Badeaux's column falsly labels anti-abortion groups as 'marginalized'

Chris Badeaux's editorial of April 28 "Abortion-clinic violence the logical result of popular perception," justifies terrorism because the anti-abortion crowd feels marginalized. The Arizona Daily Wildcat and U of A community should take such talk seriously for obvious reasons.

Chris Badeaux feels marginalized? Didn't we recently spend 12 years under the anti-abortion Reagan-Bush presidency? Didn't the Republican party endorse an anti-abortion platform at the 1996 Republican national convention? Don't we have at least three Supreme Court justices who would gladly overturn Roe v. Wade? The anti-abortion movement hasn't been marginalized, it just hasn't succeeded.

Chris Badeaux draws parallels between terrorism by marginalized groups such as the IRA and the anti-abortion movement. The IRA, like many separatist movements (including past supporters of the American Revolution), use violence against a distant and commonly ethnically different government. This is completely unlike the anti-abortion movement which seeks to expand government power, not reduce or eliminate it. There are international parallels for violence in support of increased government power. For example, violent Islamic fundamentalist groups such as the Taliban of Afghanistan use government authority to, among other things, prohibit women from holding paying jobs or exposing their legs or face in public. Fascism and communism also seek greatly expanded government power. So if Chris Badeaux drew the appropriate parallels to other violent groups that seek to expand government power, he would alienate even more of his readers.

Personally, I think it would be best if men bugged out of the abortion debate and left it to the women to decide. The thought of religious fundamentalist men running around trying to commandeer the government in order to assert government control over women's bodies is so repulsive that I would even vote for Bill Clinton to stop them.

By Jon Spencer (letter)
Arizona Daily Wildcat
May 6, 1997