Weaponizing Sound and Space: Spatial and Sonic Patriarchy as Forms of Anti-abortion Violence

Shannon Stettner[1]

The space outside abortion clinics is complicated. Much of it is public and there are important discussions about the uses of public space, the right to protest, and the “ownership” of such spaces.[2] In Canada, many legal injunctions or safe access zones (theoretically) prevent protestors from occupying the area directly in front of clinics because clinics are also private medical spaces that provide vital healthcare services.[3] From the mid-1980s to the early-2000s, Canada experienced anti-abortion violence that some observers classified as single-issue terrorism.[4] This violence included aggressive clinic pickets, abortion clinic attacks, and gun and knife attacks against abortion providers, both in their homes and at or near their clinics. There are moments, in this period of violence, when some elements in the anti-abortion movement knowingly and willfully transgressed the line between lawful and violent protest. It is important that we interrogate this violence and do not simply dismiss it as a fringe element of the movement.[5]

Scholars have paid significant attention to the gendered use of space and, in particular, to women’s use of space as it is mitigated by their fear of male violence. Geographer Gill Valentine, for example, argues that “women’s fear of male violence…is tied up with the way public space is used, occupied and controlled…. This cycle of fear becomes one subsystem by which male dominance, patriarchy, is maintained and perpetuated.”[6] In the instance of aggressive clinic protests, I argue that even when women are part of the anti-abortion group, this existing fear of violent male bodies in public spaces is compounded by the actual presence of physically aggressive men seeking to block clinic access. Additionally, recent scholarship has argued that the noise surrounding abortion clinics is not harmless, forming a type of “sonic patriarchy” that is described as “the gendered domination of a sound world (whether public or private), shaping the ways in which women are heard or forced to hear.”[7] In the following analysis, I highlight how spatial and sonic patriarchy attempted to control women’s access to abortion clinics.

Henry Morgentaler’s abortion clinic on Harbord Street in Toronto, 1991

In the mid-1980s, sociologist Michael W. Cuneo observed daily actions outside Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s Harbord Street clinic and acknowledged, “The daily protests undoubtedly were…nerve-jangling and disruptive to area residents and business people and could qualify as ‘violent’ if the term were given a sufficiently broad meaning.”[8] He witnessed activists kicking bumpers and tires, draping themselves across cars, taunting police officers, name-calling, shouting, and chanting. These protests, a blend of spatial and sonic patriarchy, continued for four and a half years until an injunction prevented protestors from being within 150 metres of the clinic. Activists even established an office next-door to Morgentaler’s clinic so that they would have a base from which to launch these daily actions, thereby altering the geography of their protests. Notably, their intention was to physically divert women from the abortion clinic to their office.[9]

In the late 1980s, the Canadian anti-abortion movement adopted the even more radical practices of Operation Rescue, which began in the United States.[10] Between October 1988 and October 1989, Operation Rescue held actions across Canada with over 1,800 anti-abortion participants, of whom 1,300 were arrested.[11] Operation Rescue’s communications incited violence, referring to participants as “soldiers,” with leaders telling followers, “If you believe abortion is murder, act like it’s murder.”[12] Adherents claimed that their tactics were peaceful, modelled on the sit-ins of the civil rights movement. Their aim was to block patient access, shutting down the clinic’s activities for the day. Participants often chose to be arrested instead of dispersing when asked to by police, and they were instructed to “go limp” so that removing them would be an arduous process.

The first Canadian Operation Rescue action occurred in Toronto on 29 October 1988, and included notable American anti-abortion activist Joan Andrews. Andrews gained notoriety for her willingness to engage in direct action, be arrested, and serve prison time. Human Life International, an American anti-abortion organization, created a documentary film highlighting this protest: Rescue with Joan Andrews.[13] In the film, we see the aggressive physicality of these protests play out against the pro-choice counter protestors. The “rescuers” positioned themselves in front of both doors of the Morgentaler clinic. It was nearly physically impossible to move past them and attempting to do so subjected individuals to verbal and physical violence. When women attempted to reach the clinic, the protestors shifted their bodies to create a fleshy blockade.

Although the protestors claimed to resist arrest by making their bodies go limp, in the film their bodies were tense and acting as barriers. Anti-abortion protestors are also shown making physical contact with women attempting to enter the clinic. In one scene, a male protestor puts his hand, arm fully extended, against the shoulder of a pro-choice activist trying to climb over the protesters to gain access to the clinic. Of Operation Rescue actions, Carolyn Egan of the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) recalled being crushed in a crowd of “rescuers” while trying to ensure access to the clinic. Morgentaler’s biographer, Catherine Dunphy relays, “When Egan escaped, she said her right side was bruised ‘as if I had been beaten.’”[14] OCAC’s Linda Gardner similarly related, “As much as they tried to look peaceful they were not. They would attack women, pull their hair. They were punching and kicking. I got punched in the face.”[15] This physical violence served as a threat and deterrent for any women trying to access the clinic.

Operation Rescue’s physicality was also important for sidewalk counselling. By creating a physical barrier around the clinic, Operation Rescue increased the amount of time sidewalk counsellors had to “counsel” women and “rescue” them. Detaining women by blocking clinic access was therefore a physically violent act that restricted the women’s movement and ability to exercise reproductive autonomy. Importantly, sidewalk counselling was also experienced aurally. The booming voices of protestors would have been amplified by bullhorns and accompanied by police sirens, among other noises. Chanting and shouting became a violent intimidation tactic. The noise was so powerful that Operation Rescue organizers had to caution followers about the power of their collective voices. At a large rescue in California, for example, they were warned: “If you shout even something as unthreatening as ‘We will help you’ to an arriving mother, the sound of 30 voices shouting that does not say what you mean it to say.”[16] These instructions suggest that rescuers knew they were creating both a physical and sonic barrier that incited fear and disorientation.

American scholarship argues that Operation Rescue’s tactics fizzled because they were not sanctioned by the mainstream anti-abortion movement. In Canada, abortion clinic injunctions rendered these tactics largely unusable.[17] By then, however, the damage had been done. Ongoing acts of anti-abortion violence across North America contributed to a palpable climate of fear. In 1995, following the murders of clinic workers in the U.S., Morgentaler stated, “At this point in our history we have to view every aggressive picketer in front of a clinic as a potential murderer.”[18] It might be tempting to dismiss this assertion as hyperbole, but as one scholar cautions, “the distinction between civil disobedience and aggressive acts of violence is small and the boundary between the two has been crossed frequently.”[19] It is important that we understand the physical and sonic violence as more than simple protests; they were acts of patriarchal violence. And, while the physical violence of these earlier protests has largely abated, the sonic violence persists, joined by campaigns of visual violence like the Genocide Awareness Project.

Shannon Stettner is a historian specializing in reproductive health and activism, oral history, and lived experience. She is an avid traveller, dog enthusiast, world class putterer, and a regular contributor to Active History. 

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[1] My sincere thanks to Jason Reid and Kristin Burnett for their support and guidance in the writing of this piece.

[2] For a recent conversation, see Lucy Jackson and Gill Valentine, “Rethinking spaces, sites and encounters of conflict in twenty-first century Britain: The case of abortion protest in public space,” in Order and conflict in public space, Eds., Mattias De Backer, Lucas Melgaço, Georgiana Varna, and Francesca Menichelli, Order and conflict in public space. (Routledge, 2016): 182-204.

[3] For the varied use and successes of safe access zones see Sylvia Bashevkin, “Explaining Feminist Movement Impact: Provincial Abortion Policies in the Wake of Decriminalization, 1988–2018” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 56, no. 3 (2023): 504-524.

[4] See, Ron Crelinsten, “Canada’s Historical Experience with Terrorism and Violent Extremism” in eds. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Senator Linda Frum, Terror in the Peaceable Kingdom (Washington: FDD Press, 2012), 15; G. Davidson Smith, “Single Issue Terrorism,” (Commentary No. 74, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Winter 1998).

[5] Carol Mason, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Dare? Confronting Anti-Abortion Terrorism after 9/11,” U. Pa. J. Const. L. 6 (2003), 802.

[6] Gill Valentine, “The Geography of Women’s Fear,” Area 21, 4 (Dec. 1989), 389.

[7] See, Rebecca Lentjes, Amy E. Alterman, and Whitney Arey, ““The Ripping Apart of Silence” Sonic Patriarchy and Anti-Abortion Harassment” Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture 1, 4 (2020): 422-442.

[8] Michael W. Cuneo, Catholics Against the Church (University of Toronto Press, 1989), 77.

[9] Cuneo, Catholics Against the Church, 68.

[10] On Operation Rescue, see Dallas Blanchard, The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Rise of the Religious Right: From Polite to Fiery Protest (New York: Twayne, 1994); Faye D. Ginsburg, Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

[11] “Operation Rescue in Canada,” The Interim (25 October 1989), https://theinterim.com/issues/operation-rescue-in-canada/

[12] This sentiment was echoed verbatim by Canadian activists, with Rev. Stephen Hill of the Ontario Pro-Life Clergy Council being quoted in the Toronto Star as saying “The pro-life movement has come of age. If we believe abortion is murder, it’s time to act on it.” See, Nancy J. White, “Abortion: Two sides of a controversial issue,” Toronto Star (8 October 1989), A1. For OR statement of the same see, Eleanor J. Bader and Patricia Baird-Windle, Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 152.

[13] The film was supported by The Canadian Foundation for the Defense of Human Life, Campaign Life Coalition, and Human Life International. See Rescue with Joan Andrews, directed by Terry Malone, (Human Life International, 1988): 39:04.The action is described in “Operation Rescue Comes to Canada,” The Interim (27 December  1988), https://theinterim.com/issues/abortion/operation-rescue-comes-to-canada/ and “Why I joined Operation Rescue,” The Interim 27(December 1988), https://theinterim.com/issues/pro-life/why-i-joined-operation-rescue/

[14] Here Egan describes the January 1989 “rescue” action, but the tactics and outcomes would have been the same across rescues. Dunphy, Morgentaler, 336.

[15] Ibid., 336.

[16] Gary Wills, “Operation Rescue: Save the Babies,” Time (May 1, 1989), http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,957538-1,00.html

[17] Paul Saurette and Kelly Gordon. The changing voice of the anti-abortion movement: the rise of” pro-woman” rhetoric in Canada and the United States (University of Toronto Press, 2016), 134.

[18] Dunphy, Morgentaler, 429.

[19] Beau Seegmiller, “Radicalized margins: Eric Rudolph and religious violence,”” Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 4 (2007): 522.