FactChuck: Randall Terry=MLK

As previously mentioned, NARAL did a convincing job of demolishing this typically atrocious FactCheck.org article. One claim made by the hack who wrote it, however, is offensive on so many levels it demands further attention: the argument that Operation Rescue’s methods “mirrored the non-violent tactics used earlier by civil-rights activists.”

• Contrary to FactChuck, violence was not merely “threatened” by radical anti-abortion activists. Members of the group in question in this case were involved in bombings and other extreme acts of violence, and women were injured by Operation Rescue blockades. (Conversely, Martin Luther King never bombed a Klan meeting. Fred Shuttlesworth didn’t shoot George Wallace with a high-powered rifle. Nor did civil rights leaders condone such acts.)

• Even if we write off the violence as aberrational, to compare the tactics of OR to those of the civil rights movement is empirically wrong and morally and politically reprehensible. Sit-ins were not trying to prevent other people from eating; they were trying to compel restaurants to provide African-Americans with the same service they were providing everyone else. Non-violent resistance on behalf of voting rights did not try to stop white people from voting. (This is not to say, of course, that groups like OR do not use any tactics comparable to the civil rights movement, but these tactics are completely irrelevant to Bray. To borrow Amanda’s language, OR can wave all the bloody fetuses and hand out all the pamphlets they want; nobody questions that.)

• Perhaps most importantly, civil rights activists had positive law on their side. While it was true that civil rights activists were often charged with trespassing, violating injunctions, and the like, these actions by the state were almost always unconstitutional. (And, by this I don’t merely mean that I think they were unconstitutional, but that the United States Supreme Court thought they were unconstitutional.) While Randall Terry may sincerely believe that a fetus is a human life and that this justifies a variety of illegal activity, this belief (unlike equal protection and voting rights) is not inscribed anywhere in American law. OR and its ilk, therefore, are more comparable to the Klan than to the civil rights movement. They use illegal means to achieve illegal ends.

What a disgrace that FactCheck would publish this garbage. Further reading: Bader and Bind-Widdle, Targets of Hatred : Anti-Abortion Terrorism.

…from the above-mentioned book, here’s some data. In 1991, the year Bray was decided, there were 2 cases of murder or attempted murder of abortion providers, 9 bombings/arsons (or attempted bombings/arsons), 83 cases of invasions, assault and battery, vandalism, death threats burglary or stalking, and 3,885 arrests at blockades. To take one example, by the end of a seven-week Operation Rescue operation in Wichita that summer, “police had arrested 1,734 people for 2,657 acts of trespassing, resisting arrest and violating injunctions against blockading.” But, you might ask if you’re a FactCheck hack, couldn’t this be because they were the victim of trumped-up charges like the civil rights groups Operation Rescue and its fellow travellers are so similar to? Er, no. In fact, Mayor Bob Knight “did nothing to curtail their activities,” and governor of Kansas Joan Finney spoke at an OR rally. Think about that–with the tacit or explicit support of the two most powerful relevant political officials, OR members were still subject to well more than a thousand arrests. I think you can see the scope of the threat they posed, and that OR apologists like FactCheck are completely full of shit.

…Abby draws our attention to Blue Mass. Group’s critique of the ad. I don’t really agree–for reasons I’ve explained in comments, to the extent that the critique is valid it is, I think, more a criticism of modern political advertising than anything specific to the NARAL ad itself. But David’s critique is a reasonable one.