November 2023

Activist Suspects Increased Anti-Abortion Forces in Massachusetts

By Cathy Corman

Activist Laurie Veninger is worried. Lots of women came together in the summer of 2022, immediately after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade. These days, she says, women aren’t showing up at events and actions. Along with other activists in the Commonwealth, she says we need to pay attention and get involved.

Veninger thinks dangerous groups may be showing up to oppose a variety of progressive causes, including access to abortion.

What she’s seen on Cape Cod this past summer and fall have made her increasingly anxious and angry.

Veninger became worried when she learned that Your Options Medical, a CPC with locations throughout the state, had begun sending a mobile ultrasound unit in a van up and down the Cape to dissuade pregnant people from considering abortion.

She became increasingly concerned when she learned that the people sending the van had planned a forty-day vigil outside Health Imperatives, a reproductive health clinic in Hyannis which, this summer, for the first time, began offering medication abortions. 

Health Imperatives is the only health clinic on Cape Cod offering medication abortion.

With others involved in Indivisible Mass’s Feminist Action Team, Veninger organized forty days of counter-vigils to demonstrate support for Health Imperatives. 

“We stood out,” Veninger says. “And it was not fun.”

Veninger has always been active in the expansion of women’s rights and was energized to ramp up her work when the Supreme Court overturned Roe.  She’s is an activist with Indivisible Mass Coalition’s Feminist Action Team, part of a statewide branch of a national organization working to protect democracy and justice.  She also works with Abortion Truth Campaign, which counters the disinformation tactics of anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers in Massachusetts.  Veninger is involved, as well, with Reproductive Equity Now, a group working for abortion access throughout New England.

The first few weeks of the counter protest were “civil,” Veninger says. Protesters mostly stood outside Health Imperatives and prayed. 

Then interactions became heated.

Some protesting the clinic’s work would “talk loudly about their opinions,” Veninger says, while one woman became verbally and physically aggressive. She alternated between “praying over” people, reciting scripture, and name-calling, Veninger says.

“She was praying and then calling us evil or enemy or Satan’s handmaidens. Ridiculous things. Then she’d go back to praying for mercy on our souls.”

On the last day of the vigil, Veninger says, this woman almost pushed a counter protester into the road. Veninger and others had collected items to donate to patients at the clinic. The same protester saw the bins filled with collected items. Veninger heard the woman say “This is so pathetic. [The clinic] is just for women. There’s nothing for babies.” This same protester grabbed Veninger by her backpack and “yanked [her] out of her way.”

It would be easy to dismiss a woman like this as “just a nut,” Veninger says. On the contrary, she believes what she experienced outside Health Imperatives this summer may be but one example of the growing presence of extremist, anti-democratic groups in Massachusetts.

With input from other activists in the Commonwealth, Veninger says there is evidence that members of the following groups seem to be participating in anti-abortion work and are supporting CPCs.

• Moms for Liberty, a political coalition of right-wing women promoting anti-vaccination campaigns and banning inclusive, diverse curricula and books. The group is known to harass and threaten librarians and school board committees.
• NSC 131, or National Socialist Club 131. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, identifies NSC 131 as a Neo-Nazi group targeting “New England’s immigrant, LGBTQ+, and Jewish communities.”  SPLC explains that “131” is an “alphanumeric code” for ACA, or “Anti-Communist Action,” which signals its opposition to far-left groups.

Veninger says activists around the state are noticing that members of these groups are showing up to leaflet outside hotels housing immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, protest outside Governor Maura Healey’s home, and block town resolutions to monitor CPCs.

She isn’t surprised that the same people may be increasingly showing up to block progressive, inclusive, democratic initiatives. 

“This is what happens with extremism,” she says. “It only gets more extreme.”

Like all I’ve profiled in this space, Veninger urges us to pay attention and get involved. Here are two of her suggestions:

• Talk to family and friends about the issues, “convincing them that if they really want to be pro-life,” they have to work to pass legislation for free health care for all, gun control, and access to abortion care. 
• Find ways to get involved here in Massachusetts to expand and secure access to abortion care and gender affirming health care. As long as the Republican Party holds a majority of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, Veninger says, no Democratic legislation will pass. She urges all to “build a movement for when we flip the House.”