Statement read from David Gunn, Jr., son of murdered abortion provider Dr. David Gunn:
I enjoy reading, and one of my favorite authors is Shakespeare. One thing I have learned from Mr. Shakespeare is the difference between seems and is. As one of my college professors once said, you can analyze every play Shakespeare wrote on the thesis of seems and is. For example, Hamlet feigns madness in order to expose the true murderer of his father. Although he seems mad to the other characters, we the audience know that he truly is in control of his faculties. Further, in Macbeth we know he pretends to be faithful to King Duncan in order to murder the king and capture this throne.It has been said that life imitates art. I see examples of this statement often enough to believe its truth. It is even reflected in our current predicament. It seems as though American society is more tolerant. It seems as though abortion services are safe and will remain a legal medical service for another 25 years.
We need look only at the current state of legal abortion to see that the appearances I have mentioned are not 100 percent true. Legal limitations are placed upon the abortion providers regulating when people can receive abortion services. Politicians disguise their legislative intolerance under terms like parental consent and legal waiting periods. They claim to be protecting the young by informing the parent. But as was the case with Becky Bell, many young women may feel too ashamed to seek parental advice or consent. In such instances, these women may seek the services of an illegal provider who has no interest in the safety of the patient. In my area of the country, women must travel hundreds of miles to have access to abortion services. A required waiting period only further hinders the availability of abortion to these women.
We can also examine the amount of violence that surrounds this issue to see that tolerance levels are not what they appear. My father, along with five other people, have been murdered over this issue. Although the anti-choice organizations claim they have nothing to do with these murders, they must be held accountable for the hateful rhetoric they continue to speak....
I would like to take this time to announce a second abortion provider appreciation day on March 10. This is a significant date because it marks the fifth anniversary of my father's death. Please take this opportunity to thank the provider in your area for risking death to secure abortion services in your community.
Mary Lou Greenberg, Reproductive Freedom Task Force of R&R! and spokesperson for the New York Branch of the RCP:
So long as you've got a system that not only thrives but relies on patriarchy it's going to be a hell of a fight. Every step of emancipation is going to be a tortuous one and we ain't never gonna get a situation where women can be free until you've gotten rid of that system. Now, there are a lot of people that may disagree with this statement, which comes from my communist viewpoint. But we're uniting with all kinds of people to fight against everything that keeps women down and keeps the people down...People have got to realize that if we're going to protect the right to abortion, if we're going to go forward, if we're going to make it possible for more women to have abortions than they do now, we've got to rely on ourselves. Ain't nobody in any of these big buildings gonna do it for us. It ain't gonna be the courts, it ain't gonna be the cops.... We have got to stop being on the defensive or saying well yes, but. No. No ifs, ands or buts on this issue, as far as I'm concerned. It's got to be abortion on demand and without apology for any woman at any time for any reason!
When Bill Clinton talks about abortion being safe, legal and rare that's a big problem. Because why should abortion be rare? Yeah, we want better birth control. We want sex education in the schools. We don't want women to be raped. But that ain't what he's talking about. Look at what he does! No, that's not what he's talking about. He's saying by use of the word rare that there's something wrong with abortion. And by use of the word rare he's contributing to a climate that puts us or tries to put us on the moral defensive.
We've got to get off that defensive. We've got to stand proud. We've got to hold our voices up. If we've had abortions, we've got to talk about them. We've got to support the doctors and clinics. We've got to find ways of defending those doctors/providers by any means necessary.... This is our day. They ain't gonna have it. They ain't gonna have our lives and we're gonna fight to turn things around.
Maureen Britell, National Abortion Federation:
Just last month we got a phone call from a woman in the Midwest who said, "I need your help. This is my eighth pregnancy. The last three all died in utero. They just told me this one will, too." Her problem is that she's poor and Medicaid does not have to pay for abortions, even when the fetus will expire, and no one was going to help her. She said, "I need your help. I'm at the end of my rope. I can't do this anymore." We were fortunate enough to be able to assist her and we sent her to a doctor and I have to call him the hero of this story. She and her husband drove across the state in 30 degree weather. They stayed in their car the night before outside the clinic because they didn't have enough money for a hotel. She walked in that morning, it was 32 degrees out, in a T-shirt and flip-flops. Our hero doctor pulled a nurse aside and said. "Here's my credit card. Take her out, get her some clothes. Tell her we found funding for a hotel. Don't let her know I'm doing this and don't worry about any costs." That's what this day is all about, heroes like that doctor, our heroes and heroines across the country.Jennifer Russo, Medical Students for Choice, medical student at George Washington University:
There simply are not enough abortion providers. So great, I want to become an abortion provider, what do I do? I apply to medical schools, I apply to residency programs that train practitioners in abortion care, right? Guess again. A 1992 study showed that only 12 percent of ob-gyn residency programs required training in first trimester abortions. Only 12 percent. And these are people who are going to potentially be delivering babies. Forty-seven percent of residents in ob-gyn residency programs had never performed a first trimester abortion. That's ob-gyn. A 1995 study showed that only 15 percent of family practice chief residents had performed a first trimester abortion. So just think about that for a second....Statement by NARAL, National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League:
The Roe decision was a great milestone in the struggle for women's equality. With autonomy and the right to make reproductive decisions, women are able to participate more fully in American life. For only when women determine when the time is right to have a child and when it is not can we pursue our goals in the workplace, in education and other segments of life. Yet 25 years after the Roe decision, the ability to exercise the right to choose is neither guaranteed nor equal for all women. With Congress and many state legislatures today controlled by abortion opponents, access depends on where women live, how much money they earn and whether a doctor is available in their area. Opponents of this liberty will not rest until Roe is overturned. Supporters of this fundamental American freedom must recommit ourselves to fighting for the right the Supreme Court so widely established on January 22, 1973.Elizabeth Toledo, Action Vice President, National Organization for Women:
As we stand here today on the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade we pay a special tribute and remember in our hearts the women whose lives were taken by illegal abortion, and we remember fondly the women whose lives were taken by anti-abortion terrorists. And we have a special place in our hearts for the women and men who daily face the harassment and the terror in providing reproductive health services to women in this country and to the women and men who proudly stand in front of those clinics to make sure that all of us have the right to access them safely.The future of our movement, I believe firmly, lies in the grassroots. If the opposition can't overturn Roe v. Wade, they will make it impossible either economically or legally to get an abortion. They will take every abortion procedure and move it through the Congress and move it through the state houses and move it through the local city councils until there are no medical options for physicians. They will attack the medical school establishment until there are no physicians who are trained in these procedures. They will make sure that women don't have financial access to abortion. If you are a woman who relies on the federal government for your health care, you don't have access to abortion. If you're a woman who lives on a reservation, you don't have access to abortion. If you're a woman who relies on military health care benefits, you do not have access and until the day that we can say proudly that every woman who chooses to have an abortion has the ability to have an abortion, we have not finished our work. And so we stand here today proudly to say we will not go back! We will not go back!
Amy Dennison, Feminist Majority:
I'm here on behalf of the Feminist Majority working very hard for our rights every single day of the week, even the weekends, and actually at 4:30 this morning I got up with some wonderful people who are probably in this crowd to make sure that the pesky anti-choice people were not trying to blockade any of our wonderful clinics and they didn't. I just think that the most important thing to say is it's up to us. Every single person here can make the difference if you just keep up the fight. It's up to the young people. We've got to do it. Don't turn back.Statement from Patricia Baird-Windle, Founder, Aware Woman Centers for Choice in Florida, and National Council Member at Large of R&R!:
Every day in clinics across this continent women are shown respect for their intelligence and moral agency. Abortion clinics provide the most complete and detailed informed consent of any medical service in the world. And we do all this while keeping our fees for service the lowest in the nation, while continuing to pioneer changes such as the morning after treatment, very early abortion and extensive use of ultrasound pregnancy dating. And we do all this while continuing to fight the insidious insanity of a hard-core cadre of violent domestic terrorists. These extortionists cloak themselves in a fraudulent cape of religion. They boldly announced ten years ago that "We will make your lives a living hell. You will have no place to hide." They made these threats publicly and proceeded to make good on their threats with a war of attrition, of constant meanness, of shadowy tactics ranging from tracking the license plates of our patients and corresponding with them to maligning and defaming us--abortion providers--to such sinister things as stealing our garbage and canceling our credit cards. Then they began to shoot us. There have now been six killed and 16 wounded in the United States and Canada. The most recent shooting, the third done by a cowardly sniper hiding in the woods, gunned down a doctor in Canada in November...Do not take the availability of abortion for granted. Do not take your local abortion provider for granted. Instead, recognize the enormous social changes we have helped to bring to women across this continent. And remember the courage that it takes for us to come to work and provide these services of social change. We won't go back. We must continue to fight. My heart is with you all today--and with all of the women whose lives have been changed by Roe v. Wade.
Statement from Ali Azima, M.D.:
We must continue our fight until a woman's right to choose can be exercised without fear of intimidation or feelings of shame, and those of us who provide abortion services can work without threats of violence. I have suffered personal and professional indignities, violence, and harassment over the years because of my beliefs and my work. Recently I requested a sheriff's protection from demonstrators' harassment. His official response was to vilify me and assure me that he would do everything in his power to assist the demonstrators!However, I remain committed to a woman's right to choose, and her right to high-quality, safe medical care. I will continue to provide these services to those who request them. I urge you to continue to fight also, because those of us "on the front lines," as it were, need your political and emotional support in this effort.
I was particularly pleased to see in the literature sent me by Refuse & Resist! that there is an organization called Medical Students for Choice active in this effort. Those of us who have been providing abortion services for years are--let's face it--getting older, and if younger physicians do not come forward to take over, this right to choose will become meaningless by attrition.
Cece Williams from Atlanta:
I had an abortion when I was 17 years old and I was in my senior year in high school. I didn't know I was pregnant until the sixth week. I felt afraid, for how could this have happened to me? I thought, "Oh my god, my dad is going to kill me or beat me into a coma." My sister made the mistake of telling my dad, my parents, that she was pregnant and had an abortion. I saw her being slapped around and yelling for mercy, swearing she would never do it again if only my father would stop hitting her. It's her life, her body, I thought to myself at the time. This country, this country saw me, a 17-year-old Black woman in high school, as incapable of making a decision that would affect the rest of my life. My first thought was to have an abortion.... I don't feel guilty. I do not feel guilty nor ashamed for having my abortion. I came to realize later in life that I do not owe an explanation to the world as to why I chose to live my life and not become a teenage mother. I am not, I repeat, I am not an incubator! I will have a child when I want to, when I choose to.Joycelyn, from Antioch College:
It's 1930 something and abortion is illegal. A woman has a family, she has three children and she's married. She gets pregnant again. She can't afford or does not want to have that child, but she cannot go to the doctor and get a safe and legal abortion so she gets a back-alley abortion. She hemorrhages and she dies. That woman was my great grandmother and my grandfather is very pro-choice, let me tell you. In fact you'll notice that a lot of older people who were around when abortion was illegal are pro-choice because they know what happens when it's not available.
As a young woman I kind of took for granted my whole life that if I was to get pregnant that option would be available to me and then this summer Operation Rescue came to Dayton, Ohio. And us Antioch students and Refuse & Resist! were in the house. Everywhere they were, we were there and I learned a lot from that week. It was a very intense week but I realized at that point that we as young people have to be there to defend our rights and to keep abortion safe and legal because right now it's being dismantled.Dr. Robert Rockwell, National Secretary of Refuse & Resist!:
We in Refuse & Resist!, we call them Christian fascists not just because it's a good name to yell at some people, but because we really realize that it's a whole agenda that we're fighting against and that they're putting out. And it doesn't just relate to women. It relates to taking away affirmative action, taking away welfare, attacks on immigrants, attacks on gays and lesbians. And all of those things are all tied into this agenda and that's what we mean when we say it's all one attack.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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