On May 9, a so-called “progressive” anti-abortion organization calling itself Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) published an attack on Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR) and the Revcoms.

PAAU opposes all abortions. It has invaded abortion clinics, traumatizing patients. It is part of the Christian fascist anti-abortion movement. PAAU’s attack on Rise Up and the Revcoms was packed with outrageous lies, dangerous slanders, and distortions. After PAAU’s slanderous hit piece was published, much of its content—with unsubstantiated lies and dangerous provocations—was later echoed, parroted and amplified by the mainstream so-called “women’s movement.”

These attacks have been substantively refuted by RU4AR (To Those Who Would Rather Lie, Slander, and Attack Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights Than Unite All Who Can Be United Against This Fascist Assault). And by the Revcoms (A Reply to the “Statement Against RiseUp4AbortionRights”: In Defense of the Emancipation of Humanity and the Leadership We Need to Get There) including, as background and context for these attacks, read Behind the Week of Internet Attacks on Bob Avakian and the Revcoms: Imperialist Fear Mongers and Their Servants).

Who Are PAAU? Anti-Abortionists as “Progressive” as Upholders of Slavery

With a laundry list of woke rhetoric on their website, PAAU’s objective is the same as the rest of the fascist anti-abortion movement: enslaving women through forced motherhood.

PAAU came onto the scene in 2021. Its leaders are linked to multiple actions in which they push their way into abortion clinics, loudly “praying” for patients, demanding they cancel appointments. At an LA clinic they chanted the name of a doctor, saying “we know who you are, we know what you do.” In DC they targeted the sole physician at a clinic, claiming (without any evidence) that he was “making a killing” performing illegal abortions. After demonizing him in this way, they posted his picture prominently on their website. This is dangerous, given the waves of violence against abortion doctors (see here and here, for example)

PAAU is seamlessly integrated into and promoted by the most un-disguised, violent, rabid women-hating leaders of the anti-abortion movement. PAAU featured Randall Terry at an April 5 joint press conference to defend their grotesque and disgusting theft of fetuses from an abortion clinic in Washington, DC. Terry openly decrees that it is “human nature” for women to follow men. He is an overt Christian fascist theocrat who has declared “When I, or people like me, are running the country, [abortion providers] better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you." Given the history of violence against abortion providers, and the past actions of Terry and his organization, Operation Rescue, this is no idle threat.¹

On June 6, Texas senator Ted Cruz, a high-power player in the Republi-fascist Party, joined a PAAU press conference to support their attacks on abortion providers. Cruz is a Christian fundamentalist theocrat who thinks women are breeding machines, subordinate to men, who vehemently opposes equal rights for LGBT people.

A “Woke” and “Inclusive” Front for Red-Baiting and Fascism

PAAU’s veneer of wokeness covers over a completely reactionary movement, declaring that being forced to bear children is “women-forward and women-centered.” They claim (with utterly no substance) to be “anti-capitalist.” They exploit the terrible and disorienting impact of identity politics to insist their vicious anti-woman agenda be judged on the basis of their straight-out-of-an-identity-politics-template commitment “to radical inclusivity while magnifying secular, feminist, liberal, and LGBTQIA+ identifying pro-life voices, especially those belonging to people of color.”

PAAU’s attacks on Rise Up 4 Abortion rights targets the one organization which, before and after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, has been leading in bringing forward much needed mass resistance against the attacks on abortion rights. And PAAU’s so-called “anti-capitalist” pretentions have made it a useful tool to attempt to isolate the Revcoms.

Any organization proclaiming itself pro-choice should have immediately, publicly and unambiguously exposed, rejected and distanced from PAAU’s demand that “Pro-lifers and pro-choicers must condemn RU4AR together.” Instead, in the weeks that followed the release of PAAU’s hit piece on Rise Up and the Revcoms, many of the lies and slanders in it were echoed and amplified in attacks on Rise Up and the Revcoms by the mainstream, “women’s movement.” And these attacks further escalated in the weeks that followed.

The lies, distortions, and invocation of “me-and-my-movement” identity politics of PAAU, and Democratic Party-aligned forces converge and pivot around attacks on Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution aimed at emancipating all humanity, calling him a “cult leader.” (In response, see Bob Avakian Is Not a “Mad Cult Leader”: He Is a Deep Thinker and Profoundly Thoughtful Leader An Open Letter to Fighters for Abortion Being Hit by This Accusation—And Others Who Are Hearing It, by Sunsara Taylor, in this issue of the site, and Bob Avakian Speaks to “Cult”: A Ridiculous, Ignorant, and Irresponsible Accusation—We Are Applying a Scientific Method and Approach to Understanding, and Transforming, the World To Emancipate Humanity).

Sharp lines of demarcation must be drawn between the side of the people and the enemy (or those doing the enemy's dirty work).