• Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global , by Sian Norris (Verso, 2023)
In the last year, four women in the UK have been prosecuted for carrying out illegal abortions. This is especially shocking when you consider that in the 160 years prior there were only three. There has been a corresponding rise in criminal investigations, which are not only invasive and traumatic for those involved, but also suggest that further prosecutions are coming down the line. But why now? In her book, Bodies Under Siege, Sian Norris sets out the links between the rising far right and the wave of anti-abortion initiatives taking hold across Europe and the United States.
FAR RIGHT
Norris’s starting point is the place that women — and women’s bodies — have in fascist ideology. Central to this ideology is the belief in a “natural order” predicated on patriarchal authority and white supremacy.
The far right consistently links abortion to a conspiracy they call the "Great Replacement", whereby abortion, alongside migration from the global south, is leading to the collapse of white-majority nations. The Great Replacement is, so the theory goes, being driven by so-called “cultural Marxist elites” — a term that is rooted in antisemitism but has become a catch-all to include Jewish people, feminists, the left, Black Lives Matter activists, the EU and the US Democrats, amongst other things. At the heart of the Great Replacement theory is the call to take control of women’s reproduction; meanwhile people of colour must be removed, sterilised or exterminated in a genocidal race war.
Then came QAnon, another conspiracy theory that emerged in 2017 on the message boards of 4Chan. According to followers of the theory, a left-leaning elite of — yes, you got it — “cultural Marxists” runs a cabal of cannibalistic child molesters. Abortion, they say, is used for ritual satanic sacrifice, the aim being to de-Christianise the West and execute the Great Replacement. Despite being utterly unhinged, these ideas have been successfully mainstreamed, especially in the US, where the Republican Party has been, to a significant degree, captured by the far right. Some polls estimate that as many as 1-in-5 Americans believe in some element of the QAnon conspiracy.
This isn’t the first satanic panic to take hold in the US. After the passing of Roe vs. Wade in 1973, a popular movement emerged in which men, claiming to be former satanists, stated that the world was being run by a satanic cult. This movement continued into the 1980s, in direct response to improvements in women’s social and economic status, and played a significant role in strengthening the new Evangelical right.
TRUMP
QAnon moved offline and into the real-world when on 6 January 2021, supporters of Donald Trump launched an attempted coup. Many believed that Trump would lead a far right revolution, what they were calling “Day X”. Storming the Capitol building in Washington DC, they sought to keep Trump in power. The mob brought together QAnon followers, far right extremist groups, and prominent anti-abortion activists. Among them was John Brockhoeft, an anti-abortionist who was jailed for firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Cincinatti, Ohio, in 1985. In a newsletter published from prison, he described the murder of doctors providing abortion as “justifiable homicide”.
The mob eventually went home on Trump’s instruction. That night, 147 Republicans voted to support the claim that the Presidential election had been invalid. Amongst them were Congressmen and women that had publicly promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory. In the months that followed, Republicans continued their vicious campaign against civil liberties, including the right to safe, legal abortion.
Trumpism had relied on hyper-online, misogynistic communities since its beginning. Indeed, the 2016 election was epitomised by scandals about “pussy-grabbing” and the like, and became a flashpoint for “Incels” and men’s rights activists. After his election, Trump appointed anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court, and the four years of his Presidency saw a cataclysmic wave of anti-abortion measures. These included: the introduction of heartbeat bills limiting abortion to the first six weeks; the forced closure of abortion clinics; the implementation of TRAP laws; and the introduction of state laws requiring funerals for aborted foetuses.
Although he lost in 2020, by then Trumpism had successfully turbo-charged the culture war and instigated a hardline anti-abortion judiciary. The road was clear, and in June 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade. 21 US states have now implemented a near-total ban on abortion or severely restricted access to it. The clinics in states that continue to provide abortions are overwhelmed.
EUROPE
In 2013, religious right network Agenda Europe held its inaugural conference in London, in which approximately 20 North American and European anti-abortionists set themselves the task of devising “new strategies for European anti-abortion movements”. The network’s manifesto, carrying the revealing title “Restoring the Natural Order”, has been described by Ellen Rivera, in her study of the influence of Agenda Europe in Spain, as “part theological tract, part anti-communist pamphlet, part far right conspiracy theory, and part totalitarian roadmap”. It sets out a blueprint of incremental changes to abortion rights, with the ultimate goal of a total ban. These changes include: bans on terminations in cases of foetal defect; narrowing term limits; the requirement of minors to secure parental consent; mandatory counselling and cooling-off periods; and introducing vexatious regulations that make it more difficult for abortion clinics to operate.
In Bodies Under Siege , Norris draws concrete links between Agenda Europe and a number of other anti-abortion, anti-LGBT organisations, the World Congress of Families, CitizenGo, HazteOir (in Spain), Ordo Iuris (in Poland) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (in the UK) among them. She also demonstrates the influence that Agenda Europe, and its sister and front organisations, have had on mainstream politics. Hungary and Poland are two prime examples, but the influence of these organisations on political parties and politicians extends to Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovakia and elsewhere.
Viktor Orbán welcomed the World Congress of Families (WCF) to Hungary, when Budapest hosted its annual conference in 2017. Orbán gave the keynote speech where he called on Hungarians to have more children and attacked the EU for its liberal ideology, which is described as “an insult to families”. Since then he has spoken repeatedly in public about Hungary’s “demographic winter” and the Great Replacement, catapulting a fringe conspiracy theory into mainstream politics. The WCF describes Hungary as “an advocate for the natural family in Europe” and has celebrated the redrafted Hungarian constitution, which grants an unborn foetus rights and defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Orbán has subsequently introduced measures that allow hospitals to refuse to perform abortions, instead forcing women to undergo mandatory counselling and a three-day cooling-off period; a measure taken directly out of the Agenda Europe playbook.
Poland has gone even further. Ordo Iuris has played a prominent role in legal battles against sex education and so-called “LGBT ideology” in Poland. But its main success has been its campaign to limit access to abortion, prohibiting abortions in cases of foetal abnormality. Poland has seen huge waves of feminist protests in recent years. In 2016 when the Law and Justice Party first attempted to introduce the restriction, supported by Ordo Iuris, the protests held off the reform. In 2018, the government tried again — Polish women once again fought back. Finally, in 2020, the government succeeded; sustained attacks on Poland’s judiciary meant that new restrictions could be imposed free from democratic oversight.
After the introduction of the near-total ban, the number of legal abortions dropped 90% compared to a year earlier. But Ordo Iuris hasn't stopped there. Last year, they published guidance encouraging the prosecution of those who use, supply or advertise abortion pills sent by post, the primary means by which people access abortion. They also carried out an “audit” of hospitals, determining whether they were providing abortions to refugees from Ukraine, and have campaigned for hospitals to take legal steps to verify that refugees were telling the truth when reporting that they had been raped. Rape is one of only two remaining situations in which people in Poland can access abortion.
Alliance Defending Freedom was set up in the US in 1994. Its focus is fighting court battles and it claims to have won 80 percent of all the cases that it has fought. Amongst its victories one can find state bans on late-term abortions and dismantling buffer zones around abortion clinics — these zones protect service users from harassment by anti-abortion protestors. The ADF played an important role in paving the way to the overturning of Roe vs Wade .
BRITAIN
Alliance Defending Freedom’s European wing, ADF International, is seeking to replicate these successes in the UK. The main focus at present is buffer zones. They want to keep them out of British law and dismantle them where they exist, arguing that anti-abortionists have a right to free speech. A number of Tory MPs have taken up this argument in Parliament; MPs that have proven links with the ADF, the World Congress of Families and CitizenGo. Amongst them is Nadine Dorries, who in 2011 submitted a Bill to Parliament seeking to ban abortion providers from offering counselling to women with unwanted pregnancies.
Brexit accelerated a culture war that has produced fertile ground for far right groups like ADF International, Patriotic Alternative and Turning Point UK. Brexit emboldened those with hateful and bigoted views, leading to an increase in racist, xenophobic and anti-LGBT hate crimes. And for many, the new common-sense is that white, conservative males — AKA “the white working class” or “ordinary people” depending on who you’re talking to — are being silenced by a “woke mob”.
Mark Collett, UK neo-Nazi who founded the fascist group Patriotic Alternative, shared a cartoon on Telegram depicting white women queuing at an abortion clinic and a line of hijab-wearing women outside a maternity ward. The image was captioned, “this is white genocide”. It’s one of many like it circulating on Telegram, Reddit and Gab. Jim Dowson, who founded the anti-abortion UK Life League and co-founded the fascist, anti-Muslim group Britain First, is also very prominent in the UK. He spends much of his time producing online content, videos that weave in anti-abortion speeches with far right conspiracy theories and pro-Putin messages.
Unfortunately, these organisations have been gaining some momentum — Patriotic Alternative has been organising protests across the UK outside hotels housing asylum seekers and refugees. It has also co-ordinated countryside hikes and local litter picking initiatives to try and garner support. Patriotic Alternative recently split, with some members leaving to form a new group, Homeland. Red Flare, an organisation that investigates the far right, described Homeland as “a distillation of the most dangerous elements into something harder, more serious and better organised”.
Patriotic Alternative, alongside Turning Point UK — whose sister organisation Turning Point USA organised the buses that took the extremist militias to Washington DC on 6 January 2021 — have also been protesting drag events. In recent years, trans, queer and gender non-conforming people have been a central target of far right hate. Indeed, anti-trans bigotry has united the broader far right in a way that few other issues have managed. This should come as no surprise: gender is, in the view of the far right, innate and immutable and traditional gender roles determine one’s place in the so-called natural order.
The far right has formed an unexpected alliance with women anti-trans activists, some of whom originally herald from the left and claim to be feminists. Unlikely partners, the two camps share common ground on issues such as protecting single-sex spaces and women’s sports. Individuals and organisations share platforms with fascists (not all, it should be said — objectionable though they are, Woman’s Place UK have denounced those working with the far right). In doing so, these so-called “gender critical” feminists have found common cause with a right that wants to criminalise trans people, stigmatise gender non-conformity and subordinate women. And it doesn’t stop there. In June this year, Kathleen Stock, a prominent “gender critical” feminist, published an article titled “The Perils of Reproductive Extremism”. In it she argued for the continued criminalisation of abortion, mere days after Carla Foster was sent to prison, and for the father’s right to influence the decision of whether someone should get an abortion or not. Not only have “gender critical” feminists fuelled the right’s war on trans people, in Stock’s case she’s coming after our reproductive rights too.
In this context, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we appear to be losing the culture war. The Conservatives, historically an institutional barrier to the rise of the extreme right, has now itself turned into a far right party of sorts. It’s no coincidence that the Tories are now pursuing a barbaric scheme to deport migrants to Rwanda. Nor is it a coincidence that they are now preparing a “new Section 28” which will force schoolworkers to “out” trans students. Migrants’ rights, trans rights and reproductive rights are all firmly in the crosshairs of the right. It is essential that we are united in our struggle against oppression in all its forms.
WAKE-UP CALL
At this stage it is not entirely clear why we are seeing such a spike in criminal investigations against people having abortions in the UK. But evidently something is going on.
In Bodies Under Sieg e, Sian Norris draws a clear line between fascist ideology, the role of conspiracy theories in popularising fascist thought, the web of religious right organisations working to roll back our civil liberties, and finally the mainstream politicians that have long had connections with these far right projects. But while Norris is right to sound the alarm about the influence of these groups, it would be wrong to say that Trump and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade came about purely by design — these things are messy and complicated. Trumpism is rooted at least as much in the long-standing Evangelical right, as it is in new-fangled conspiracy theories and far right message boards. Trump was, ultimately, a horrible, perfect storm and it is far from a foregone conclusion that the anti-abortion lobby will have the same level of success in the UK.
But what Norris has helped clarify is that the anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-woman religious right is a force to be reckoned with. It’s organised, it’s well-funded and at the moment it’s riding a wave of rising far right sentiment across Europe. And, as always, women’s bodies are a terrain that the right seeks to control and which we must defend. As such, Bodies Under Siege is a much needed wake-up call.