a strategy at work here, in Kansas, and nationally. Kline claims the records are necessary to find evidence of child rape and any violations of a state law restricting abortions performed after twenty-two weeks of pregnancy. Kline’s move, backed by judicial support, is the boldest of any state yet. And while preventing child rape is a noble cause, it is clear that the Attorney General is really interested in going on a fishing expedition calculated to impede an abortion clinic’s ability to offer services. Since many of the women whose records are being demanded are not even minor’s, there is little apparent connection to child rape concerns. Yet the added burden and potentially intimidating impact this effort will have on clinics and women seeking abortions is likely well-known to Kline and his goons.

Additionally, the move blatantly violates patient privacy. “It really is scary for patients,” said Priscilla Smith, director of the domestic legal program at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. “As more and more restrictions are placed upon abortion, there's more and more opportunity for self-righteous and right-wing anti-abortion attorneys general and prosecutors to do these kinds of investigations.”

This is, of course, a microcosm of the national scene. Last year, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft attempted to secure records from organizations like Planned Parenthood under a similar guise. His attempts were intended, allegedly, to determine if the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act was being properly adhered to—as well as to study, supposedly, whether these later term abortions were medically necessary. Ashcroft’s effort was squelched by a number of judges, including U.S. District Judge Charles P. Kocoras. Ruling against Ashcroft in a case involving Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, he wrote: “An [already] emotionally charged decision will be rendered more so if the confidential medical records are released to the public . . . for use in public litigation in which the patient is not even a party.”

As the appointment of Samuel Alito grows increasingly inevitable, progressives and conservatives are again gearing up for another round of the culture wars. In Kansas, and likewise nationally, the anti-abortion rights approach will likely continue along familiar lines: attacking those who support abortion rights as “baby-killers” who are not “pro-life,” as well as slyly undermining the right to abortion itself. The hope, clearly, is that by adding restrictions and legal burdens—such as demanding records or requiring more stringent parental and spousal notification, for example—the right to abortion will be watered down to the point of uselessness. This is a devious strategy, and effective because it has, so far, won the framing of the issue. If progressives are to begin challenging this approach the effort must first begin by re-framing the need for abortion rights.

And so, again, I’ll claim it: I am pro-life. I am pro-women, pro-abortion rights, and pro-life.