view entire issue in pdf format - On The Issues Magazine

HOFFMAN (continued from page 5)
genocide by gas inhalation. Hill had
used the media to defend his position
on the justification of murdering doctors
who perform abortions. "We're
saying 30 million children have died.
Sometimes you have to use force to
stop people from killing innocent children,"
he told Nightline on December 8,
1993. Two days after Gunn's murder,
Hill called the Donahue show to set up
an appearance to announce that Dr.
Gunn deserved to die.
Another, maybe even more dangerous
casualty of the relentless onslaught
on abortion and abortion providers has
been to increase a sense of ambivalence
about abortion itself as a moral or nec-
Laurence
Richard
essary choice. Many
people who describe
themselves as politically
pro-choice and
are committed theoretically
to the issue,
often feel the need to
say, "I don't like abortion,
but..." while
political leaders follow
President Clinton's
adage that he wants
abortion to be "safe,
legal, and rare."
This reluctant public
and political engagement
with the
reality of abortion within women's
lives has extended to the millions of
women who have abortions, and to
their lovers, families, and friends as
well. Having made the difficult, profound,
personal choice to have their
abortion, feeling relieved and grateful
for the service, most women prefer to
integrate the experience privately,
rather than cast it in political terms—
understandable, but dangerous. Few
become vocal supporters of the clinics
that have helped them or return to
work as clinic escorts. And we need
their support. If the 30 million women
who have had abortions since legalization—and
their husbands, friends,
lovers, and families—came forward to
support choice and providers, what an
army that would make.
Unappreciated and unrecognized,
viewed as mavericks at best or pariahs
at worst by establishment institutional
medicine, abortion providers stand
alone, apart and vulnerable. For historical
and political reasons, most abortion
ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995
services are performed at outpatient,
freestanding facilities. Risking their
lives on an almost daily basis, doctors
and other health-care workers continue
to provide services in a war zone
where only one side is armed.
This both real and intellectual isola-~
tion played out most recently on the
international front at the UN. Population
and Development Conference in
Cairo. The Catholic Church, along
with its situational fundamentalist
allies, described the provision of birth
control to women who need it as "biological
determinism" and the promotion
of women's equality as "cultural
imperialism," while aggressively
promoting their own brand of theocratic
imperialism. Bending to this
Olivier in
III, 1956
pressure, Vice President
Al Gore assured
the attendees at the
conference in an
August 25 press conference
that "the
United States has not
sought, does not seek,
and will not seek an
international right to
abortion"—underlying
the U.S. government's
belief . that
reproductive
freedom
is not viewed as a
transcendent
human or civil right,
but merely as a local
privilege that can be granted, limited,
or denied according to national
customs and laws. This may have been
situational diplomatic maneuvering,
but it reads as gender-specific noblesse
oblige.
Back on the home front, Piso and
Felisone continue to live happily in
Queens and the FBI investigation continues
with no published results so far.
The federal marshals are down to
guarding Choices seven hours, and
patients come and go as they have for
years.
I sit in my office surrounded by my
warrior images. A large painting of
Elizabeth I (the Armada portrait) hangs
on the far wall and on my desk stands a
statue of Diana (Artemis), Virgin Goddess
of the Hunt, protector of pregnant
women and sucking animals. She holds
her bow and arrow taut, taking aim at
unseen enemies.
I sit alone and think of Kawana
Michele Ashley from Clearwater,
Florida. Lacking romantic heroines,
desperate and living very much in the
present, Ms. Ashley felt forced to use a
deadly weapon to defend herself
against an invasion. Nineteen years old
and 20 weeks pregnant, she couldn't
raise the funds for an expensive, second-trimester
abortion. No swords
and daggers for Kawana. No
metaphoric visions of Amazons in battle.
No, she just picked up a pistol and
shot the fetus in her uterus, causing a
wound that eventually killed it after
delivery by cesarean section. Because
the fetus was considered developed
enough to have lived outside the
womb, Ms. Ashley was charged with
manslaughter and is currently being
held on $50,000 bail.
The casualties mount. Where are my
troops •
Progressive Thinking People
Shop at the Warm Store
socially conscious
environmental
cruelty free
nature gifts
12 Wnnery Brook Road
Woodstock, New Ybrk§
Catt for a fret catalog;
A not-for-profit business of Woodstock Animal Rights Movemen
49