Abortion Protestors
Filed under: Heebie Jeebies - December 13, 2007 @ 6:59 am
The short of it: they’re fucking nuts.
Check out the Army of God site for proof.
I didn’t run into any at my pre-abortion appointment (I hear they gather at the clinics on Fridays and Saturdays during better weather, and I went on a Tuesday and it was gloomy and cold), but when I went with a friend 15 years ago, they were out in full force and completely freaky and disturbing. I wonder how effective they really are - how many pregnant women change their mind and have the baby instead, when confronted with gang bangers screaming bible verses.
A friend of mine shared this experience with me:
I recently accompanied an African-American friend of mine for her abortion. The anti-abortion activists, for some reason, believed I was the potential mother and she was the friend. Of course it was the little white girl who was pregnant, not the bodacious black one with child-bearing hips and a volcanic bootie shake.
She lost the knob to reposition her car seat and had to look for it while these possessed, white, wide-eyed freaks surrounded by their toddlers and preschoolers approached, serenading me with crackly voices. “Jesus loves your unborn son or daughter. Jesus will show you the way.”
Some twangy, out-of-tune stringed instrument, a banjo?, played a distorted Kumbaya tune, and the background to their concrete stage consisted of larger-than-adult-sized pictures depicting fetuses that never developed skin, had dislocated limbs, their bodies traumatized from their grand exit.
A woman with long, curly red hair, holding a baby who faced those grotesque signs yelled out at me. Their voices were disturbingly in unison, all about Jesus. I wanted to shout out “What’s Jesus doing for the mothers and babies dying in Africa of AIDS? What’s Jesus doing for the parents of babies in East St. Louis?” I didn’t. I pictured the burning crucifix in the movie Carrie. I pictured the psychopathic antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I saw the white coats of doctors who perform abortions stained with blood from bullets. “Jesus will show you the way!” the wide-eyed freaks shouted. “You will regret this the rest of your life!”
It doesn’t matter what the issue is. I never want to be on their side.
December 13th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Hey there - I came over from mander overboard site (she’s a friend of mine, and she’s sucha great writer) - what an incredibly interesting site you have - could you please tell me what country you are writing from - is this really America? Do protestors stand outside and really do these things at abortion clinics? That’s fucking crazy, in New Zealand we don’t have anything that borders on this.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:42 am
Whether it’s protesters or Star Wars geeks standing outside in big groups during the day, I always wonder the same thing…don’t they have jobs?
I don’t have an opinion on pro-choice / pro-life one way or another, but how I love how kooky the pro-lifers like this are, so much fun. I came across some woman spewing “life” propaganda once when I was a teenager, my response was “the only reason you’re alive is your mom couldn’t get the angle right with the hanger.” (If looks could kill.)
Love the bumper stickers too. They use the common “It’s a child…not a choice” stickers to antagonize pro-choicers, so I thought of making money by printing stickers for the choicers to antagonize the lifer rednecks. “It’s a child…you’re not suppose to f**k it.” Never got around to doing that just yet.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:43 am
Christians who expect non-Christians to abide by essentially Christian codes of conduct baffle me. I really want to believe that they have good intentions, but they wrap anger around them like a blanket; not to mention how damned selective they are about which teachings of Jesus they make a big deal about and which ones they don’t. Those armyofgod.com people are really crazy, it’s like their brains aren’t on. And there’s no talking to them, the wheel is turning but the hamster is dead. Their actions don’t follow their own logic. They don’t believe abortion is wrong because aborted fetuses are gross, yet the gross-out factor is about all a lot of these people have. My Aunt works at a Pro-Life pregnancy center, but she’s not a protester. She’s much more interested in things like “people” and “listening” than stomach-churning poster campaigns and anything involving a megaphone.
December 16th, 2007 at 8:39 am
bomber - I love when people from other countries read my blog. It makes me feel so worldly. Very cool of you to point out how bizarre the pro-life hysteria seems from your perspective, cuz it’s very real here.
Shannon, love your twisted sense of humor. I thought it would be funny to fuck with the pro-lifers by walking into the clinic with a basketball shoved under my shirt.
Alex, I thought for sure this topic would scare you off the blog. You ARE saintly. Hee. Well open-minded, calm, reasonable and kind anyway.
December 16th, 2007 at 11:30 am
walk me through this - how often do these protests happen? Is it a once a year thing?
December 16th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Heavens no, it happens ALL the time. They gather around health clinics all over the country once or twice a week with their big bloody signs and harass the women going in and scream at people driving by. It’s definitely a huge and passionate past time for a lot of people, both men and women.
America is very polarized on the topic - about 50% are against abortion and the pro-life people are always fighting to make it illegal. They succeed in little ways all the time by tightening laws and making it more and more difficult for a woman to get one. There is a lack of clinics, rules imposed, and tons of misinformation meant to frighten people. Insidious.
December 16th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
W-H-O-A THERE NELLY, hold the fuck up - are you telling me the images above are a WEEKLY EVENT? I though they were some sort of special yearly event! We had one in NZ about 8 years ago where for one day lots of people stood silently on the streets - no posters or anything, they just congregated as a silent protest, but they got too much abuse from passer bys, in New Zealand we have the odd silent protest outside an abortion clinic, but it is VERY reserved and VERY peaceful, my god, NO ONE would dare do anything like what you are describing as it would be considered a gross intrusion in what is widely seen as a medical procedure. How can the porn country of the planet also have this weirdly repressed psyche? I just never get ‘America’ - you are the leading light of freedom and democracy (’We hold these truths to be self evident’ is such an incredible declaration of humanity as it is independence) and yet under Bush your country seems to have gone to a very strange place - which is why I suppose the rest of the west is so critical of the US, if America won’t stick to the rules, how do we get Russia or China to stick to the rules?
How do these anti-abortionists reconcile the inherant flaws in their arguements?
December 18th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I used to live by a Planned Parenthood, and they were out there every Saturday, in larger numbers in nice weather. I always yelled something or another or made hand gestures at them. I considered throwing wire hangers, but that could be considered assault. I did buy poster board to make pro-choice messages as a counter protest, but I was lazy and never followed through.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
bomber, silly goose, Christian Evangelists don’t read the Constitution! Why would they? The Bible is where all the important rules are written.
For someone’s who’s never been here, I would suggest doing an online search of “red state” and “blue state.” We have loads of uneducated shitbrains living out in our rural areas.
February 9th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I was looking at the pics on ArmyofGod site. Did any one else notice that ‘Jude’ and ‘Ester’ are the same? What they couldn’t find enough examples? They had to duplicate them? I wonder if they were trying to get this idea across: the images here are so upsetting and vile, but dont worry, you wont remember them a few minutes after you view them.