Greg Smith / Corbis via Getty Images
Antiabortion Militants Open Training Facility in Memphis, Aim to Restart Large-Scale Clinic Blockades
Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, is trying to make a comeback by teaming up with antiabortion extremist group PAAU (the so-called “Progressive” Anti-Abortion Uprising group associated with dozens of clinic and pharmacy invasions), to kick off “Rescue Resurrection.” Their stated goal is to revive large-scale clinic blockades with a formal kick-off training and series of events starting Dec. 3 in Memphis, Tenn.
Terry was one of the leaders of mass clinic blockades that took antiabortion extremism to a new level in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Operation Rescue’s (OR’s) orchestrated blockades in Atlanta, Memphis and Wichita drew massive media coverage. During the sieges, accessing a targeted abortion clinic meant getting through a gauntlet of bodies blocking clinic doors and driveways. Antiabortion activists traveled state to state in order to participate, blockading clinics, going limp when arrested (to represent the “unborn”) and requiring three to four police officers to remove each protester arrested and carry them to waiting police buses.
-
Inside the Global Network of Abortion Doulas Supporting Self-Managed Care
-
Twenty Thousand Stillbirths a Year, and No Federal Plan to Prevent Them
-
We Can No Longer Tinker With the Machinery of Death: New ACLU Report Exposes Fatal Flaws in Capital Punishment
-
‘Liberation’ Playwright Bess Wohl on Theater as Resistance: ‘Theater Is Dialogue. Autocracy Is a Monologue.’
Get the Ms. Weekly News Digest:
Sign Up
Listen, Rate, Review and subscribe on:
On Surviving Epstein—Part I (with Jess Michaels)
Over the past several months, the Epstein files have been extensively covered by the media. But too often, the voices of actual survivors are missing. In this episode, we’re filling that gap and shifting the focus to where it belongs: to the survivors and what justice means to them. Dr. Michele Goodwin is joined by Jessica Michaels, a sexual assault awareness advocate and Epstein survivor. Dr. Goodwin speaks with Jess about her experience as a survivor of sexual assault, her work as an advocate, and what she wants the public to know about sexual violence as news about Epstein and his connections to powerful men and women continues to come to light.
Content warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual assault.
-
Get the magazine and join the community
Become a Member -
Support Ms.
Donate
Feminist Daily Newswire
Feminist Majority Foundation
- South Carolina Senate Rejects Push for Abortion Criminalization Bill
- Planned Parenthood Forced to Close 20 Clinics After Medicaid Cuts
- New Taliban Rule in Afghanistan: No Burqa, No Healthcare for Afghan Women
- FDA Removes Black Box Warning from Menopause Hormone Therapies
- Australia Solves the Preterm Birth Crisis: The Prevention Program the US Needs to Adopt
From the Magazine:
Get Ms.’s award-winning feminist reporting delivered directly to your mailbox!
-
Yearning to Breathe Free [Part 1 of 3]
In the matter of K-E-S-G-, a Salvadoran woman stalked and threatened by gang members was denied asylum by the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals on July 18, even though her persecution stemmed from her gender in a country that treats women as property. Advocates warn that this ruling could make it much harder for women fleeing violence to prove gender-based claims and may embolden immigration judges to discount their stories.
“This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has singled out women seeking asylum, and we know where this path leads,” said Neela Chakravartula of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies. “More judges denying protection to women who qualify for it. More refugees being deported to danger.”
The decision highlights the ongoing struggle to recognize gender as a protected basis for asylum. Afghan and Salvadoran women, among others, may now face even steeper barriers to protection—a chilling effect that experts say could deter survivors from seeking safety in the U.S.
John Moore / Getty Images
Virginia Giuffre’s Posthumous Memoir Is an Indictment of the Men—and Institutions—That Enabled Her Abuse
I thought I was mentally prepared to read Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous book, Nobody’s Girl. I was wrong. If reading the book was gut-wrenching, I can’t imagine what it was like for her and other girls and women who experience the horrors of being trafficked.
In the final paragraph of the book, and perhaps in some of the final sentences she ever wrote, Giuffre tells that she will have achieved her goal with Nobody’s Girl if “just one person” is moved to create “a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as everybody else.”
Although she never lived to see this day, her book, her courage and her rage compel us to fight for this goal in the name of all victims and survivors of sex trafficking.
