In March of this year, Dr. George Tiller, one of the most courageous abortion doctors in the country, was assassinated. In the weeks that followed, violence and threats against women’s clinics and the doctors continued at heightened levels.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate approved a version of healthcare reform that includes an amendment, Stupak-Pitts, that would deprive women of the ability to purchase health care insurance that covers abortion if they receive any form of government stipend or tax break. Millions of women would lose the abortion coverage they currently have. Complicated abortions needed for the health or life of the woman will become cripplingly expensive, and the overall juggernaut to remove all reproductive rights from women will lumber menacingly forward. In the words of Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, “If enacted, this amendment will be the greatest restriction of a woman’s right to choose to pass in our careers.”

Taken together, these events represent an escalation in the legal and extra-legal assaults on women’s right to abortion that go beyond anything done under eight years of the Bush Regime. As part of a trajectory of restricted access, shrinking numbers of providers, growing cultural stigma, we are teetering towards a tipping point away from one of the most vital rights of women. Without the right to decide for themselves, without coercion, shame or danger, when and whether they will have children, women are not free. When half of humanity is oppressed, all of society suffers.

Yet, precisely at this decisive moment when an outpouring of rage and defiance against all this is most needed, the silence and capitulation of the pro-choice “movement” is as stunning as it is deafening. There are no nationwide protests gathering steam. There are no throngs of students descending on DC. There are no rowdy bands of ’60s women holding up coat hangers and screaming, “We will not go back!” There are no groups of men refusing to be silent as the rights of women are stripped away.

None of this is happening because no one who is recognized as a national pro-choice “leader” is calling for any of this. Surely, there is sufficient deep concern, simmering disgust and anger, and potential energy among all these sections of people and many more. The last time a nationwide protest was mobilized for women’s right to abortion over half a million showed up. By all accounts, the current upset among the pro-choice majority is enormous. But this is being squandered, suffocated and channeled into dead ends by pro-choice “leaders” who long ago slavishly subordinated themselves to the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party, for its part, has ceded to the Christian fascists at the core of the anti-abortion movement both the political initiative and the moral high ground. For years, it has promoted the deadly illusion of “common ground” while each year that “common ground” moves further to the right.

But what “common ground” can there be with a movement whose aim is to enslave women to our reproduction? With a movement to force us to bear children against our will? There is not a single “pro-life” organization that upholds birth control. If you go to a clinic and actually talk to those who try to shame and intimidate women out of getting abortions, you will be very hard-pressed to find anyone who will disavow the Biblical verses that command women bear children and to obey their husbands. This movement has unleashed foot soldiers who they kill doctors and blow up clinics. In the legislatures, it has succeeded in making abortion nearly unavailable for millions of young women, rural women, poor women and oppressed nationality women. Groups like Human Life International praise the anti-abortion laws in El Salvador, where miscarriages are investigated by the government and women are thrown in jail if they get an abortion.

There is nothing “moral” about any of this. Nor is there anything in this that can -- or should -- be united with. When there are two antagonistic positions -- one that views women as fully human and deserving of full control of their lives and reproduction and one that sees women only as breeders of children and helpmates to men -- there can be no “common ground.”

During his presidency, Bill Clinton developed the mantra that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” a stance which accepts the outrageous premise that there is something wrong and to be avoided about abortion. Hillary Clinton took this further when she called abortion “tragic.” Speaking at Notre Dame earlier this year, Barack Obama insisted that abortion is “a heart-wrenching decision for any woman” and called for “common ground” in reducing the number of abortions.

But, there is nothing “tragic” about abortion. Fetuses are not babies. Abortion is not murder. It is a very positive thing for women to be able to decide for themselves when and whether to have children. The most common emotion women feel about their abortions is relief. And right now, when 87 percent of U.S. counties already lack any abortion provider, when women have to endure a gauntlet of obstacles (parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, financial burdens and long distances to travel, among others), we don’t need fewer abortions, we need more!

That the pro-choice movement has tied itself to the Democrats and their approach has done immeasurable harm.

In 2006, when the governor of South Dakota signed a complete ban on abortions, the weaknesses of the pro-choice movement were starkly revealed. Rather than exposing this ban as the viciously anti-woman measure that it was, and rather than seizing back the moral high ground by upholding the positive morality of women having control over their lives, the pro-choice coalition (which included NARAL and Planned Parenthood) fought on incredibly narrow grounds. Not only did their television ads argue merely that the ban “went too far” by failing to make any exception for rape, incest and the life of the woman, they themselves called for people to “honor and protect human life, reduce the number of abortions.” The very fact that they had to make an argument that women who are raped or whose lives are in danger ought to have access to abortion reveals that they were arguing with people who do not care one iota for women. Even worse, they were arguing on their terms!

By defeating the ban on these terms that collude in stigmatizing abortion, this pro-choice coalition cut the ground out from under all of us to fight what, predictably, came next: a new ban on abortion that made exceptions for rape and the life of the woman.

This is a pattern -- of accepting the premises of the anti-abortion movement, fighting its latest assault on the most defensive of terms, and then fighting a rear-guard battle for what little ground is left -- we see repeating itself now.

Harkening back to Dr. Tiller, it is notable that despite the outpouring of nearly a thousand supporters from around the country to his funeral and despite the fascist nature of his assassination, not a single national politician even bothered to show up. Just as significant, the leaders of NARAL, NOW, and the Feminist Majority didn’t bother, either. Abortion providers, like abortion itself, seem to be considered undesirable but necessary, best not to be too closely associated with them -- even when they are under deadly assault.

Now, with Stupak-Pitts already passed by the House and the question of abortion being deliberated in the Senate, the pro-choice “leadership” is once against abdicating responsibility and instead leaving the future of half of humanity to the discretion of the Democrats.

Despite their frequent emails about how far-reaching this legislation will be if passed, none of the leading pro-choice organizations is calling for any kind of public outcry in DC. NARAL and others have asked the thousands on their email list to give them money and to call Congress, but not to appear in person because history is being decided. Last Wednesday, a day around which there were some hopeful rumors that there might be some kind of public showing, NARAL, NOW and others participated in the DC Lobby Day on Capitol Hill. All but the most willfully self-deluded can see where this leads. The co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, Louise M. Slaughter -- one of the “staunchest” advocates in the Democratic Party for abortion rights -- herself voted for Stupak-Pitts!

The problem is not, as some now argue, that a whole generation or two has grown up without the harrowing memories of desperate women bleeding to death from botched illegal abortions. Surely, the visceral memory of such scenes lends potency to the pro-choice defiance of many who are older. But the defensiveness and current political passivity of the pro-choice majority cannot be chalked up simply to the passing of time.

The real problem is that two generations have grown into a world where it is far more common to hear a passionate defense of the so-called “rights” and “dignity” of frozen embryos than to hear an unapologetic defense of the right and dignity of women being able to decide for themselves without coercion, judgment or danger, when and whether they will have children. The real problem is also that for the last two decades, as abortion rights have been chipped away and at times sledge-hammered, the lunatic right wing has consistently mobilized in the streets and unapologetically on the airwaves, as the “pro-choice movement” remained largely passive and straitjacketed in the dynamic of capitulation to the Democratic Party.

It is long past time a different dynamic be set. It is time for the pro-choice majority to unchain themselves from the craven political calculations and capitulation of the Democratic Party. It is time to unshackle our energies from the pro-choice “leadership” that has tied itself to that party. It is time to go back into the streets. It is time for the millions of women who have had abortions to come out and speak openly and defiantly about them to lift the shame and to challenge the stigma. It is time for doctors who provide abortions to be cherished and protected. Not only must Stupak-Pitts be defeated, abortion and birth control must be expanded and celebrated. Abortion must be available on demand and without apology if women are to be free!