Ms. Magazine celebrates 40 years with panel discussion about anti-abortion extremism

CLAREMONT - Ms. Magazine celebrated four decades of feminist journalism with a panel discussion at Scripps College Thursday night in which an editor said the magazine is taking a strong stance against anti-abortion extremists.

"These are not lone wolves who are acting out of a deep moral sense of their concern over unborn children," said Ms. Magazine executive editor Kathy Spillar.

"This is a network of domestic terrorists that functions like every other network of terrorists. They recruit, they arm, they plan their targets and they commit the violence. All we've ever had until now is the prosecution of the one person who actually plants the bomb or pulls the trigger.

"And until you dismantle the network that's behind the terrorism you're never going to see an end to it. We face a very real terrorist threat in this country that is using abortion. They're also very anti-government of any kind. They're usually also very racist and this is a network that will continue to commit violence and perpetuate this mythology that abortion is controversial. And this is hurting us terribly."

Legal abortion, Spillar said, has been settled and is not a "real" debate.

"Forty percent plus of women will have an abortion in their lifetime," Spillar said.

"And 90 percent will use contraception if they're heterosexually active. So this is not a real debate but it is being played as a debate both on the streets by the extremists and in Congress and in the state legislatures by predominantly male and conservative elected officials."

The result of groups in the U.S. fighting over the legality of abortion is negatively impacting women all over the world, Spillar said.

"We're not meeting our obligation on the international stage in funding family planning programs, our policies continue to interfere with efforts in countries all over the world to legalize abortion," Spillar said.

"And women are dying. This is not something that happened 40 years ago before (the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion) Roe vs. Wade. Women are dying today -- 500,000 a year die of complications from pregnancy or childbirth or botched illegal abortions.

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Ms. Magazine celebrates 40 years with panel discussion about anti-abortion extremism