A special presentation of Inform Your Resistance: Abortion abolitionists: who are they, what drives them, and how do their tactics overlap with those of other far-right movements? Join host, Koki Mendis, and PRA Senior Research Analyst, Cloee Cooper, as we reveal the chilling facts about this nationwide syndicate of militant anti-abortion Christians. We unravel the differences between the broader pro-life movement and the abortion abolitionist movement and observe how the latter attempts to impose biblical law in the US, rallying with extreme anti-abortion leaders from the 1990s.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Subscribe here: https://www.axismundi.us/inform-your-resistance/
EPISODE RESOURCES
No Sanctuary: Anti-Abortion “Abolitionists” Go to City Hall by Cloee Cooper and Tina Vásquez
How the anti-abortion movement fed the Capitol insurrection by Tina Vasquez
The anti-abortion abolitionist movement is dangerous. Here’s what you need to know by Cloee
Cooper and Tina Vásquez
The New Abolitionists: The Christian Anti-Abortion Movement Gaining Ground in State Legislatures by Heidi Beedle
The Army of Gideon: Anti-Abortion Activism in Wichita by Heidi Beedle
Convergence of Far-Right, Anti-Democratic Factions in the Northwest Could Provide a Model for the Rest of the Nation by Frederick Clarkson and Cloee Cooper
The Prochoice Religious Community May Be the Future of Reproductive Rights, Access, and Justice by Frederick Clarkson
Mobilizing for Reproductive Freedom in the Battle Over Bodily Autonomy by PRA featuring Adaku Utah, Cloee Cooper, Loretta Ross, and Tara Romano
--------- EPISODE KEYWORDS ---------
Abortion Abolitionists, Christian Right, Christian Reconstructionism, RJ Rushdoony, Capitol Insurrection, Anti-Abortion Legislation, Homeschooling Movement, Overton Window, Pro-Choice Religious Community, Movement Strategies, Collective Power for Reproductive Justice
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Brad here, and I want to welcome you to today's episode.
Today we have a special episode because we're going to introduce you to Inform Your Resistance, a new podcast produced by us at Access Moody Media that comes from Political Research Associates.
Now I want to just stop and tell you about Access Moonday Media.
I know some of you have heard already, but I know many of you may have not.
Access Moonday Media is a new podcast network started by us here at Straight White American Jesus.
And I started Access Moonday Media because I wanted to create a set of podcasts that's research-based, that connect the ivory tower to the grassroots.
I saw a gap.
In terms of the kinds of content that were being produced, I wanted there to be research-based work that is full of rigor and veracity and that comes from experts.
But I also wanted to make sure that that content was compelling and the kinds of things that people want to listen to when they're driving to work or doing the dishes or just trying to find something that's worth their time.
Well, Inform Your Resistance is the first podcast from Access Moonday Media to debut, and Inform Your Resistance comes from the Political Research Associates, which is a think tank, a research and strategy center that has been covering the American right, the global right, and the intersections of Christian nationalism, white nationalism, and patriarchy since 1981.
What that tells me is that PRA and its associates have a deep expertise in things related to all of those issues.
And so on Uninform Your Resistance, you're going to hear from those experts.
Cokie Mendes is the host, and Cokie two times a month, every two weeks, is going to be interviewing someone who is deeply, deeply invested in understanding movements, communities, Leaders, elites, and others who are at the forefront, unfortunately, of the global right, of Christian nationalist movements, of white nationalist movements, patriarchal movements, and so on.
Today you're going to hear an interview with senior researcher Chloe Cooper, who has spent years studying the abortion abolitionist movement.
And you might be thinking, well, I know a lot about the opposition to reproductive rights on the part of the GOP and conservative Christians.
But what Chloe reveals is that this movement, the abortion abolitionist movement, sees most pro-life people, people who are in conservative churches who are pro-life, sees them as their enemy.
And that's because they see them as not going far enough.
I mean, the folks that Chloe's talking about are truly radical.
And what's scary is they're finding traction in our government and in our culture.
We are really excited to bring you Inform Your Resistance and we're just really excited to launch Axis Moody Media.
I want to just stop and say some of you asked me how you can support us and we really could use your support.
We are an indie network, just like Straight White American Jesus is an indie show.
We don't have any outside funding at the moment.
We don't have big grants from universities.
We don't have a patron or a funder who's sort of given us a blank check.
So if you would like to help us at Access Moondi Media, Get off the ground and make sure that we can create the kind of research-based podcast that will help safeguard democracy from religious nationalisms, from extremist communities, from authoritarian leaders or wannabe leaders.
And here's a couple ways you can do that.
You can go to accessmooney.us and sign up to be a paid member of our substack.
You'll get updates from us.
You'll get special content.
But most of all, you'll help us make all of the things That we envision possible.
You can also go to our Straight White American Jesus Patreon, and we're going to be, over the next couple of weeks, basically building out a way to support Axis Mundi through Patreon.
But right now, Straight White American Jesus is the best way.
Now you might be thinking, well, what is it you want to do?
And if you check out accessmooney.us, you will see all of the shows that we have in pre-production or in production.
And I think they're pretty exciting.
We have shows from Andrew Whitehead that will be running for the next four weeks and actually debuts today.
We have shows from Sarah Mosliner on patriarchy and white supremacy and their implications.
Entanglements with purity culture.
But here's the thing.
We have a bunch of series that we want to make and yet we don't have the funding to do it yet.
We have great scholars, great researchers, and we have two shows in particular that we would really like to make.
One of them is about red state religions and progressive religious communities in deep red contexts that are resilient, resisting, and doing their best to help people flourish and be safe amidst the persecution of trans folks, systemic racism, Attacks on the LGBT community writ large, anti-Asian hate, and on down the line.
We are going to be telling you more about all of this in the coming weeks and the things that we're going to be trying to make and build and do over the next year.
But for now, if you'd like to support us, go to axismovie.us and sign up to be a paid Substack supporter or go to our Patreon at Straight White American Jesus and support us that way.
We're so thankful for y'all.
And I just want to say before we get to the interview, thank you for making this happen.
We have felt your love and support for the last five years, and it's enabled us to take a big leap and to try something that's kind of.
Kind of scary.
And that's starting Access Moody Media and starting to explore our dreams for making more content that will help folks like you understand the threats to our democracy, join in solidarity with those who are trying to safeguard it, to rescue it, to protect it.
And generally to just educate in order to activate.
Thanks for listening.
We hope you enjoy this interview with Chloe Cooper on the first episode of Inform Your Resistance.
Make sure to check the show notes so you can subscribe to Inform Your Resistance and get all the latest episodes that drop every two weeks.
Until next time, keep your eyes open and feet on the ground.
Axis Mundy This is Inform Your Resistance with PRA, Political Research Associates.
Tune in twice a month to hear experts, researchers, journalists, academics, and movement strategists explain some of the most significant contemporary threats to democracy from the mainstream and far right.
Together, we break down the so what of these movements so that you can inform your resistance in the fight for a just and inclusive democratic society.
Political Research Associates has been producing rigorous, long-form analysis on the intersections of right-wing strategy for over 40 years.
With Inform Your Resistance, we distill what you need to know most.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm your host, Koki Mendez, Communications Director here at PRA.
Today, I'm joined by PRA Senior Research Analyst Chloe Cooper to discuss the so-called abortion abolitionist movement, who are the moral absolutists of the contemporary anti-abortion movement.
Chloe's a journalist and researcher with over a decade of experience researching far-right movements and their strategies to influence law enforcement and local government.
She was granted the 2021 Soros Justice Media Fellowship to develop a podcast on far-right sheriffs.
Chloe holds a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, specializing in social justice and investigative reporting.
You can read her analysis at The Progressive, the Center for Right-Wing Studies, PBS Chicago, and of course, Political Research Associates and its publications, Religion Dispatches and The Public Eye.
Before we begin, I'd like to clarify an important note about the language used in today's conversation.
As Chloe will explain, abortion abolitionists appropriate the language of the 19th century abolitionist movement that sought to end the formal economic system of slavery in the United States and Britain.
The appropriation of this terminology, especially by a movement that is actively working to heighten the inequity and violence of our reproductive laws that are disproportionately felt by black and brown communities, is important.
We are, however, choosing to discuss this movement, using their appropriated language, because abortion abolitionists are highly distinct from the rest of the anti-abortion movement, and their politics are squarely centered around the demand to abolish abortion in any form outright, as we'll hear from Chloe.
We ask that our listeners stay the course with us as we suspend our deep distaste for this violence of rhetorical appropriation so that we can maintain our focus on our strategic analysis of a movement that must be recognized, named, and taken seriously in the ongoing fight for reproductive justice.
Thanks for listening.
Chloe, welcome to the Inform Your Resistance pod.
Today, we're going to talk about abortion abolitionists.
And so I'm going to get us started with the question, who are abortion abolitionists and how do they differ specifically from the pro-life movement more broadly?
First off, just thank you so much for having me, Koki.
It's really wonderful to be here and have a chance to share some of the research I've been doing alongside two really brilliant colleagues of mine, Tina Vasquez, who's editor-at-large with the movement journalism platform PRISM, and longtime PRA senior research analyst Frederick Clarkson, who has not only worked with me on this, but has obviously done decades of work understanding the Christian right and its threats to Reproductive justice and human rights more broadly.
So the abortion abolitionist movement that I'm going to be speaking about today is really a nationwide network of militant anti-abortion Christians who compare their work of allegedly defending the unborn today to the 19th century anti-slavery activists.
And these groups take abortion politics really seriously.
This is a movement of smart, educated, and dedicated people with a theocratic vision that could easily include violent tactics.
It's a movement that also has significant overlap with other far-right social movements that see this as a right moment to gain power within government and dramatically shape culture.
And kind of most importantly, the constellation of abortion abolitionist groups that we're going to be speaking about today would like to see the death penalty for any person who's involved in an abortion.
And it's an ideology that has actually long roots in this country.
So while there's no really single leader of the abortion abolitionist movement today, it's really a decentralized movement.
There are a number of groups that have popped up, especially just in the last 10 years, and the majority of their leadership are young, white, male pastors.
So today's movement includes a younger generation of these mostly white male pastors, like Russell Hunter, who's the founder of a national network based in Oklahoma called Free the States, which just rebranded actually to Abolitionists Rising, and this other man named Jeff Durbin, who's the leader of Apologia Church in Arizona and founder of another national network called End Abortion Now.
But we've seen actually abortion abolitionist groups pop up in numerous states across the country and they actually seem to be currently expanding to new states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, etc.
What's kind of concerning is that this new network of abortion abolitionists have also teamed up with some of the key leaders of the 1990s.
Militant anti-abortion movement as well.
In fact, the very people who wrote documents that justified the murder of abortion providers in the 1990s.
And this includes people like Matthew Trujillo, who wrote this very famous book called The Doctrine of Lesser Magistrates, and Rusty Thomas, the founder of Operation Save America.
And so back to this question now of how do these groups differ from the pro-life movement more broadly?
So while both the pro-life movement and the abortion abolitionists would like to, in many ways, criminalize and end abortion, the pro-life movement today is much more interested in actually working within the structures of the U.S.
legal system.
And therefore, the abortion abolitionist movement views the majority of the pro-life movement as incrementalist, reformist, and actually as a barrier to the radical changes that they are seeking.
The abortion abolitionists would actually like to install a whole different kind of government in the U.S.
that is in line with biblical law, and they see biblical law as a more moral framework for society, and so therefore they will often be willing to take illegal measures to try to eradicate abortion in this country.
And Chloe, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the abortion abolitionists have almost an oppositional relationship to the pro-life movement.
They use a sort of heated rhetoric the same way they would with pro-abortion activism.
Absolutely.
And not only do they see the pro-life movement as incrementalist and kind of liberal, in many cases, especially in recent years, you will have leaders that run on abortion abolitionist platforms who run entire campaigns actually calling establishment Republicans that are pro-life murderers.
Because they are essentially willing to collaborate with aspects of a secular state that they fundamentally disagree with.
And many of their recent campaigns also post Dobbs, the Dobbs decision, actually includes specifically hammering major wedges within the current pro-life movement or creating major wedges within the pro-life movement right now to try to basically peel off some of the pro-life movement to become more abortion abolitionist.
Fascinating.
Absolutely fascinating.
You touched on this a little bit already, sort of through the biblical worldview, the theocratic vision that this movement has.
But Christian nationalism really in the last couple of years has entered mainstream discourse via media coverage.
And then PRA has been tracking this movement really closely for the past four decades.
Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship between abortion abolitionists and Christian nationalism as a movement?
Yeah, absolutely.
So what's really important to understand is that both the Christian Nationalist Movement, which is much broader than the small subset of abortion abolitionists, but both the Christian Nationalist Movement and abortion abolitionists are very much influenced by this movement within Christian nationalism called Christian Reconstructionism, which was led by this guy named R.J.
Rischduny.
But what it primarily advocated for was Christians taking concrete actions today to bring about the conditions for a second coming.
And what that essentially translated into was Christians taking political action and becoming very involved in politics.
And that R.J.
Rushduni actually created this whole document which laid out essentially a vision for how Christians could take political action and a vision for the type of theocratic society that he was advocating for.
That ended up being incredibly influential within the rise of the evangelical right in this country and other major pillars of the Christian nationalist movement today.
It has also been very influential within this kind of longer legacy of the militant Christian movements and militant anti-abortion movements.
As well as the overlap between the militant anti-abortion movement and the drive to create militias and other types of groups that could prepare for something like the Civil War or prepare to take arms to kind of take over the country.
Frederick Clarkson has done amazing work around this, kind of looking specifically about how RJ Rashtuni and Christian reconstructionism has been kind of the intellectual firepower behind the Christian right.
Specifically in terms of the abortion abolitionist movement, a really key influencer and somebody that I spoke to before is this man named Matthew Trujillo who wrote the book The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates.
He was extremely influenced by R.J.
Rischduny and the Christian Reconstructionists.
And launched a number of groups in the 1990s that are kind of some of the precursors to the modern-day abortion abolitionist movement.
And not only that, as I mentioned earlier too, Matthew Trujillo is now an active part of the abortion abolitionist network.
He speaks at all of their convenings.
He also speaks and kind of spreads the gospel at a number of patriot movement groups in this country to share with them the justification for Taking up arms right now to defend the type of society that they're ultimately advocating for.
Thank you for that overview.
I mean, this is where PRA's work is so interesting, is in mapping these influences and really understanding the intersection of what potentially could look like discrete movements.
Staying here for a second, what are some other far-right movements that we've seen really working with abortion abolitionists, but potentially from their own corner of the right?
So, first of all, the abortion abolitionists are generally a very conservative and traditional group of activists today that have a really strong moral compass.
And they, you know, really believe really vehemently in what they're fighting for, it seems.
I mean, after hours and hours of listening to their online educational materials and the speeches that they give, they really offer this like deep sense of belonging and purpose, which is something I just want to highlight in a moment where I think that can sometimes be sparse in society.
And that deep sense of belonging and purpose is something that seems to You know, galvanize people in a really deep way.
And the most common overlap that we see today still, just as it was in the 1990s, is the overlap between the abortion abolitionist movement and various militia and patriot groups.
But we also see that these groups share this ecosystem with a whole range of other actors that are really concerned with essentially influencing the lesser magistrates to transform society.
And by that we mean Influencing local judges, influencing sheriff's departments, influencing city council.
It's not surprising that this movement first came on my radar when I was actually trying to research the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, who were also influenced by the Christian Reconstructionist movement, but using similar tactics to try to push sheriffs around the country to nullify state laws that they disagree with, for example.
I saw a similar tactic taken up by the abortion abolitionists at first with introducing sanctuaries for the unborn.
So very concretely, we've seen that the abortion abolitionist movement intersects closely with various groups within the Patriot movement.
Also, though, doing research along with Frederick Clarkson, the two of us found together that some of the very state legislators that were actually chairpersons for Project Blitz, which is the legislative playbook of the Christian right, We're also some of the first state legislators to bolster the abortion abolitionist move back in 2019 to start introducing state-level abortion abolitionist bills.
And that person specifically that I'm speaking about is the former state legislator Matt Shea, who also ended up spending a lot of time actually supporting militias that took over the wildlife Malheur refuge in Oregon back in 2016.
So a recent case in point is Tina Vazquez identified a group in North Carolina called Guilford Patriots who brought out Matthew Trujillo to discuss the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.
And the group itself operates out of the Greensboro's Grace Life Church and was founded by this local far-right activist who had protested outside of school board meetings and other events in Guilford County, was active speaking out against mask mandates, gender-affirming care, and critical race theory in schools.
She's also affiliated with this North Carolina group called Revival and Courage and the North Carolina grassroots government, which is a political action committee formed in 2022 that endorsed far right candidates with the goal of ousting Republicans who were not far right enough.
And one of the founding principles of this PAC is to abolish abortion.
So we are seeing massive overlap on the ground in terms of these groups and the ecosystem that they share with other far-right movements.
Another important example of abortion abolitionists sharing an ecosystem with other organizations within the far-right is that A number of abortion abolitionists actually participated in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, and this is something that Tina Vazquez laid out in a piece that she wrote for PRISM back in 2021.
So just to try to paint a little bit of a picture of this ecosystem, it seems like many of these actors that at times within the realm of trying to understand the far right, people like to think of these groups on all these separate tracks.
In reality, we see lots of overlaps, actually.
And the example in North Carolina seems to only be one.
Every single time we look further and scratch under the surface, there seem to be many examples where there's a number of different groups kind of sharing ideologies, ecosystems, and working together.
Wow, this is, I mean, I'm riveted.
It's so interesting to hear so many of the different movements that we follow in our work.
Really, you're naming them all in this, in play in the abortion abolitionist ecosystem.
Really, really interesting.
One thing, you know, I hear from you right now and what I've seen in your research and Fred and Tina's research is it is male actors who come up over and over again.
And you mentioned that it's, you know, white male pastors who are really playing their primary role in leading these movements.
It's really fascinating to me, especially given what we see as the face of the pro-life movement is often women, right?
White women who are the spokespeople for pro-life organizations.
So I'm curious, what role do women play in the abortion abolitionist movement, if any, and what does this tell us about the misogyny of the anti-abortion movement more broadly?
Let's just first start out by saying that the public spokespeople of the abortion abolitionist movement are men and almost entirely all white men.
And part of what's pretty interesting is that they actually have a justification for why that is the case.
But I also want to be clear that there are definitely a number of women who participate in the movement, who will go out and rally for an abortion abolitionist bill, who just participated in their recent March 2023 convening in Wichita, Kansas called Abolitionists Rising.
But I've listened to hours of their material and one of the things that they actually provide as a talking point for their base to refute the accusation that they are a movement of all males is that
They believe that it is the job of the male in society to protect women and specifically to protect them from what they see as the biggest sin a woman or a person seeking an abortion could possibly commit.
And so there is this major savior and hero complex going on.
Where men, as the ultimate protectors, need to be on the very front lines of this abortion abolitionist movement, essentially saving women and people seeking an abortion.
And so you definitely see that men are not only the major spokespeople of this movement, but are also often the ones outside of abortion clinics, outside of reproductive choice clinics, actively trying to advocate for somebody to not seek an abortion.
And they see that as the biggest kind of gift that they could give these people in society.
And so I thought that that was somewhat interesting.
But then, absolutely, I think there's also something about the militancy of this movement, too.
I mean, within their traditional understanding of society.
Men should be at the forefront of a militant movement.
Men should kind of be the soldiers of this.
And so, yeah, that's what we primarily see.
But I want to just not also take away the agency from the women who are in these spaces, who, you know, also very much see The violence against the unborn as they see it as a major sin in society and want to back up the movement as much as possible.
That paternalism rhetoric makes so much sense.
It's much easier to comprehend the sort of primacy that men play in this movement, understanding that logic, the rhetoric.
I want to say too, just my gratitude that you listen to this stuff for hours on end and subject yourself to what I can only imagine is horrific and disturbing.
I hear that in the work that you do and the fact that you spend that time in these spaces so that we on the left can understand these movements in order to better combat them is Invaluable.
It is self-sacrificial.
And I just want to name that right now and say my thanks.
And thanks for everyone.
Thank you, Koki.
So moving into where the abortion abolitionist movement is today, we're starting to see the recent introduction of anti-abortion bills in Alabama, Missouri, Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Arkansas that are aiming to allow for murder charges to be brought against anyone who has an abortion.
Are we seeing this abolitionist agenda come to fruition right now?
So, while the bans that we are seeing in the states that you mentioned are very severe, and the abortion abolitionist movement may have played a significant role in some ways in pushing the Overton window, The bans themselves are actually quite distinct from the kinds of bills the abortion abolitionist movements are advocating for.
And in fact, they almost illuminate some of the main divides between these movements right now.
The bans that have passed have a bit more of an incrementalist approach, and they specifically do not blame the person accessing abortion.
They blame, you know, in some cases they blame providers, but they overwhelmingly do not specifically criminalize the person seeking care.
Abolitionists, on the other hand, have two major goals in mind with their abortion abolitionist bills.
And one of them is to see the fetus from the very moment of conception as a full human regardless.
To treat abortion at any stage as murder.
And they see the bills that they are actually crafting is to specifically also make sure that there is absolutely no exceptions for abortion, even including rape.
And so there is a slight, basically, difference, and the abortion abolitionists themselves actually still view the bans that have been passed as kind of liberal and incrementalist and wishy-washy, for lack of a better term.
However, the abortion abolitionists have actually introduced bills that are abortion abolitionist in 17 states, and there are 10 states currently with active legislation to abolish abortion.
And this includes places like Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina.
It's unlikely these bills will pass, but if they do, they would harshly criminalize the people accessing abortion to the degree of capital punishment.
And the bills also would kind of codify laws that classify fertilized eggs, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses as persons, granting them full legal protection under the U.S.
Constitution.
So, yes, essentially treating any person involved in an abortion as murderers.
The architect behind many of the abortion abolitionist bills that have been introduced is this attorney named Bradley Pierce, who also founded the Foundation to Abolish Abortion.
And he's also connected to the homeschooling movement, which is kind of interesting.
And one of the first bills he introduced was in Texas, where that very bill proposed charging abortion providers and their patients with murder.
The logical incoherence of using capital punishment to punish people who you claim are murdering fetuses is so frustrating, but also, you know, really important to understand.
Absolutely.
Chloe, you just in your last answer mentioned the Overton window.
Can you just take a second to explain what that is for our listeners in case it's a new concept?
Yeah, absolutely.
So the concept of the Overton window is somewhat actually related also to this concept of centrism and extremism.
But essentially that in any given moment of time, there are a number of ideas that are considered within the category of acceptable or normal.
There's a shared kind of common sense or there's a spectrum that is considered common sense.
There are groups, however, always in history that are pushing for ideas, politics and actions that kind of exist outside of the perceived common sense of the time.
These are groups that sometimes people consider extremists.
In our case, we're talking about far-right and militant groups.
But when they push things even further outside of the bounds of what is considered acceptable in that time, they can actually shift the entire concept of what is common sense or acceptable.
And that's partially what I mean by pushing the Overton window in this case.
That the abortion abolitionists, for a number of years now, have created a whole new category of what they think is acceptable and moral.
And as far as they've been able to push that somewhat into To essentially inject those ideas into the discourse, they actually are able to shift the category of what is considered normal or acceptable.
And in that sense, the abortion abolitionist bills that they have already introduced into a number of states, as well as the language and culture of their movement, it may have played a role in the new bills that have been introduced since Dobbs.
Essentially, in normalizing the criminalization of people seeking an abortion.
Thank you for that.
You've given us a really good overview of the abortion abolitionist movement.
You've given us a lot of insight into the various actors that you all are tracking.
How do we strategize to block abortion abolitionists, especially in the context of their partnerships with the patriotic militia movements, their ties to homeschooling and the Christian nationalist movement more broadly?
What can we do with this information?
Well, I want to start out first by just discussing a little bit more of some of the strategies that these groups have been employing since the Dobbs decision, and then just go into a little bit of some of the amazing examples that I am seeing in some states of people pushing back against not only the abortion abolitionists, but also some of the bedfellows that they keep.
As I touched on a little bit earlier, the abortion abolitionists do not view the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a major victory, but they do see it as a turning point and one that provides them a lot of opportunity to influence and shape Culture as well as politics in brand new ways.
This is only in the last couple years that these groups moved from only agitating outside of abortion clinics and encouraging people to adopt children to now actually not only trying to influence local policy, but to influence state legislators.
And now at their most recent convening in Wichita, Kansas, they said they want abolitionists, and of course they mean abortion abolitionists, to become a household name.
They said that they think this is a moment in the culture where people can finally understand their movement.
So it is a movement that is shifting into what they think of as more mainstream opportunities, honestly, to influence change.
So beyond introducing bills, there's another strategy that they've started to employ as well, which is to try to get people within their movement to run for the precinct chair of the local Republican Party.
Right.
We saw that really starting to take off in Colorado, and Heidi Beadle, a local journalist there, did some amazing reporting around it.
And we've also seen them continue to try to build a pretty vast online network of people.
And this is a network that is not only encouraging activism, but also really creating a community for these types of groups.
And now we've seen at least three or four years in a row of them holding these national convenings and national networks that is trying to kind of bring together some of the more disparate elements of the movement and try to create a little bit more of a coherent whole.
So they continue to do grassroots activism.
They continue to try to get people to build a more kind of robust adoption network, essentially.
But they've also now started to take on some more cultural and political tactics as part of their overall agenda.
So now in terms of how we strategize, there's A couple of places that I have been looking right now to I kind of understand the best ways to strategize around this right now.
I wanted to highlight the amazing effort that Frederick Clarkson is working on right now with the pro-choice religious community, where he is working to build essentially with other pro-choice religious organizations to create kind of a religious and moral response to this.
And that is something that is still very much in the works and I think is going to play a massive role in terms of the type of cultural and political changes that are needed to push back against the abortion abolitionists.
And then I've recently partnered with Collective Power for Reproductive Justice.
And last year, I was able to go out to a meeting where there were reproductive justice groups from different parts of the country came together to try to assess some of the threats.
This was before Roe v. Wade was overturned.
And I was able to share some of my research on the abortion abolitionist movement and their overlaps with the patriot movement groups.
And together we were able to try to assess and understand that there's still actually a lot of gaps in knowledge around the abortion abolitionist movement and
One thing that I've been doing is just trying to scope out kind of where are those gaps in knowledge so that reproductive justice leaders themselves and the communities that are working with them can just even be equipped with the knowledge about the strategies of the abortion abolitionist movement, where they are active, and so that those can be incorporated into their movement strategies.
So I really think there's a multi-pronged approach that's happening and really there's more that's needed.
One other thing that's also coming to mind is that there are a number of journalists around the country as well who are taking the abortion abolitionist movement seriously and who have been doing some excellent reporting.
So it's almost like you end up being at multiple different stages at once.
One is to understand these groups and what they're currently doing.
Two is to be working closely with movement organizations to make sure that they understand who these groups are and what they're doing.
And three is to try to build different types of coalitions that can help actually establish movement strategies that are rooted in communities, that are rooted in movements on the ground, that have the capacity to push back and also to be a part of other types of frameworks that really take Thank you, Chloe.
Those are really concrete examples.
people's bodies seriously and that center humanity and reproductive freedom.
Thank you, Chloe.
Those are really concrete examples.
I think that you painted such a clear picture of what's needed and the sort of trends that you're already seeing.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk through what is a really fascinating and scary movement.
And, you know, just once again, appreciate that you're doing this work and identifying how best to deploy it on the ground, I think, is the key to staying relevant and staying abreast of trends that could otherwise happen when we're not paying attention.
So, thank you so much for talking with us today.
Thank you, Koki.
Thank you for listening to Inform Your Resistance with Political Research Associates.
Today's episode was hosted by me, Koki Mendes.
Our producer and fact checker is Olivia Lawrence-Weilman, sound engineering by Scott Okamoto, and production support by Brad Onishi.
Harini Rajagopalan created our communications and marketing materials, and Frank Lawrence, our music.
If you haven't already, rate, review, and subscribe.
And the best thing you can do to help us is tell your comrades about the pod.
Resisting authoritarianism is just better with friends.
