Solidarity

I want to be in Alabama right now.

I want to be in Birmingham, to be exact. I woke up this morning with a knot in my stomach, the kind that means regret and unease and anxiety, and it's there because I should be in Alabama right now, but instead I'm hundreds of miles away.

Because Operation Save America has descended upon Alabama this week, in an attempt to shut down one of the last abortion clinics in the state -- "storming the gates," in their words, to "push what is left of the abortion industry into a deep grave."

I want to be with my Alabama sisters and brothers, as they fight back.

I live in a state now with a pro-choice governor and a pro-choice state senate, and my member of congress is openly gay. I live in a town where the "Christian Coalition" is considered quaint and anachronistic. I live in a town where most women my age wouldn't understand why they'd need an escort to help them get from the clinic parking lot to the front door.

The greatest gift from living in Alabama is that I no longer take any of this for granted. The stakes are clear now. The battle (and it is a battle) is no longer theoretical. People die because of this.

The anti-abortion crowd tries to distance itself from the doctor-killers, but their "mainstream" smokescreen doesn't fool us. They are willing to murder doctors, nurses, women and anyone else who gets in their way, to prove their point that abortion is murder. Somehow, in their twisted sense of logic, this makes sense.

Last year, Operation Save America tried to shut down Mississippi's last remaining abortion clinic. Yes, just one, in the entire state. But they failed. When more pro-choice supporters showed up for a counter-protest, anti-choicers responded with a bomb threat.

Obviously, they are very selective about which lives they want to save.

In 1998, a man named Eric Robert Rudolph detonated a bomb made of dynamite and nails in the doorway of the same Birmingham abortion clinic targeted this week by OSA. Rudolph's bomb killed a police officer and maimed a nurse. The OSA siege in Birmingham this week happens to coincide with the anniversary of Rudolph's court sentencing. This is not an accident.

Chances are, pro-choice demonstrators will outnumber OSA's "army" in Birmingham, just like they did last summer in Mississippi. But I don't want to be there because I think the movement needs me.

I want to be in Alabama right now, standing silent, arms linked, forming a human-chain safe zone around the clinic to keep it open during the so-called "siege", because that's the only sane response to OSA's insanity.


(87% of all US counties do not have an abortion provider. If you have the resources to do so, please consider helping to make sure Birmingham/Jefferson County isn't one of them.)