Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014 Launched!
Forecast—Hot August in Texas
August 4, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Wednesday night, July 30, about 60 people in Houston’s Encore Theater and people watching on more than 200 computers across the country were taken on an unforgettable journey. A powerful, determined, and deeply moving People’s Hearing took them from the past—the days of illegal abortion, coat hangers, and back-alley abortions—to the present state of emergency for abortion rights, to the future—the “Way Out and Way Forward Toward Abortion on Demand and Without Apology and the Liberation of Women.” The following afternoon, more than 30 protesters gathered at a park in Houston and marched a few blocks to the headquarters of the Harris County Republican Party and presented them with the verdict of the People’s Hearing.
Bold and courageous volunteers, young and old, mainly women but including men, came into Houston on July 30 or in the days just before to get out the word about the Freedom Ride and the People’s Hearing. They were joined by people from Houston, including people brand new to this fight. Together, they are out to make history: as Stop Patriarchy, the organization that initiated the Freedom Ride described it, this is “a fight to turn the tide in the all-out assault on women’s right to abortion and birth control, July 30 thru August and into September.”
The entire Encore Theater event crackled and sparkled with the sense that something new and different, something important and meaningful, was coming together that night—from the moments when people were gathering, through the presentations, and afterwards when people lingered to mingle, to talk with friends new and old about what had just happened, what was going to happen next, how to carry this forward, how to reach out to and involve many, many more people in this fight.
The People’s Hearing
Two young women MC’s opened the hearing by saying, “We’re here because across the country courts are holding hearings that are restricting abortion and closing clinics. We feel a great need for a People’s Hearing. While these courts are determining the lives and the futures of women everywhere, there is an urgent need for people to share their stories... and bring to light what’s at stake in this fight for reproductive control.”
A fiery and furious torrent of profoundly moving testimony followed. Women told searing, often deeply personal stories of friends who died after receiving illegal back-alley abortions; women spoke of their own experiences of being raped and looking for abortions; of suffering vicious incestuous assaults and being made to feel that they were somehow responsible for something “shameful.”
Other front-line fighters in the battle for the right to abortion sent in written and recorded messages: Merle Hoffman, the founder and president of Choices Women’s Medical Center in New York, said that over the past 40 years she has been fighting for women’s right to abortion that she “has been involved in many battles, seen women’s rights be assaulted from many different sides. But never, never has the threat been so palpable, been so powerful, as it is now.” Derenda Hancock, the lead escort at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the last abortion clinic in Mississippi—sent a statement. She said, “There is no doubt that what happens in Texas affects us all. It is my hope that the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride will help to focus national attention on this dire situation. That by lending our voices with our sisters in Texas, we will hear them in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Then by lending our voices, be heard throughout the South. All of our voices must then spread throughout the nation and be loud and clear. We are sick and tired, and aren’t going to take it anymore. Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!”
An abortion provider in Texas gave testimony, and a statement from Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine described how an illegal abortion had torn his family apart many years ago. Two women who had learned of the People’s Hearing days before came to present some of the most poignant—and uplifting—testimony of the night.
Fierce determination to defy, resist, and defeat the attacks on abortion flowed through every presentation—fueled by an understanding that the lives, the futures, the dreams, and the hopes of millions of women are at stake in this battle.
The searing testimony, the fury and determination not to allow women to be thrown back, was pulled to a higher and deeper level in an intense and enthusiastically received talk delivered with the passionate conviction of Sunsara Taylor. Towards the beginning of her speech, Sunsara emphasized, “I think it’s come together tonight, the stakes that face us ... the doctor said it in the interview, we’re going back. It’s like history took a big U-turn and we’re being slammed back.... We are living in a time of great emergency, a tremendous emergency and we have a tremendous responsibility to turn this around.”
Bloody Coat Hangers at the Republican Office
The Harris County Republican Party is a headquarters for some of the most vengeful, hateful, and relentless woman haters in the country. They have a program that aims at eliminating all abortion and preventing women from getting birth control; their platform calls for recognizing “fetal personhood” in the U.S. Constitution, and putting that above any rights a woman may have. They are dead serious about imposing these extremely repressive measures on society, and some of the key forces behind Texas’s anti-abortion laws are based in these offices.
Many of the protesters gathered at the park were dressed all in white; many carried bloody coat hangers, and there was an eight-foot hanger with the words “When Abortion Is Illegal, Women Die” written across it. Many carried enlarged photos of women across the years who had died from brutal illegal or self-induced abortions.
Two young women entered the Republican-offices building and banged on their door to present them with a bloody coat hanger as a symbol of their crimes against women. But the Republicans hunkered down in their offices and were heard over a speaker phone calling the police. The young women pushed the hanger under their door and joined the protest outside. After an hour of silent protest in the Texas heat, holding up hangers, photos, and banners, and with several of the women draped in symbolic chains, the protesters threw off the chains and chanted “without this basic right, women can’t be free, abortion on demand and without apology.” A short, powerful speak-out was directed at the Republicans’ headquarters before people marched back to the park.
The Texas Abortion Rights Freedom Ride has taken off from Houston. Thousands of people throughout the metro area learned about this Freedom Ride, at concerts by Lady GaGa and Beyoncé, at soccer games, at the sprawling Texas Medical Center, and in some of the projects and streets of Houston. Dozens of people helped make the People’s Hearing and the stay of the Freedom Riders possible, in all sorts of ways and with many contributions. Several people, young and old, stepped forward to participate in making all this happen and in being part of the Freedom Ride.
Next stop—Austin, the state capital. Then on to San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, and a Week of Defiance at the end of the month. Weather forecast—hot August in Texas.
The riders are determined to continue to reach out to and involve thousands of people in the battle to defeat and turn around the attacks on abortion rights and to change the way millions of people understand the issue of abortion. It is not about the supposed “rights of the fetus.” Fetuses are not babies, women are not incubators, and abortion is not murder! At issue is whether women will be viewed and treated as breeders, or as full human beings.
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