Abortion

From Courts to Clinics

How the Anti-Gender Far Right is Reshaping Texas

Ken Paxton and Greg Abott on a yellow background with a dotted pattern on it.

In Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton is testing the powers of the AG to enact wide-ranging right-wing policies, including anti-trans and anti-abortion legislation, that extends beyond state lines.

Article

Trad Values Meets Tech

The U.S. Right’s Pronatalist Coalition

A blue and light purple background with cut outs of four people in the foreground

Pronatalism has produced a tenuous coalition of traditional conservatives, abortion opponents, and White nationalists working together with tech moguls, futurists, libertarians, and libertines, united in a common cause of promoting more births.

Article

Putin’s “Year of the Family”

How Russia Revives and Reverses U.S. Cold War Rhetoric

A patterned background with the outline of russia with cut outs of the bible, Putin, and the Kremlin

In her commentary, Irina Smolevskaya scrutinizes Putin’s appeal to “traditional family values” as a reversal of U.S. Cold War containment rhetoric appealing to domestic and transnational conservatives alike.

Article

Countering the Ideology of “Violent Care”

Lessons from Bay Area Radical Abortion Defense

a group of protesters holding pro-abortion signs

Abortion defenders and activists showed Angela Hume the inherent contradiction in the anti-abortion movement: it purports to protect women while actively harming them. Hume coins the term “violent care” to explain this contradiction and points to…

Article

A militant wing of the anti-abortion movement has long looked to the 19th century anti-slavery abolitionists for inspiration and guidance, organizing under the banner of “abortion abolitionists.” This movement distinguishes itself from the self-…

101

Abortion Abolitionists with Cloee Cooper

Inform Your Resistance Season 1: Episode 1

A group of people holding up signs in front of the capitol building

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…

Podcast

The Sovereignty Strategy

Anti-abortion Politics in the Americas

People sitting on stairs. Three people hold signs in Portugese, written with blue ink on white paper.

Opposition to reproductive and sexual rights is at the heart of authoritarian and theocratic politics around the world, including in the United States. The Trump-Pence administration worked hard to build a…

Article

Transformation: Toward a People's Democracy

Author Q&A with Suzanne Pharr

People at a protest holding a sign that says "We Demand Voting rights now!" "We demand An end to police brutality now"

In Arkansas in 1981, inspired by The Combahee River Collective Statement released in the 1970s, activist Suzanne Pharr founded The Women’s Project, an organization that worked across rural and urban communities to bring about social change.…

Q&A

Torchbearers for a Different Future

Enduring the End of Roe and Thwarting an Accelerated Push Toward Authoritarianism

A sunset between buildings and a road full of vehicles.

For much longer than 50 years, individuals who should be free have been made to endure the cruelty of courts. On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that for now, bodily autonomy is not a protected freedom, instead giving states greater…

Article

Three women holding signs that say "We march for Woomen's Health."

This May, Texas passed a law deputizing citizens to sue anyone who aids another in obtaining an abortion after six weeks, and rewarding those whose court challenges are successful with $10,000 in attorney fees. This clever and destructive law is the…

Article

Mobilizing for Reproductive Freedom in the Battle Over Bodily Sovereignty

Watch Now: A PRA Roundtable Discussion

Under the perceived threat of a Democratic administration stymieing the war of attrition against reproductive rights, the anti-abortion movement continues to strategize for a post-Roe future. From the growth of the abortion abolitionist movement to…

Report

Black and white circle with text in middle reading "Seven Spheres of Society"

The city of Spokane, Washington sits at the eastern edge of the state—a mountain range and a cultural world away from the Pacific coast. It looks eastward to Idaho and Montana, and south to Eastern Oregon, where far-right secessionist movements have…

Article

Class of 2020

Far-Right Candidates Reveal Where the GOP is Headed

A collage of Warren Hamilton, Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene

While the Trump administration is over, part of its legacy is helping carve a place for 21^st Century far-right movements and ideologies in the halls of government and within Republican ranks that look more like 19^th Century…

Article

The Changing Strategies of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Where We Are Today

White women protesting, holding circular signs that say "Keep Abortion Legal"

President Trump’s third and most recent appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, clearly opens the door for new strategies, messaging, and rhetoric by the anti-abortion movement. But it’s also a moment the movement has long…

Article

No Sanctuary

Anti-Abortion “Abolitionists” Go to City Hall

In the spring of 2019, a steady stream of young, White men began appearing at Raleigh, North Carolina City Council meetings to speak on behalf of the “pre-born.” Sometimes the men appeared with their elementary school-aged children, who read pre-…

Article

This directory lists the current prochoice and reproductive justice elements of organized religion in the United States. It is intended primarily as a resource for those seeking to support these values in light of contemporary legislative and…

Report

There is a vast prochoice religious community in the United States that could provide the moral, cultural, and political clout to reverse current antiabortion policy trends in the United States. Most, but not all, of this demographic are Christians…

Report

Gavel sculpture located in the courtyard of the Ohio Judicial Center in downtown Columbus, Ohio

On March 20, Ohio became the first state to use the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse to ban abortions, with the state’s attorney general calling pregnancy terminations “non-essential” health services.¹ After Ohio opened that door, anti-choice…

Article

Ornate interior of the Senate Chambers for the state of Michigan lawmakers at the capitol building in downtown Lansing.

After the 2010 census, Michigan’s Chamber of Commerce worked to gerrymander the state’s districts to ensure a permanent Republican, business-friendly legislative majority. The effort worked so well that, according to the Brennan Center for Justice,…

Article

Sign left behind from an anti-abortion rally depicts dia de los muertes styled skeleton for abortion "survivors" network

Looking at the past year’s congressional votes could make it seem like the most serious threat facing the nation is a rampage of violent and unethical medical professionals pressuring pregnant people into post-viability abortions, mismanaging the…

Article

Playing the Long Game

How the Christian Right Built Capacity to Undo Roe State By State

Executive Summary The progressive movement and advocates for reproductive rights, health, and justice have been caught off guard by a movement that has adapted to a changing political, social, and cultural landscape. The Christian Right has…

Report

In front of SCOTUS during March for Life Rally. January 22, 2016

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday evening signed a bill into law intended to ban nearly all abortions and criminalize physicians who provide abortion care, and hours later the Missouri state senate approved legislation that ban abortions after…

Article

Bringing Bad Sex Ed Back

Trump’s Rebranding of Abstinence-Only

Chalkboard with text that reads "Sex Education"

In a private session intended to set language for gender equality policies and to brief non-governmental organizations on U.S. priorities for women’s issues, a senior advisor from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Bethany Kozma…

Article

Profile on the Right: Human Life International (HLI)

Human Life International (HLI) is a Catholic organization with a long history of vicious and hyperbolic attacks on LGBTQ and reproductive rights. It opposes contraception, in-vitro fertilization, comprehensive sex education, and abortion in all…

Profile on the Right

Race, Class, and the Contradiction of Contemporary Abortion Politics

As we mark the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, two facts about the current abortion patient population in the U.S. are especially striking. First, that patients are disproportionately poor, with half living below the official poverty line and…

Article

Right Positions D&E Bill as the Next Big Challenge to Roe

On November 2, federal Judge Lee Yeakel began hearing arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Paxton, a lawsuit challenging Texas’s new ban on Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) abortions. Yeakel’s hearing is just the first step in a process that is…

Article

Whole Woman’s Health’s Unexpected Win for Science

In June 2016, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas anti-abortion TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) law that threatened to shutter all but a handful of the state’s clinics by requiring them to meet costly ambulatory surgical center…

Article

When Anti-Abortion Propaganda is Accepted as Investigative Journalism

One of the underreported aspects of the current smear campaign against Planned Parenthood is the coarsening and polarizing of our civil discourse that usually accompanies discussions of the culture wars. This has been especially glaring because the…

Article

Catholic Democrats & the Group Behind the Anti-Planned Parenthood Videos

Anti-abortion Catholic Democrats have long sought to cast their cause as progressive, but their actions have taken them into common cause with the Religious Right. This tendency has been on display during the brouhaha over the publication of the…

Article

Anti-Choicers in Colorado Push to Protect the Not-Yet-Conceived

Last November, Colorado voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have defined personhood as inclusive of fetuses. This victory for reproductive rights, however, was won amid a slew of attacks on Coloradans’ reproductive freedom. Now,…

Article

A protester in front of the Capitol holding a sign that says "Keep Abortion Legal"

The real result of the anti-abortion movement — if not the intended goal — is to punish women for terminating pregnancies.

Article

A white man in the center of a circle, with other people bowing their heads and placing a hand on his shoulder and arms.

Nearly 30 years later, anti-abortion activists still work from Joe Scheidler’s blueprint. Could Scheidler’s story provide any clues to where the faults might lie in their strategy?

Article

Video Denounces Planned Parenthood and BDSM; New Personhood Alliance Forms

When I decided to search for #SexEd on Twitter, looking for coverage of sex education, I wasn’t expecting to see activity from Live Action, Lila Rose’s anti-choice organization. But I quickly realized the tweets related to the slew of emails from…

Article

If Money Talks, the Anti-Abortion Side is Shouting

While “Gosnell” didn’t break the Veronica Mars record, the campaign did surpass its stated goal before ending yesterday at $2,241,043.

Article

Anti-Shaming Rhetoric Used to Attack Rape Survivors' Rights

“Rape survivors should not be shamed”: this sounds like a feminist statement. From SlutWalk and StopSlut to less controversially named anti-violence initiatives, denunciations of slut-shaming and victim-blaming are a staple of today’s mainstream…

Article

PRA's Rachel Tabachnick Discusses Reproductive Autonomy in Rolling Stone

PRA fellow Rachel Tabachnick is appearing in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone magazine, discussing how the Religious Right has successfully integrated its unpopular…

Press Hit

Remembering John Salvi and the Brookline Clinic Shootings

As the United States Supreme Court reviews Buffer Zone laws around healthcare clinics today, let’s take a moment to remember one of the worst moments in the fight for women’s reproductive autonomy.

Article

From a Place of Privilege

Abortion, Male Victims, and Ultrasounds

A gathering of the NRLC met for several days to strategize. In addition to the typical arguments against abortion, some newer ones were on the docket. Most significantly, the idea that a woman should be required to have an ultrasound before she is…

Article

From The Archives: Laying Siege to the Last Abortion Clinic in Mississippi

Back in 2006, Salon.com contributor Michelle Goldberg wrote an article for the Public Eye Magazine discussing the attacks on, and the resiliency of the last standing women’s health clinic in Mississippi. As new developments continue to unfold, the…

Article

Profiles on the Right: Operation Rescue

Operation Rescue is a militant anti-choice organization functioning out of Wichita, Kansas. It was founded in 1986 by radical fundamentalist Randall Terry who united pro-life activists under the slogan “If you believe abortion is murder, act like it…

Profile on the Right

Profiles on the Right: Ryan Bomberger

At the Family Research Council’s 2012 Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., where he was a featured speaker, Ryan Bomberger opened his remarks by saying “I’m as Black as Obama.” He explained that his biological mother was raped, became pregnant,…

Profile on the Right

Lila Rose speaking with attendees at the 2021 Young Women's Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA.

Though only in her mid-twenties, Lila Rose is already a seasoned antichoice activist. In 2006, while still a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, she started an antichoice publication, The Advocate, which she claims is distributed…

Profile on the Right

Two black and white pictures of women in black dresses.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute aims to abolish abortion rights in the United States by recasting antichoice as authentic feminism, promoting incremental antichoice laws, and undermining the work of the prochoice Guttmacher Institute. Though it bills…

Article

How Fetal Personhood Laws Promote Rape Culture

During Wednesday’s hearing on Arizona Representative Trent Franks’s proposed 20-week abortion ban, Franks claimed “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” Using the same pseudo-scientific reasoning as Todd Akin (who infamously…

Article

Defending Reproductive Justice

Activist Resource Kit

In the 40 years since the passage of Roe v. Wade, the struggle for reproductive justice has evolved and intensified. We must be prepared to deftly confront right-wing attacks and advance reproductive justice for all. The Roe 40^th…

Report

Watch: The Secret History of Sex, Choice and Catholics

Did you know that the Roman Catholic Church used to lean prochoice? This was (shocking) news to most of the attendees of Friday’s screening of The Secret History of Sex, Choice and Catholics–even those who were themselves Roman Catholic.

Article

The Right's Attack on Roe v. Wade at 40: The Hyde and Helms Legacy

Those who celebrate the enduring legacy of Roe v. Wade must also be mindful of the barriers to reproductive autonomy that remain. Full article published at Truthout.

Article

Abortion as "Black Genocide"

An Old Scare Tactic Re-Emerges

Three Black women wearing winter clothes holding signs that say "we march for Women's Health"

This February, a highly provocative series of 65 billboards went up around Atlanta, which featured an African American infant and the proclamation, “Black Children Are an Endangered Species.” The signs directed viewers to a website, TooManyAborted.…

Article

The More Things Change

Continuing Threats to Reproductive Freedom

a billboard that says "All life is Sacred! From conception to natural death! Pregnant? There's Help. 800.748.LOVE"

In the run-up to the August 2009 Congressional recess, TV ads on health care reform hit the airwaves. The Family Research Council’s political action committee launched a five-state effort to squash a comprehensive health care bill with their spot,…

Article

The America We Seek and the Origins of Abortion Reduction

The general approach crystallized over several months in early 1996 when 45 antiabortion and religious right leaders, organized by the neoconservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, formally adopted abortion reduction as a series of related…

Article

A protestor holding a paper that says "Bans of our bodies"

It didn’t turn out like they had planned. Two decades of political investment by the antiabortion movement and the Religious Right did not result in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Even conservative Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged during…

Article

Janice Shaw Crouse

A Warrior With Words

Women holding up signs that say "Feminist majority leadership alliances" in front of the Supreme Court

Exactly two months before abortion provider George Tiller was assassinated in the foyer of his church in Wichita, Kansas, Janice Shaw Crouse lent her voice to the chorus of pundits criticizing Tiller’s unwavering support for women who sought his…

Article

Guest Commentary: Killing for Life Returns

The murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas raises again the question of what it means to defend life through killing. When militant antiabortionists began bombing clinics and shooting doctors in the 1980s and 1990s, law enforcement officials looked…

Article

A sign that says "I stand with planned parenthood"

For the leaders and workers of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, attacks from right-wing foes are nothing new. Almost from the moment that the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, the federation and its clinics have been in the…

Article

Sarah Palin in a white jacket, in front of a crowd, smiling.

From the podium at the Christian Right’s Values Voter Summit in mid-September, National Review Institute’s Kate O’Beirne, 59, pronounced that the “selection of Sarah Palin [as the GOP vice presidential nominee] sounded the death knell of modern…

Article

Protesters holding banners. One says I Stand with Planned Parenthood, another one says "Don't take away my birth control"

Thirty-seven-year-old Erik Martin says he got involved in the American Life League shortly after his eight and 10-year-old children came home from their Blacksburg, Virginia, public school several years ago with an illustrated comic book entitled,…

Article

Male Victims of Abortion

New Theme of Right to Life Committee

A man wearing sunglasses holding a sign that says "Men Regret Lost Fatherhood"

They pledged to “Bring life to the heart of America and bring the heart of America to Life.” In 72 workshops, five plenaries, and three worship services, more than 500 members of the National Right to Life Committee gathered in Kansas City, Missouri…

Article

A Mississippi License plate that says "Choose Life"

On Tuesday, July 18th, for the first time in ten years, protesters arrived on Dr. Joseph Booker’s block in Jackson, Mississippi. They went door to door, ringing bells and telling people that their neighbor, the state’s last abortion provider, is a…

Article

Politicized Science

How Anti-Abortion Myths Feed the Christian Right Agenda

Three women at a prochoice rally holding signs that say "Safe, legal abortion on demand. No apologies!" and "Abortion is a right. No Going Back."

The anti-abortion movement uses B.A.D science and agenda-driven journals to back up false claims about abortions, in an effort to make abortions illegal.

Article

“If You Love Children, Say So”

The African American Anti-Abortion Movement

Introduction For those on either side of the abortion debate there are great stakes involved with the outcomes of the upcoming 2004 elections. There could be the possibility of three open vacancies on the Supreme Court within the next few years,…

Article

Reproducing Patriarchy

Reproductive Rights Under Siege

Protester at Rally for Reproductive Rights Chicago Illinois, sign says: Our Bodies, Our Right to Choose, Our Decision to make not yours!"

A woman’s ability to control her reproductive decisions—her reproductive rights—involves more than her right to safe and legal abortion. Reproductive rights encompass the right to bear and raise children, the right to access adequate reproductive…

Article

John Salvi, Abortion Clinic Violence, and Catholic Right Conspiracism

Most of the news coverage of John C. Salvi 3d has portrayed him as a confused person making nonsensical statements alleging conspiracies against Catholics. In fact, almost all of Salvi’s conspiratorial statements echo paranoid scapegoating theories…

Article

Search

Research