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Abortion Foes on the Street

Jill

This article in the New York Times is… interesting. First: I love that the Times has labeled anti-choicers as “abortion foes.” If you look through their archives, that’s the headline in far too many abortion stories. Considering that the antonym to foe is “friend,” I always find their word choice a bit… odd.

But my feelings about “abortion foes” aside, the article is worth a read. It’s not perfect from a pro-choice perspective, and I have some basic journalistic qualms with it — like the fact that the author says that abortion protester James Poullion was killed for his activism, without mentioning that his killer was an unstable individual with no ties to the pro-choice movement, and was going on a murder spree and simply disliked Poullion’s sign. But it’s nonetheless an interesting take, and I’m mostly curious to hear all of your responses. Thoughts?

14 thoughts on Abortion Foes on the Street

  1. I used to live in Owosso, actually, and I can assure you that James Pouillon was no activist. Those who were close to him knew he cared nothing for the so-called “unborn”. He was a blatant misogynist, had abused his wife and children mercilessly, and really only targeted the high school with the anti-choice signs because he enjoyed tormenting and offending people. It was his sincerest wish that he be killed and martyred in the way he was.

    I mean, I thank him, really, because if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have become the crusader for women’s rights that I am today, but more people need to know him for the fraud he was. He was nothing more than a bitter man with mommy issues, seething over with hatred and rage.

  2. I appreciate that the Times uses “abortion foes” as opposed to “pro-lifers.” That said, I agree that the part about Pouillon’s death was misleading, especially as it went on to say that it means doctors aren’t the only ones in danger.

  3. I have always been strongly for the woman’s choice and detest the strong and often convoluted views of those, who feel that a women, by exercising her natural choice to opt for an abortion is some how committing a sin and is guilty of a heinous offence.

    Women of the world, unite!

    OUTfrontUK

  4. I don’t know- they painted them too sympathetically for my taste. I’ve been at a crisis pregnancy center and it far from sitting on a comfy sofa. It was a horrible experience. I grew up in an anti-abortion family and I’ve unfortunately taken part in several anti-abortion protests before I pulled my head out of my ass and now these people just make me sick.

  5. And now, I think that even more after visiting an anti-choice website where they were excited about the way in which their side was portrayed.

  6. What struck me was the way the article seemed to be trying to put anti-choicers on the same level as pro-choicers in terms of the amount of duress, harassment, and violence they experience. As if one dead protester, shot by a serial murderer, and the blowback they receive for their bullying equates to decades of planned shootings and murders, arson, threats, targeting the confused and insecure…. blech.

  7. The article mentioned that anti-abortion groups are planning a day of protest during which they’ll hold signs depicting abortions outside of schools. This really doesn’t make sense to me- do they think it’s mostly schoolchildren who are getting abortions? It seems like a blatant attempt to get some parents to say “I don’t want my kids having to see that on their way to school” and then the abortion protesters can shout about how they’re just telling the truth and their freedom of speech is being abridged. Is there any other reason I’m missing for why the protests with graphic fetus imagery would be targeting schools?

  8. I’m a longtime clinic escort and there are a few things I can say with absolute certainty.

    1. In almost 20 years of of escorting, I’ve seen exactly one patient turn away. We figured she probably rescheduled for a day when the harassers weren’t there-they can be very scary. The stories the antis tell in the article are, to my mind, highly dubious.

    2. It’s no surprise to me that antis get into street harassment for personal reasons. You will never see a creepier bunch of misfits and grudge-bearers than you’ll see holding gory signs at a clinic. The stuff they spout about the roles of women and men, their obsessions with “being a man” and “real women want to be mothers” tells you everything you need to know about the anti-choice movement.

    3. Never once in all the time I’ve been escorting have I seen or heard of a pro-choice person physically attacking, stalking or threatening an anti. Ever. They’d love to think of themselves as martyrs, but it’s a complete fantasy.

    4. Their behavior towards their own children is the clearest proof of the way they really feel about kids. They bring their children-from birth to teenager-out in the snow and rain and blazing sun, inadequately dressed, left to wander unattended up and down city sidewalks and directed to interfere with adult strangers who are in the midst of personal crises. It’s sick.

    5. Those signs are faked.

  9. Nikki, if you took everyone fitting that description out of the anti-choice movement, there wouldn’t be a movement to speak of. And yes, even the women. Reading Jill Stanek’s blog is illuminating. She’s obsessed with the idea that abortion and contraception are emasculating.

  11. One big problem with this article is that it seems to imply that most anti-choice protestors – characterized as “street activists” – use imagery and tactics like James Pouillon did. As a protestor, James Pouillion has become known for the protests he engaged in before he was killed, namely bloody imagery of very late-term abortion, and displaying that imagery in front of a high school.

    The article implies that association by focusing on the tributes and near-martyr status attributed to Pouillon by anti-choice activists, and associating this with anti-choice protest in general. For example, this paragraph from the beginning of the article:

    “Together, these street activists make up an assertive minority of a few thousand people within the larger anti-abortion movement. Neither the best financed nor largest element in the mix, they are nonetheless the only face of anti-abortion that many Americans see. Indeed, persistent provocation is their defining attribute: day after day on street corners from California to Massachusetts, they stand like town criers, calling to women walking into abortion clinics, or waving graphic signs as disturbing as they are impossible to ignore.”

    But most anti-choice protest uses imagery and location that, while still offensive, is much less graphic and overtly harassing, and many more than a few thousand people nationally are involved with that. It’s much more common to see “life chains” of protestors with signs that don’t have bloody imagery, and while we don’t have any studies or articles to link to that describe their typical location they probably are more likely to be seen at busy intersections that simply have a lot of traffic rather than a high school or even a clinic, though protests like that at clinics are also common.

    If the article had discussed the more common protests like “life chains” and the people who participate in them it could have better made points how while anti-choice protests include some people who consider themselves part of the mainstream of society (especially in conservative states and communities), there are numerous inconsistencies and differences between protestors, but that nearly all of them have a very unrealistic perspective on why women seek abortion and how having an abortion plays into how they live their lives. Many protestors sincerely believe that abortion “hurts women” and that what they are doing somehow helps. Hearing from more mainstream anti-choice protestors – and from pro-choice escorts and protestors – would help make those inconsistencies more clear, and show ways to change the minds of some anti-choice protestors, at least the more mainstream.

  12. southern students for choice-athens has a good point. I’ve seen mini-graveyards with tiny crosses meant to represent aborted fetuses more than I’ve seen bloody images. These mini-graveyards have been either on church grounds or on college campuses and are done by people who probably consider themselves mainstream- they oppose abortion and are willing to participate in “Respect Life” day or whatever, but it’s not something they consciously think about every day. Hearing more about this group of people and how they might change their minds would be useful.

  13. I have always considered these people flaming assholes who think that their opinions are so important that they need not respect the rights of anyone else. The Times article did nothing to change that opinion.

  14. It’s probably correct to say that most participants in anti-choice protest like a “life chain” don’t so much believe in statements like “abortion is murder” or “abortion kills children” as they do statements that might be more open to reason (and changing minds) like “abortion hurts women”. The former two statements about abortion taking a life require more of a stretch of imagination than most people seem to easily take, while the latter “abortion hurts women” is closer to the pseudoscientific anti-choice concept of “post abortion syndrome” which in one form or another is a common anti-choice concept, and one that unfortunately has gotten somewhat written into US Supreme Court precedent in Gonzales vs Carhart.

    We’ve found doing different kinds of outreach that people tend to be relatively pro-choice (believing abortion and related reproductive health care should be accessible and that they have a personal responsibility in making it more accessible) if they’ve personally had experiences helping others deal with an unintended pregnancy or pregnancy scare, even if they’ve never known personally someone who has had an abortion. If they don’t have that experience, they tend to have relatively unrealistic (and often unsupportive) attitudes about abortion and related issues which they’ll freely express and, if not pressured too much, admit may be unrealistic. People tend to have anti-choice beliefs (supporting legal restrictions on abortion, not simply personally believing it wouldn’t be something they’d electively choose to do) if they haven’t had experiences where they’ve helped others deal with issues like these, and they tend to also have difficulty empathizing with women (or men) who are dealing with unintended pregnancy or pregnancy scares.

    We’ve found it’s not only possible but usually easy to break down that psychological barrier or deficit if we can talk with them in ways that help them empathize with people who are in those situations, especially young and poor people in those situations, and to the extent that they can do so, they tend to express or at least be willing to accommodate beliefs that, for example, abortion should be available with minimal legal restrictions. They might not be willing to donate at our tabling right away or, if they’re at a demonstration to literally switch sides, but signing a petition at a table that they’d otherwise not have signed or expressing conciliatory words at a demonstration that they’d not otherwise have spoken is a common effect we’ve seen in positive interactions with people who we’d otherwise consider anti-choice, and that’s a start.

    It’s possible to have these interactions in many settings, either in encountering people who don’t identify themselves as pro-choice when we’re tabling as a group, or if there’s a counterprotest to something like the “life chain” where it’s possible to have an encounter with people on “the opposition”. Obviously we can’t have encounters like this in an environment that’s overtly hostile or triggering, as would be the case if one tried to talk to antis at a clinic demonstration (a bad idea, obviously).

    This really isn’t difficult to do, though some other pro-choice groups have discouraged this because of the risk of arguments between antis who want to argue and pro-choice folks who go along with arguing with them. In many cases, of course, it takes two people actively cooperating in a perverse sense to make an argument, and it’s usually not difficult to choose not to argue without appearing to concede anything. If one thinks like that about potential interactions with more people with relatively moderate anti-choice views, it’s easy to see opportunities to change minds on many levels by an organized pro-choice presence or counterdemonstration at any kind of anti-choice demonstration like a “life chain”, or in encounters with people like that in tabling or other outreach we might do on our own. Of course this wouldn’t have worked with Pouillon or others who use the most grotesque posters and language, but it can work with others, if one is willing to try.

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