Understanding the Right: a Prerequisite for Reproductive

Justice

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Copyright 2007, PRAVersion 1.0

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Incisive Research for Social Change since 1981– Focus: on Right-wing social movements– Publish: Public Eye Magazine, Activist

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Reproductive Justice• Designed and led by women of color to

address their concerns

• Comprehensive approach: including health care, legal, and social justice issues

• Has potential to address the reality of multilayered attacks by Right

Where does the “vast right-wing conspiracy” live?

No one place: The Right is no Monolith

The U.S. Political Right: No Simple Answers

• No one organization “controls” the Right. No single funder is “behind” the Right.

• Some large organizations are important, but many others appear to be more influential than they really are.

• Recognize that there are multiple networks of organizations and funders with differing and sometimes competing agendas.

THE RIGHT’S “CULTURE OF LIFE” TEXT / SUBTEXT

“PRO-LIFE”FETAL RIGHTS

ABSTINENCE-ONLY SEX ED

ANTI-EUTHANASIA

(Terri Shiavo)

PATRIARCHYSOCIAL CONTROL

HETEROSEXISM

“PRO-

MARRIAGE”

ANTI-STEM CELL RESEARCH

WHITE SUPREMACY

COMPASSION FOR ABORTION VICTIMS

YOUTH PHOBIA

FEAR OF CHANGE

Secular Right

National Security Militarists

Economic Libertarians

NeoconservativesBusiness Nationalists

Corporate Internationalists

Condoleezza Rice Pat Buchanan Virginia I. Postrel Donald Rumsfeld William Kristol

Religious Right

Christian TheocratsReligious Conservatives

R.J. Rushdoony

Xenophobic Right

Extreme RightWhite Nationalists

PatriotsPaleoconservatives

Samuel Francis Militia of Montana John Tanton Timothy McVeigh

Sectors of the Right: Submovements

Christian NationalistsChristian Right

Billy Graham Jerry FalwellChristians – Jews - Muslims

Different Primary Targets

Religious Right

Xenophobic Right

Secular Right

While issues of race, gender, and class are intertwined in all social movements, each sector of the Right will frame its arguments in a way that highlights a narrower primary target.

Gender & Sexuality

Race & “Elites”

Various targets: Preserve Economic privilege

The Right did not invent:•Racism

•Sexism

•Heterosexism

•Classism

•You name it…

But sectors of the Right know how to use these attitudes and mobilize people who hold them…

Intersections of targets

gender

race

class

sexuality

Keys to the Right’s Interactivity

• They can mobilize multiple bigotries in a single project

• One frame can be modified to fit new targets

• Our diverse multiple identities create opportunities for different targets or wedges.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan,author of the 1965

The Negro Family: The Case for National Action

“A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos... And it is richly deserved.”

“Save our welfare system and the world from the exorbitant cost to the taxpayer for each drug addicted birth.”

Project Prevention (C.R.A.C.K.)

Targets

• Class• Gender• Race• Sexuality

Mobilized Base• Resentful taxpayers• Fearful whites• “Pro-lifers”

Response from CWPE and INCITE!

Immigrant Health Care Challenges Illustrate Multiple Targets

Targets– Race– Gender– Class– Sexuality

Mobilizes– Population

control advocates

– Angry taxpayers

– Nativists

Marriage Promotion

Letter reads:

“Honey, Why don’t you find someone to marry you.

Have a nice life.

See you around.

W.”

WELFARE MOMS

Marriage Promotion

Targets• Young women• Single mothers• Communities of color

Mobilized base• Resentful taxpayers• Faith communities• Fearful whites

Silver Ring Thing: Abstinence Until Marriage

• Targets:– Sexuality– Age

www.silverringthing.com

• Mobilizes:

-Parents

-Anti-abortion folks

-Sex-phobic folks

Intersections of Sectors

Secular Right

Xenophobic Right

Religious Right

Opposition to HPV Vaccine began years ago

“Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV.

Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”

Bridget Maher Family Research Council,

2005

• Targets– Age– Sexuality– Gender

• Mobilizes:

-Libertarians

-Christian Right

-Secular Right

Why do we need to understand Why do we need to understand the Right?the Right?

•Its success can teach us lessons

•Its movements listened carefully to the resentments of people not achieving the American Dream

•Then they targeted many of us based on various combinations of vulnerable identities in order to achieve their goals

•That complexity gives right added political power

•The Right scapegoats and demonizes groups to focus energy away from real issues

Our concerns mirror their attacks

Sterilization programs

Ending Abortion

Limiting health benefits

Erasing social safety net

Marriage Promotion

Abstinence only education

Freedom to decide to have children

Full access to abortion and contraception

Access to quality health care

Support for low income families

Defining our own families

Comp. sexuality ed

Building blocks of the Right’s attacks

on women

Building blocks of Reproductive Justice

Why is understanding the right a Why is understanding the right a prerequisite for achieving RJ?prerequisite for achieving RJ?

•Exposes the structural pervasiveness of Right’s success

•Empowers vulnerable communities to understand how we are viewed and used

•Highlights that strategic designs require strategic responses

Reproductive Justice Frame

Institutional policies and practices

Community values

Individual attitudes

Purists vs.

Pragmatists

Neoconservatives vs.

Theoconservatives

Paleoconservatives vs.

Neoconservatives

Culture Warriors vs.

Economic Libertarians

Biological Racists vs.

Cultural Supremacists

Cracks in the U.S. Right

Challenges to RJ MovementChallenges to RJ Movement

How can we coordinate diverse How can we coordinate diverse agendas of our various groups?agendas of our various groups?

How do we develop strong coalitions How do we develop strong coalitions with other social justice movements?with other social justice movements?

How do we keep to a vision of How do we keep to a vision of wellbeing of all women and children? wellbeing of all women and children?