“On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we talk with both long-time anarchist organizer Suzy Subways and historian Spencer Beswick about how anarchists in the 1990s organized in the face of a deadly far-Right attack on abortion access across the so-called United States.
With the growth of both the above ground organization Operation Rescue, which mobilized thousands to shut down abortion clinics and the underground anti-abortion movement which targeted doctors and reproductive health offices with firebombings and assassinations, abortion access was under threat like never before. But while liberals stuck to legalistic attempts to sway the courts, anarchists, utilizing strategies and tactics from groups like Anti-Racist Action, brought a fresh perspective to the struggle and began to mobilize and build coalitions.
During our discussion we cover this history as well as what led to the passing of Roe v Wade; as Beswick argues that it was the creation of a mass, militant movement that centered bodily autonomy and freedom that forced the State to codify limited abortion rights into law. As the supreme court is poised to rule on striking down Roe v Wade, this history, and the lessons and questions that it raises, is needed now more than ever.”
Woman holding a flag and a sign reading “Free my uterus! And all other political prisoners.” From Liz A. Highleyman, “Reproductive Freedom in Everyday Life,” Love and Rage Vol. 3, No. 2, 1992.
I’ve been working on an article on anarcha-feminism in the late 1980s-90s, focusing primarily on abortion struggle (in part in response to the new Texas anti-abortion law). As the anarcha-feminist Liz Highleyman put it in 1992, “The day when abortion is again made illegal may come sooner than we like to think. We must be ready to take our bodies and our lives into our own hands.”
Anarcha-feminists were on the front lines of the militant struggle for abortion. They were convinced that Roe v. Wade would not last forever and that they could not depend on the state and the legal system to protect abortion, so their analysis and political practice feel particularly relevant today. Anarcha-feminists generally took a three-pronged approach to abortion struggle: construction of women’s infrastructure, defense of abortion infrastructure, and a combative relationship with the state. (Note that the language in this post is very gender-normative because this is the language that the feminists I’m looking at used at the time.)
1. Construction of women’s infrastructure: establishing autonomous infrastructure (health clinics, etc.) and self-help groups in which women learned to take care of their own bodies and induce abortions on their own terms. As one anonymous anarchist put it in an article called “Laws and Outlaws,” “Medicine is something we must take into our own hands. Because how can you smash the state if you’re still walking funny from a visit to the gynecologist’s?”
This meant first and foremost an urgent need to (as Highleyman wrote) “rebuild the network of feminist women’s health and reproductive resources that existed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s,” particularly organizations like the Chicago Jane Collective which provided underground abortions before they were legalized. While anarcha-feminists supported abortions provided by accredited doctors, their focus on women’s autonomy led them to draw on alternative traditions of women-controlled health practices. This includes herbal and holistic methods which women have used “throughout the ages […] to control their fertility and reproduction.” Thus anarchists advocated expanding grassroots infrastructure and self-organization to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to perform their own reproductive care. This would produce true reproductive freedom and autonomy, independent of the state and its laws.
2. Defense of abortion infrastructure:physically protecting abortion clinics from the attacks of Operation Rescue and others. Many non-anarchists took part in this, of course, but anarcha-feminists brought Black Bloc tactics and a willingness to engage in physical confrontation, and they were very successful in preventing Operation Rescue from shutting down clinics in NYC, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and in many other places across the country.
But anarcha-feminists believed that defense of infrastructure was not enough. They vowed to go after Operation Rescue, prevent them from meeting, and disrupt them anywhere they went. When Operation Rescue attempted to host a summer training camp in Minneapolis in 1993, anarchists physically confronted Operation Rescue, blocked them in their church, disrupted their meetings, vandalized their materials, protected clinics from their attacks, and generally made them unwelcome. Although some liberals opposed these tactics, anarchists and other militants handed Operation Rescue a major defeat and ran them out of town.
Reflecting on the experience, an anarchist named Liza wrote in an article titled “Minnesota Not Nice to Operation Rescue,” that “it seems like no matter how hard activists fight, we rarely win. Except this time we were victorious. We fought against these fascists […] We saw the demise of Operation Rescue in the Twin Cities, partly due to our unprecedented aggressiveness and opposition, and partly because their movement is losing, big time.”
3. Combative relationship with the state: anarcha-feminists did not appeal to the state to maintain the right to abortion. They believed that the state was inherently patriarchal and was ultimately the enemy of women. In place of the slogan “we’re pro-choice and we vote,” anarcha-feminists marched behind a banner reading “we’re pro-choice and we riot.”
Anarcha-feminists attempted to insert anarchist analysis into the mainstream feminist movement and convince feminists not to focus on legalistic, state-centered activism. They supported struggles to maintain legal abortion, but they cautioned that the state could not be trusted to maintain the right to abortion, and women must be ready to act on their own terms to maintain their bodily autonomy and self-determination. This meant taking power into their own hands.
As Sunshine Smith remarks, forming self-help medical groups and abortion infrastructure in the Bay Area “has, in very concrete ways, made our struggle against the anti-abortion group Operation ‘Rescue’ and the ‘Supreme’ Court stronger and more effective. We have learned that if the time comes, we can and will do home abortions. We are becoming physically aware of the invasion the government is conducting into our bodies. We are now able to repulse the state from our uteri because we are gaining the knowledge that enables us to control our own bodies.”
Anarchist contingent at the “March on Washington for Reproductive Freedom” (Love and Rage, 1989)
In the 1980s, the Christian Right waged war on abortion. When President Reagan failed to outlaw it, anti-abortion activists in Operation Rescue (founded in 1985) took to the streets to physically shut down abortion clinics. Using the slogan “if you believe abortion is murder, act like it’s murder,” they even defended far-right activists who firebombed clinics and killed abortion providers.
Operation Rescue was met by a new generation of anarcha-feminists across the country who drew on an evolving repertoire of anarchist tactics to defeat them. They confronted anti-abortion activists in the streets as part of their broader fight against patriarchy, capitalism, and the state in the late twentieth century. Instead of symbolic protest, anarcha-feminists directly confronted Operation Rescue in order to defend abortion and women’s autonomy from both the far right and the state itself. Anarchist interventions in reproductive justice struggles helped revitalize a feminist movement that had fought a decade of rearguard battles against the neoliberal Reagan counterrevolution.
Militant abortion defense became a key element of late twentieth century anarchist feminism. Anarchists announced their presence at the 1989 March on Washington for Reproductive Freedom with a banner reading “We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!” This slogan is a far cry from the mainstream feminist emphasis on voting and other legal strategies. This demonstrates the anarchist commitment to both women’s autonomy and militant direct action. In New York City, a group affiliated with the anarchist organization Love and Rage (1989-98) used black bloc tactics to defend an abortion clinic from Operation Rescue in 1990. Dressed in all black to preserve anonymity, two dozen helmeted anarchists linked arms alongside members of Women’s Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM!) and AIDS activists in ACT UP to prevent Operation Rescue from disrupting the clinic.
Several years later, Operation Rescue attempted to host a summer training camp in Minneapolis in 1993. The anarcho-punk Profane Existence collective set the tone for the local response when they vowed in a widely distributed poster that if Operation Rescue came to town, anarchists would “lock [them] in a church and burn the fucker down.” While things did not go quite this far, anarchists physically confronted Operation Rescue, blocked them in their church, disrupted their meetings, vandalized their materials, protected clinics from their attacks, and generally made them unwelcome. Although some liberals opposed these tactics, anarchists and other militants handed Operation Rescue a major defeat and ran them out of town.
Reflecting on the experience, an anarchist named Liza wrote in an article titled “Minnesota Not Nice to Operation Rescue,” that “it seems like no matter how hard activists fight, we rarely win. Except this time we were victorious. We fought against these fascists […] We saw the demise of Operation Rescue in the Twin Cities, partly due to our unprecedented aggressiveness and opposition, and partly because their movement is losing, big time.” Operation Rescue soon suffered a split and major demobilization, in part due to legal action taken by President Bill Clinton’s administration against anti-abortion militants. But before this, they were defeated in the streets by anarcha-feminists who took matters into their own hands. Direct action proved critical to defending reproductive freedom.
Although grounded in the 1970s Women’s Liberation Movement, this younger generation of revolutionary feminists who confronted Operation Rescue was also inspired by the group Anti-Racist Action, who fought fascists in the streets, as well as squatters in Western Europe Autonome groups who began using black bloc tactics in the 1980s. Anarchists introduced these radical street tactics to the feminist movement and proved their efficacy in the fight against anti-abortion activists. Militant confrontation of Operation Rescue was a turning point in the development of a new anarchist feminism: feminists went on the attack in order to defend women’s autonomy and build a new world. In their uncompromising struggle for reproductive freedom, anarchists offered a new vision of revolutionary feminism.
Poster distributed in Minneapolis by anarchists in preparation for an Operation Rescue “summer training camp” (Profane Existence, 1993)
Note: I wrote this short text for an online exhibit on the 1980s. It is connected to an article I am writing on anarcha-feminism in the late twentieth century, primarily in Love and Rage.
Primary Sources:
Kraker, Jan. “Anarchists Confront Operation Rescue.” Love and Rage, Vol. 1, No. 5 (August 1990), 3.
Lib, Laura. “An Introduction to Anarcha-Feminism.” Love and Rage, Vol. 2, No. 3 (March 1991), 6.
Liza. “Minnesota Not Nice to Operation Rescue.” Love and Rage, Vol. 4, No. 4 (September 1993), 1, 3, 19.
Love and Rage New York Local. “Member Handbook.” (August 1997).
“Run ‘Em Out of Town: Operation Rescue Are Coming, But Pro-Choice Radicals Are Grinding Our Axes.” Profane Existence, No. 19-20 (Summer 1993), 4.
Secondary Sources:
Carroll, Tamar W. Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Hadley, Janet. Abortion: Between Freedom and Necessity. London: Virago Press, 1996.
Martin, Bradford. The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan. New York: Hill & Wang, 2012.
Tanenbaum, Julia. “To Destroy Domination in All Forms: Anarcha-Feminist Theory, Organization, and Action, 1970-1978.” Perspectives on Anarchist Theory N. 29 (2016), 13-32.
Ziegler, Mary. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 2015.
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