Vol. 73/No. 24      June 22, 2009

In the summer of 1991, thousands of opponents of abortion rights led by Operation Rescue descended upon Wichita, Kansas. They blocked clinics there for six weeks. Leaders of traditional women’s rights organizations, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), refused to organize a countermobilization to defend the clinics, counseling instead reliance on elected officials, the cops, and the courts. But the police moved as slowly as possible to remove the thugs blocking access to the clinics. Some local officials spoke at the rightists’ rallies.

Emboldened, Operation Rescue left Wichita and later announced its next big campaign: a monthlong siege of clinics in Buffalo, New York, beginning April 20, 1992. Buffalo mayor James Griffin invited Operation Rescue to town, as the Wichita mayor had done the previous summer.

But women’s rights supporters had drawn some lessons from the defeat in Wichita. Activists began organizing in January, building a broad coalition called Buffalo United for Choice, which included campus women’s groups, NOW chapters, and many other organizations. The goal from the beginning was to get as many people into the streets as possible to ensure that clinics remained open.

The coalition didn’t wait for Operation Rescue to act. It held a march April 11 to rally abortion rights supporters, drawing 2,000 from New York, California, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Canada. The crowd was overwhelmingly young.

Many of those people returned when the Operation Rescue forces went into action. As had happened in Wichita, the police treated the rightists with kid gloves, allowing them to block clinics for hours before taking action.

But clinic defenders were ready this time. Some 1,500 people, most of them young, joined in the defense effort, compared to 500 who turned out for Operation Rescue. Hundreds of people reported every morning at 5:00 a.m. to be dispatched to defend whichever clinic needed reinforcements. They underwent training in how to withstand the rightists and how to deal with the cops to avoid provocations.

By the end of the second week, Operation Rescue had failed to close a single clinic. Instead of staying a month, most of their troops left town, demoralized.

This victory for women’s rights demonstrated that the rightists could be stopped—not by relying on the cops, or the courts, or Democratic and Republican politicians, but by outmobilizing the right-wingers in the streets.

Defenders of legal abortion went on to confront Operation Rescue in other cities and successfully beat them back. Out of this experience emerged a layer of confident young leaders, schooled in battle with the rightists, who had learned how to organize a disciplined, effective defense of the clinics.
 
 
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