Earlier this year, police removed five fetuses from the refrigerator of militant anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy. SofiaResnick reports on how a radical abortion opponent ended up dumpster-diving for remains
Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Reuters Two days after police removed five fetuses from her refrigerator, Lauren Handy sits barefoot in rumpled clothes in a fellow anti-abortion protester’s cluttered Washington, D.C., apartment. She and the other activist, Terrisa Bukovinac, claim to have obtained a box of these fetuses and 110 smaller ones from a medical-waste-truck driver outside a D.C. abortion clinic.
And as abortion becomes increasingly restricted across the U.S., she is passing her militant tactics on to a new generation of activists with a group called Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, emboldening protesters to sow chaos where the procedure remains legal. “The message that we’re spreading is that you can dismantle the abortion industry on a community level and in blue strongholds,” Handy says.
The campers would sleep in the homes of former clinic-blockaders, whom Handy says turned her on to the concept of infiltrating clinics and disrupting their operations. She watched VHS tapes of their blockades and listened to the older activists’ battle stories. A documentary Handy watched during camp featured Joan Andrews Bell, who had served prison time after tampering with medical equipment at abortion clinics in the ’80s.
Bukovinac says she coordinated with a California lawyer who sent a letter to the D.C. medical examiner’s office and police speculating that those fetuses “were a result of late-term abortion or possibly live birth abortions.” Bukovinac claims she worked with police to arrange the pickup of the five fetuses the next day.
The anti-abortion activists who have trained and worked with Handy describe her as nonconformist. A natural blonde, Handy has been dyeing her hair various shades of the rainbow since she was 12. She identifies as queer and uses both “she” and “they” pronouns. In her early 20s, she converted to Catholicism. “So I’m celibate” — she pauses before letting out a hysterical laugh — “to the best of my ability.
Handy and several of the other indicted activists already had trespass cases pending in various states that mostly resulted in fines or short stints in jail. Handy says the longest time she served was four days in a Flint, Michigan, jail in 2019, after which she did not enter any abortion clinics in the U.S. for a year. By the fall of 2020, Handy was ready to get back inside an abortion clinic — and not just to drop off flowers.
Later, I ask Handy how she ensures that the people who join her on clinic rescues won’t act violently. “It’s clearly stated beforehand,” Handy says. “Nobody’s wanting to commit violence. We want to interrupt the cycle of violence. And we can’t do that through mirroring the injustice or the use of violence. And we’re all like-minded in those principles.”
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