Carol Mason Explains How Abortion Opponents Went From Blockading Clinics to Storming the Capitol

"After Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Carol Mason, a scholar of right-wing movements, received a text message from her sister. "How could this have happened?" Mason's sister asked. "I don't know how this happened." Mason texted back: "I do.""

"For decades, Mason had studied writings by anti-abortion and right-wing extremists who fantasized about taking down the federal government. Her first book, Killing for Life, traced how these extremists went from blockading clinics to bombing and shooting abortion providers in the 1990s. After getting her sister's message, Mason realized she had the subject for her next book: how the history of the anti-abortion movement shed light on what happened that day at the Capitol."

"I write in my book that a lot of the emphasis in the reports on January 6 was on white nationalists and theocratic Christians and Proud Boys and other far-right militant groups, while the anti-abortion folks [who were also there that day] went by the wayside. I look historically, to answer the questions that are implied in the subtitle of the book. How did opposing abortion become insurrectionary? How did abortion opponents come to name the federal government as their enemy? How did they come to participate in armed assault on the Capitol and on lawmakers?"

Carol Mason studied writings by anti-abortion and right-wing extremists for decades, tracing an escalation from clinic blockades to bombing and shooting abortion providers in the 1990s. She connects that history to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, examining how abortion opposition became insurrectionary and how opponents came to name the federal government as an enemy. She asks how anti-abortion activists came to participate in armed assaults and targeted violence, noting political assassinations in Minnesota earlier that summer. She centers the movement’s ideological evolution and tactical shifts toward armed resistance against lawmakers and the rule of law.

Read at The Nation