Green-Rainbow candidate for governor Grace Ross joins CDRR at Defend Abortion clinic action [photo:annie butler]

With the police comes a flatbed truck, loaded with metal racks. It takes around fifteen minutes for workers to assemble the racks into two “protest pens,” one on the sidewalk, and one on the street. As soon as the racks are up, someone from the Coalition to Defend Reproductive Rights (CDRR) enters the sidewalk pen, which is the one closer to the entrance to the clinic.

This morning, the first CDRR people there were two women and two men from the Green-Rainbow party.

For nine years, the pen closest to the clinic was “reserved” for a group of around thirty predominantly older Catholics, who sing hymns and chant the Rosary as loudly as they can manage, led by a guy standing on the sidewalk with sound equipment. This goes on for an hour and a half.

The outer pen was set up out in the street, in case anyone wanted to counter-protest the anti-abortion group. Most of the time, it was empty.

But last August, CDRR supporters came vowing to counteract OR’s harrassment of women seeking help at abortion clinics. They have been coming every month since.

In October, CDRR decided to occupy the pen closest to the clinic entrance, to minimize OR's ability to harrass the clients. When the Boston police saw what was about to happen, they threatened the abortion rights supporters with arrest, saying that “the anti-abortion people had always had the front (inner) pen.”

But the CDRR people held their ground, ranging themselves behind a banner across the gate to the inner pen. The "congregation” marched straight toward them at 9:00 A.M., but then turned aside and file into the outer pen.

This morning the abortion rights defenders held their pink banners across the inner pen as usual, separating the main anti-abortion group from the women entering the clinic.

It was the first anniversary of the Boston Defend Abortion clinic action.

Harrassment continues despite law

The abortion clinic “Buffer Zone” law signed by Governor Paul Cellucci has been effective since November 2000. Perhaps “effective” is too strong a word.

For despite the law, members of OR continue to aggressively harrass women entering the Allston clinic.

The law forbids protesters to approach closer than six feet to clients while ranting, unless the clients "consent" to a conversation. But the courts have interpreted even a nod or a glance of acknowledgement to be consent.

Sign posted at the clinic entrance clearly states the law [photo: annie butler]

Clients are not spared from harrassment even if they walk in with their heads down and eyes closed, guided by a volunteer Clinic Escort. The ORs will loudly demand to know what they are ashamed of, hollering threats of hellfire and damnation after them.

An O.R. leader screams after a woman who has just gone in the door as the one they call "Fetus Man" holds his sign [photo: annie butler]

A woman walking along this particular sidewalk to get a cup of coffee may suddenly find herself looking at a very strange man imploring her not to kill her baby.

The clients are almost all working-class and minority women. Sometimes men come with them.

The police detail is almost never anywhere near the clinic entrance. They usually stay in their cars eating doughnuts—especially when the weather is poor, as it almost always is on the second Saturday of the month.

Yum, krispy kremes! The officers can't even see the clinic entrance from here. [photo: annie butler]

In January, however, Nazi skinheads had threatend to show up to support the anti-abortion crowd, and a bloodthirsty reporter came from the Boston Globe. She saw the police make their only arrest of an OR for breaking the “Buffer Zone” law and refusing to move away when ordered.

A link with racism

It might seem odd that Nazis would turn up to support Catholic abortion protesters. After all, the Church is on record against militarism and racism. But the abortion cause often makes odd bedfellows. And anyway, these are no ordinary Catholics.

Although the Catholic Right is the core of OR in the Boston area, in much of the country, the anti-abortion militants are mostly drawn from among Protestant fundamentalists. Each group is usually convinced that membership in the other group is a one-way ticket to hell.

The effectiveness of last month’s anti-abortion protests in Jackson, Mississippi may have suffered from the difficulty which the two groups have in working together.

The Jackson actions were organized by Operation Save America (OSA), which has replaced Operation Rescue (OR) in most parts of the country—though not in Boston.

According to a July 24 dispatch from Feminist News Wire, the actions were “an unsuccessful effort to shut down the last abortion clinic in Mississippi in an attempt to make Mississippi the first abortion-free state in America.… In addition to yelling at people entering the clinic, singing, praying, and reading Bible verses over loudspeakers, anti-abortion protestors paraded around an aborted fetus in a vacuum-packed bag, destroyed a Quran on the steps of Mississippi's capitol, and shredded a rainbow gay pride flag. OSA's outrageous tactics turned off many locals—pro-choice and pro-life alike.”

The OR leaders in Boston are a small group of militants whose ideology goes far beyond the abortion issue.

In December 2001, Bill Cotter, who is the undisputed leader of Boston OR, wrote, “the West may be destroyed by… abortion and contraception, leading to a victory by default for Islam in their 1400-year old war against the West. …the Muslim population is growing and the indigenous European population… is dying. Thus, within a few decades Europe may be a Muslim continent. … Demographics is destiny, but sadly, that doesn’t seem to terrorize us.”

A month earlier, Cotter reccommended treatment of “abortion supporters …analogous to sponsors of terrorism.”

After two Brookline clinic workers were murdered by a fanatic in 1994, Bill Cotter, speaking for OR, condemned Boston College for holding a memorial service for one of the victims. He said she didn’t deserve any sympathy, because she was “baptized in the Roman Catholic faith and volunteered to work at an abortion clinic.” Shannon Lowney had "betrayed the Catholic tradition," he declared.

The Coalition to Defend Reproductive Rights is a volunteer group of feminists and community members concerned about the lack of access to safe reproductive healthcare. We engage in organizing, education, and direct action. CDRR supports universal reproductive healthcare, free contraception, and the expansion of welfare and public childcare.

daplanning@lists.riseup.net or 617-566-2861