Antifascists’ Decades-Long Fight for Reproductive Rights Becomes a War

Everyone is stepping up their game with this one, but for antifa, it might be a matter of refining it.

On June 1, American SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) released a statement in the wake of the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision to scuttle reproductive rights for millions of women. “American SHARP stands in absolute solidarity with all those affected by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with those fighting for reproductive health justice, and with the LGBTQIA+ community whose rights are the next to be threatened by SCOTUS,” the statement read. “We encourage those seeking to join the fight for reproductive health to seek out and support existing reproductive health and mutual aid organizations. This is no time for white saviorism.”

The statement reaffirms the dedication antifascists have had in defending reproductive rights going back decades. In the weeks that followed the May 1 leaking of the draft Supreme Court decision to scuttle Roe V. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion access legal throughout the country, antifascists continued their participation in that fight, promoting mutual aid organizations whose focus is women’s health as well as organizations and funds for abortion access. Shout Your Abortion, an organization that “is normalizing abortion and elevating safe paths to access, regardless of legality,” provides links to resources for abortion access on their website.

The antifascist history in fighting for reproductive rights is detailed in an entire chapter of We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action, a book that will be released in November by PM Press about the history of the most prominent antifascist movement of the past thirty years. It notes how at the ARA Network conference in 1995, Minneapolis ARA proposed that chapters include patriarchy, homophobia and reproductive freedom as a part of the anti-racist and anti-fascist work of the movement. Chapters did indeed embrace this fight and got involved in clinic defense and intelligence gathering against the Christian Right. Such efforts included defending the clinic of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion provider who for years was routinely harassed and threatened by the right ranging from Operation Save America (formerly known as Operation Rescue) to television commentator Bill O’Reilly who after relentless attacks against him on his Fox News program immediately stopped mentioning Tiller after he was murdered by an anti-abortion activist outside his church in May of 2009. By 1998, ARA adopted a fourth point of unity: “We support abortion rights and unrestricted reproductive freedom for all.”

Antifascists have also been making the point that the attack on abortion rights as well as attacks on transgender persons are coming from the same circles of hatemongers that they routinely confront. “I think the attacks on abortion are actually part and parcel for other right-wing attacks that we’re seeing now,” Shane Burley, author of Why We Fight said on a recent episode of the Truthout podcast Movement Memos with Kelley Hayes. “The right has basically been successful in their strategy against abortion. They had a long game, generational strategy to fight back against abortion rights by focusing on the courts, and in combination with local legislation, regional projects, and things like that. And in doing so, they’ve been successful, which is owing partially to why the pivot to anti-trans attacks that are happening so heavily is abortion really drummed up fear in their base.”

That effort to drum up fear amongst the right has now included using antifa as a bogeyman, but in at least one case that failed spectacularly. In recent weeks, concern over right wing violence in general has meant pro-choice protesters carrying firearms for defense at protests, and that included a July 2 march in Dallas that caught the eye of neo-fascists Elijah Schafer, Jack Posobiec and others who made pearl-clutching tweets about it, leading to responses laughing at them being shocked at the idea that leftists can carry the guns they fought for just as much as they have at protests in recent years.

Last week, President Joe Biden signed an executive order protecting some abortion rights, but many have been critical of it not going far enough. Biden also was under fire for cutting a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to put a anti-choice judge on the federal bench in Kentucky, McConnell in turn promising not to block any future appointments of his. Still, the future looks to be a rocky road for those who have spent the past fifty years protecting abortion rights, but it has been navigated before. The mission statement of Shout Your Abortion puts it rather succinctly: “This moment must be met with a resounding collective promise of defiance: we will not obey unjust laws. We will never abandon each other. They cannot stop us, and we will never stop.”

Statement from American SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice)

American SHARP stands in absolute solidarity with all those affected by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with those fighting for reproductive health justice, and with the LGBTQIA+ community whose rights are the next to be threatened by SCOTUS.

We encourage those seeking to join the fight for reproductive health to seek out and support existing reproductive health and mutual aid organizations. This is no time for white saviorism.

We ask our comrades to put aside infighting and purity tests in the pursuit of building community resilience and resistance as we come together to fight this threat and the many others that are yet to come.

For further resources regarding reproductive health or partnering with existing organizations to pursue reproductive health justice, please visit our web page, www.americansharp.net, or reach out to your local AMS crew.

In love and solidarity,

American SHARP