Man confronts pro-lifers protesting outside an abortion clinic with some harsh truths

The religious right — the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists — has firmly positioned itself as the backbone of the pro-life movement over the past few decades. While they claim to denounce abortion over humanitarian concern for the unborn, the history of their so-called right-to-life movement is a lot more complicated and sinister. Andrew Woods, who identifies himself as an abortion clinic defender on Twitter, recently took it upon himself to give a small historical refresher to a group of maskless pro-lifers. In a TikTok video now going viral on social media, Woods is seen confronting the protesters with some hard-hitting truths about their cause.

"Before the 1970s, your church did not care about abortion and in fact believed that life begins at breath," Andrew is heard shouting at the clueless protestors. "And while I do not think that a bunch of Jesus worshippers should have a f**king thing to say about healthcare when it's not their own bodies, at least that position was consistent with your scripture." He went on to remind them that the religious right actually has its political roots deep in a history of pushing to maintain segregation in schools. 

According to Politico, while the religious right's emergence is widely touted as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, its actual origin was several years prior to the landmark decision. "In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered 'charitable' institutions," Randall Balmer, prize-winning historian and Emmy Award nominee, explained.

"The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero. On June 30, 1971, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued its ruling in the case. The decision upheld the new IRS policy: 'Under the Internal Revenue Code, properly construed, racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption provided for charitable, educational institutions, and persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions,'" Balmer continued.

He explained that it was only after this ruling that Paul Weyrich — the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation — seized on abortion as a rallying cry to mobilize evangelical voters on a large scale. Weyrich recognized that organizing grassroots evangelicals to defend racial discrimination would prove challenging and that they needed a different issue to form a "moral majority." Summing all this up in fewer words, Andrew said: "The minute y'all couldn't segregate a f***king school, you need another issue to keep maintaining your political clout."

"You don't think that there are any babies dying in there," he said of the clinic. "You're not stupid people. But you are deceptive and dishonest people. You are people who should be ashamed of yourselves because your lie affects these patients. You are terrorizing them. Why the f*ck do you think we need to be out here? In a city full of work that actually needs to be done, we are wasting our time defending people from you, because y'all are menacing them." Although the video of Andrew calling out the pro-lifers won much praise on social media, he made it clear in another video that he wanted to keep the focus on people who are actually at risk for having their reproductive rights stripped away. "The bar for men is under hell. Fight for gender equality because we're not free until we're ALL free," he wrote on Twitter.