Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism - Hardcover

Bader, Eleanor J.; Baird-Windle, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312239254 ISBN 13: 9780312239251

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Trade, 2001

Synopsis

Targets of Hatred charts the development of the anti-abortion movement in North America. Beginning in the years preceding the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion, the book examines the roles played by the Catholic Church, Fundamentalist Protestants, and Republican and Democratic parties, and assesses points of overlap and divergence. The voices of more than 190 providers in the United States and Canada--clinic owners, doctors, nurses, technicians, and their families--give readers an in-depth look at what it means to work in a field in which arson, bombings, harassment, and killing are routine. Filled with dramatic, eye-witness accounts of anti-abortion terrorism, the book demonstrates law enforcement's failure to stem the violence and is a call to arms for concerned individuals.

About this title

About the Author:

Eleanor Bader is a social worker for the Legal Services of New York City and a freelance contributor to Sojourner, The Women's Forum, and various other publications.

Patricia Baird-Windle, formerly an abortion provider, writes and lectures on abortion and feminism.

From Publishers Weekly:

While national prochoice organizations have focused on defending women's reproductive rights on legal grounds, they have largely sidestepped a major problem at the grassroots: terrorist attacks on abortion providers. But what use is the "right" to an abortion if there aren't enough clinics or doctors willing to endure threats and violence to perform them? ask abortion provider Baird-Windle and social worker Bader (who has written for PW). Their shocking, month-by-month chronicle covers acts of sabotage, bombing and murder over more than two decades. According to the authors, the "antis" (as the prochoice movement calls them) are usually white males of a paramilitary bent, informally ordained by fundamentalist Christian sects, led by skillful manipulators like Randall Terry and fueled by what Terry calls "righteous testosterone." To make matters worse, law enforcers are often unwilling to uphold the law when it comes to abortion, leaving clinic providers to defend themselves. Whether RU-486 can change the terms of battle is, unfortunately, too recent a question for consideration here. While the entries in this volume are startlingly repetitious, and the authors have made no attempt at elegant prose, they offer a piercing wake-up call and a useful reference work for any women's rights activist or civil libertarian. (May)Forecast: The recent election of an antiabortion president and the appointment of a U.S. attorney general whose antiabortion views are well-known have renewed anxiety about women's access to legal abortion that may spark some sales. The probable trial of antiabortion activist James Kopp for the 1998 murder of abortion doctor Barnett Slepian may also cast a spotlight on the book, though it's more likely to be talked about than bought.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Trade
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312239254
• ISBN 13: 9780312239251
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416