Title quotation by Sunsara Taylor (RCP) on “The O’Reilly Factor”

On Wednesday March 11th at the University of Hartford, Jillian Gilchrest, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut, “debated” Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut. There were three opening questions, and each debater had 2 minutes to respond, as well as a one minute response to their opponent. The audience was given note cards to write their questions on, and we were forewarned that we were not allowed to clap until the end of the debate, and that anyone would be escorted out (promptly) if there was any trouble at all. Nice way to start, eh? The facilitator kept a smiling face the entire time and wanted to keep things “under control” and find a common meeting ground between the two concepts at hand. Someone should tell her there isn’t one.

Peter Wolfgang compared pro-choicers to Nazis. Yeah. The situation of a 9-year-old girl being raped by her stepfather, and consequently being impregnated by him, was brought up. The young girl sought out an abortion and Peter was asked what he thought. He said something to the affect of, “She chose to make a bad situation worse. She fought violence with more violence”.

So Peter and The Family Institute of Connecticut don’t seem to think that a 9-year-old forced to bear a child because she was sexually assaulted by her step-father is a “bad situation”?? And I’d like to make clear that all women, no matter what particular situation one may find herself in, should have the choice of what to do with her body. The situation need not be one of shock, as with the 9-year-old victim of rape and incest.

When Peter responded to my question that I posed to the executive director of NARAL, regarding “legal” abortion not being accessible (and safe) to all, he said “Good. I’m glad people have trouble accessing abortions. I wish Nazis had as much trouble accessing concentration camps”. I can’t even count the number of times he compared pro-choicers to Nazis. This would be a good time to make clear that Nazi Germany began with Fascists taking control away from the people, bit by bit. So, who’s the Nazi here, Peter? The Anti-choice agenda sure seems fascist to me.

Wolfgang also talked about how the early feminists were pro-life, giving examples such as Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony. He concluded from this that “real” feminists are pro-life. However, he neglected to mention that some of the earliest feminists were also racist and had no other analyses of inequality. Wolfgang used their anti-choice stance for his argument while also making a comparison between pro-choicers and racists. He referred to women who have abortions as “no different from slave owners”. He is picking and choosing pieces of history to make his argument, while ignoring the contradictions that history offers us.

We have a law (Roe v Wade) making abortion legal, to which Wolfgang responded, “We also had a law that deemed blacks [sic] 3/5 of a person”. He also said that the founding fathers would “roll over in their graves” if they saw that abortion is legal now-a-days. But those are the same founding fathers that owned and raped their slaves and drafted the 3/5 of a person proposal. The level of contradiction and misogyny in this debate was overwhelming. Peter constantly referred to women having control over their bodies (in the sense of having access to abortion) as being akin to slave owners having rights over their slave’s lives. But he had no problem upholding and revering our “Founding Fathers”, many of whom raped and killed the slaves that they owned.

And good that there was NARAL to counteract his arguments, but too bad that they have a pretty liberal agenda when it comes to reproductive freedom (or rights, as they would have it). Although, I was glad to hear Jillian Gilchrest bring up that even though abortion is “legal”, that access is still an issue.

When I asked about access being a problem, and specifically what the state of Connecticut was doing about lack of access, her only analysis of “lack of access” was location of women to clinics that provide abortion services. She had no class analysis of the situation at all, unfortunately. She said Connecticut was doing well with access to several locations, and while this is true (some larger states have but one abortion provider), I know that other social and economic factors keep women from making informed decisions in regard to their bodies.

Let’s not let go of the basic demand: Free abortions, on demand, no apologies. I’m left wondering, where were all the feminists? Why wasn’t this lecture hall filled with activists picketing The Family Institute’s misogynistic agenda? Why didn’t I get myself kicked out??