Randall Terry -- the fiery activist who recruited D.C. resident Missy Reilly Smith to run for congressional delegate, thus clearing access to the airwaves -- announced this week that he plans to recruit candidates to run for Congress in the nation's 25 largest media markets, expressly to air graphic TV commercials.

And Terry, whose group Operation Rescue pioneered in-your-face abortion clinic protests in the late '80s, is also considering a run for president in 2012 -- which would give him the ability, he said, to run a commercial in the most coveted airtime in American television: during the Super Bowl.

The ads take advantage of a little-known legal provision barring broadcast TV stations from altering the content of political advertisements. Prior to the election, at least two dozen ads aired on broadcast and cable stations in the area, usually preceded by a disclaimer inserted by the stations. The impact of the ads were amplified by the news coverage of the attendant controversy.

The ads "did exactly what they were supposed to do," Terry said. "Missy's ad got more pro-life debate, more pro-life press ... in a two and a half weeks than all other pro-life news that I know of in the whole country."

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Terry and his colleagues can pull it off. But it is worth noting that this is not the first time this has been done.  Howard Phillips, the founder of the U.S. Taxpayers Party (now called the Constitution Party) featured graphic antiabortion TV ads in Iowa during his 1992 presidential campaign. This is probably where Terry got the idea. He was a regional leader of the party, and ran as a USTP candidate for Congress from New York. (For a discussion of the origins and theocratic ideology of the USTP see Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy).  Terry later mounted an unsuccessful primary challenge against his local Republican State Senator in Florida.

While it is worth noting that Ann Marie Buerkle, a former Operation Rescue associate of Terry's, was recently elected to Congress as a Republican from New York, Terry's aim is clearly different.  He wants to take advantage of the lack of GOP challengers to entrenched incumbents in heavily Democratic districts in order to get antiabortion militants access to the ballot. This may have the effect of polarizing the abortion debate among key Democratic constituencies with implications beyond the district and the particular race.    

Both Buerkle's victory and Smith's campaign ads show that the most militant antiabortion activism is not limited to direct action against abortion providers. Militant antiabortionism, while retaining some of the features of earlier eras, has evolved along with the rest of the Religious Right. Indeed, Terry and fellow militants met with incoming House Speaker John Boehner's chief of staff recently to push for House passage of a complete ban on abortion. It seems likely that now that there is an antiabortion majority in the House in the wake of the last round of elections, something may very well pass, even if it gets no farther. This time.

Antiabortion politics will continue to be a major factor in American politics for the lives of everyone reading this post. That is because the Religious Right in its various expressions continues to be one of the most dynamic political forces in modern American politics, and there is no element of the Religious Right and its key allies that is remotely interested in compromise or common ground on abortion.