In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

How I turned into a screaming maniac…

Vanessa

For the past few days the group Justice For All (who I won’t link to, Google them if you’re really curious), an anti-choice, forced pregnancy organization has been on campus at UNM, invited by some on-campus group consisting of a mere 14 members. I don’t know whether anyone has ever seen one of these exhibits, but it consists of two-story high billboards plastered with pictures of mangled embryos and fetuses labeled as older than they are, with lots of vague and incorrect “facts” about abortion causing breast cancer and cervical cancer and whatnot.

Not only is it disturbing because of the massive misinformation, but also the images are highly insensitive to anyone who might have had a miscarriage (and don’t get me started on the way our culture treats miscarriage).

They put this exhibit in a completely centralized place, where you can’t help but walk by it if you want to get to class on time. I, however, was determined to walk by without paying it any notice, nobly proclaiming myself above reacting to such shock-value, trollish tactics.

Needless to say, less than half an hour later I was waving a coat hanger in the air leading several women in chanting “NEVER AGAIN!!!” at the top of our lungs. So much for nobility.

Luckily, the next day (what I’m assuming was) an impromptu “Women’s Health Fair” had sprung up on the other side of the plaza, with tables set up by doctors, Planned Parenthood, a group of midwives, and other such organizations handing out condoms, pamphlets giving the true facts about abortion, and the like. It was nice to see people combating deliberately provocative lies with helpful, simple, open truth. I stopped to snap a few photos with my cameraphone (below the fold).

Photo 39
This guy (dressed in a Dia de los Muertos costume) was circulating a petition to have the group removed. Not that it would happen, he said, but he thought it was important that the UNM board of regents knew how many students were upset.

Photo 38
Part of the exhibit was a giant sheet of paper where people could write what they thought of the billboards. This says “Where are the pictures of women who will die of septic abortions when abortion is made illegal?”

Photo 37
This was my contribution. I was pretty pissed off.

Photo 40
At one of the “Women’s Health Fair” tables.

Photo 41
The bottom sign read “We won’t go back,” and had a picture of a coat hanger.

Photo 42
This guy was I’m pretty sure a doctor a med student, encouraging people to make their own pro-choice signs while giving out actual facts about abortion.

All in all it gave off a pretty happy vibe. It was kind of nice to see so many people coming together in the face of lies and shock tactics.

39 thoughts on How I turned into a screaming maniac…

  1. I love the guy in the Dio de los Muertos costume. But, ech: Does this mean I can expect Justice For All to stop by here soon?

    (I can’t believe they let TWO New Mexico bloggers on here. Yes! World domination!)

  2. My favorite abortion picture depicts a blastula with the caption, “Abortion is murder.” The vast majority of anti-choicers who carry pictures of fetuses aborted at 22 weeks are against abortion performed at 5 weeks with RU-486 or even plan B, too. They even carry the same signs to agitate for banning abortion at 5 weeks and plan B.

  3. (I can’t believe they let TWO New Mexico bloggers on here. Yes! World domination!)

    Woo! No longer shall they think we are part of Mexico!

  4. My favorite abortion picture depicts a blastula with the caption, “Abortion is murder.” The vast majority of anti-choicers who carry pictures of fetuses aborted at 22 weeks are against abortion performed at 5 weeks with RU-486 or even plan B, too. They even carry the same signs to agitate for banning abortion at 5 weeks and plan B.

    Ooo, you should have heard some of the things they were saying. My favorite was when the old white guy tried to tell me that abortion was genocide against poor black women. With a “but-I-totally-love-black-people” kind of tone of voice.

  5. At my school once every semester a group called the Genocide Awareness Project come to school and display similar materials while simultaneously comparing abortion to the Holocaust. Ugh!

    For the last two years our campus’ Pride group have created large ‘buffer’ banners that said Choice and Queers Unite Against Hate and stood in front of them so that people could walk by without having to see the images. Its a very peaceful way to protest… and it stops them from getting the attention that they are seeking. Plus its a great way to allow students to ‘choose’ whether they want to see these images instead of just bombarding them with them.

    Here’s a link to pictures of the protest for those who are interested. http://www.picgo.com/go/prideubc/2005.misc

  7. Sorry this kind of insanity occurs in NM; here in Maine, it’s both 1-damned cold so the protesters would freeze their butts off and 2-hunting season…nope, best not to GO THERE!

    Seriously, I once applied for a job 10 years ago at a hospital here and there was a gang of the same sort of nutters standing directly in front of the building- screaming, waving their bloody posters. I had to wonder if these people realized or cared that buses passed that road constantly, as the elementary school was just up the street.

    Did they REALLY CARE about babies, who later become schoolchildren?

  8. At my school once every semester a group called the Genocide Awareness Project come to school and display similar materials while simultaneously comparing abortion to the Holocaust. Ugh!

    Well, abortion is like the Holocaust. RU-486 is really just a delayed Zyklon B pill that’s released in the womb, after beaming signals to the fetus’s proto-brain, “We’re sending you to a special room to take a shower in.” D&E is performed by forcing fetuses to dig a hole in the ground, and then shooting them so that they fall into it.

  9. And, and, a New Mexico commenter! We get less protest here (in my part of the state) because they drove out Planned Parenthood many years ago, and if anyone performs abortions in this college town, it’s a big secret. One has to travel to El Paso or Albuquerque for such things. Extremist groups seem to value ignorance as a good thing; they foster it in their followers both through promoting false information and discouraging independent thinking. It helps them in that they don’t really want resolution for the issue; they’re entirely intoxicated on the energy they get from their obsession; imagine if the opportunity to act that way ended? What do you do if you can no longer wave your bloody placard and scream at strangers? They’re addicted to a behavior that is only “acceptable” under very specific conditions.

  13. Don’t worry Alon, back when I was commenting as plucky punk I was queen of getting moderated. You probably just keep hitting on particular words or something.

    (hilariously enough, when I posted this comment, it got moderated)

  14. Hey, this was like a day in November every year of college! (Do they like Fall or something? Way to ruin the season for me…) We had the “genocide awareness project” and the anti-choice group was so gleeful about it. It was their big project of the year. Standing in front of bloody faked fetus photos. Can you imagine, that being your accomplishment in activism?

    My last year, they apparently got really pissed off that we were handing out condoms. Ha!

  15. This guy was I’m pretty sure a doctor, encouraging people to make their own pro-choice signs while giving out actual facts about abortion.

    I suspect he’s a med student given the short white coat. =)

  16. Good for you Vanessa. GAP came to our campus and I wish I had been on the right side of the issue then, but even back then I thought it was a hideous display.

  20. Ooh, ooh pick me! (theme music, ‘These Are the People in Your Neighborhood’, plays)

    I’m so happy that someone I know, albeit in her superhero guise as PluckyPunk, personally executed a verbal assault on those monkeys.

    My feeling was, your right to advocate for a political viewpoint I find abhorent is not at issue, but is there a right to terrorize my 6 year old on her way to her music lesson? Because believe me, she experienced those pictures as terror. Had a hard time going to sleep. I would go to their houses and demand babysitting but they’re not emotionally stable enough to be left alone with a sleeping child so I can do laundry.

    The witless fuckstains.

  21. I suspect that if abortion is banned, women could go to jail for miscarriages.

    Oh sure, but why wait for an abortion ban?

    That one got shot down, but there will be other attempts.

    Genni:

    they drove out Planned Parenthood many years ago, and if anyone performs abortions in this college town, it’s a big secret.

    I really should write the Chamber of Commerce and complain at them for leaving that part out of their welcoming materials. I swear I did not know that.

  23. A few things… reading feminist blogs, meeting women who I liked and respected who had had abortions. The biggest change came when I had a pregnancy that posed some pretty serious risks to my health and I realized that no one else had the right to make decisions for a pregnant woman that affected her health and her life. It was a slow process, but I can’t emphasize enough how importnant the fantastic, patient pro-choice bloggers and commenters were. The ones who explained things and put up with my questions as I worked things through in my mind.

  24. I remember a few years ago while I was a student at UNC (Carolina, not Colorado) and a similar group came by and set up in the quad. One girl stood on the low wall and collected money for Planned Parenthood for the duration of the “exhibit.” I gave her a couple dollars and a “good work!” on the way to class.

    I haven’t been on central campus during the day very much since then, so I couldn’t say whether they’ve been back.

  25. I don’t know if its the same group, but one of those ad-trucks drives around downtown about once a month with those pictures up – always around lunch hour. Ugh. It’s like a drive by visual assault. And there’s no way to block it b/c it moves.

  27. When the anti-choice folks from Quebec Vie and Life Ministries came to Montreal we made enough of a media ruckus that the St-Joseph Oratory where they were supposed to do their big media-friendly conference cancelled on them at the last minute. Their big shots were furious because they had to book a basement in a “podunk little church” (their words, not mine) instead of being welcomed as heroes in a legitimate setting.

    After the pro-choice march that brought a thousand or two people out, a couple of us went to give them a taste of their own medicine and blocked the exit in the church’s parking lot so they were stuck in and would have had to go by us to get to their cars.

    *Obviously* we had the riot squad ready to take us on if we did anything foolish, unlike those scions of the community who can harass medical clinics as much as they want. Not that I’m surprised at all that a bunch of masked black, red and pink-clad anarchists, far leftists, queer activists and radical feminists would rate a great deal of police attention. Par for the course.

  28. Holy Christ, TWO NM bloggers?! I had no idea…

    (Grew up in Albuquerque myself, graduated from Highland High School in 1999. God, I miss the Frontier Restaurant……)

  29. There was once one of these groups at the church across from our apartment building. We didn’t know they were going to be there and drove past in the morning with our 3-year-old in the car. He had nightmares for a week. Two years later I am still pissed off.

  30. If those “Prolife” (quotation marks because I don’t think such a postive, innocuous sounding word fits them) people really care so damn much about the lives and welfare of children, why are they putting these huge gory posters up where people cannot help but walk by them with their kids? I mean, if there were images so gory on a movie on tv, these people would certainly call the FCC screaming and threatening.

    Have they ever considered how scarring the minds of young children affects their ability to recruit/convert women with kids and/or of childbearing age? Anyone who has a minimum amount of parenting skills would hate to have such people forcing such images on their kids, or on kids at all, and would likely not to fond of the pushers-of-gory images.

    Then again, we should be grateful that the Fundies aren’t too bright and haven’t figured this out. They might get better at recruiting teh faithful, and what would we do then…

  31. Devil’s Advocate:

    Would we be protesting if they were instead showing real pictures of maimed and dead Iraqis and American soldiers in order to protest against the war?

    (Ways the analogy don’t hold:
    Show the Truth’s pictures are often doctored or misleading, whereas the effects of the war on Iraq are real.
    A foetus might be gruesome but it did not suffer, unlike children or adult civilians and soldiers.)

  32. When I was three or four years old we drove by an Operation Rescue campout outside a clinic every Thursday on my way to preschool. I asked what the big pink babies were about, and my mother explained:

    1) How babies are made
    2) The importance of consistant contraceptive use (with details!)
    3) That people disagree about when an unborn baby (her words) becomes a human being
    4) Her own personal belief that women should choose whether they gave birth or not.
    5) The importance of free speech, even when we disagree with how people use it.

    It was only years later that I realized that my mother had been partway through a dangerous, medically complicated, desperately wanted pregnancy when she was driving past those signs. Knowing my mother, she must have been absolutely furious every single time. But I still remember those conversations as one of the places where my parents taught me their moral values, reproductive choice among them.

  33. Argh. One of these moronic groups was at my campus (Denver) last fall (if they came here this semester, I must have missed it). I think it was the Genocide Awareness idiots. Same idea, though: huge posters, set up at a major pedestrian intersection. Foul.

  34. …pictures of mangled embryos and fetuses labeled as older than they are…

    Um, I think you meant “younger.” That would serve their purpose of distorting the facts to guilt-trip women. (IIRC, many of those pictures are actually of spontaneous abortions, aka “miscarriages.”)

  36. Seriously, I once applied for a job 10 years ago at a hospital here and there was a gang of the same sort of nutters standing directly in front of the building- screaming, waving their bloody posters. I had to wonder if these people realized or cared that buses passed that road constantly, as the elementary school was just up the street.

    They do that in front of our local hospital too, and obviously since it’s a hospital they don’t know who’s there for what or why, but they make up for that by waving huge placards with doctors’ names on them. Nothing ominous about seeing that on a beautiful Saturday. Is there any way to interpret that as other than a threat?

  37. I only came across people like that once, across from a Krispy Kreme, of all places. They were on an intersection with a fairly long stoplight, and when we had to stop, someone actually stood up in their car to yell at them out the sunroof, “Do you have to show that while my daughter’s in the car?”

  38. Hey Lily: do you go to UBC? I wa going o related what happens there with the GAP but it seems like you got it pretty well covered.

    My question here is where does the right to free speech come in in terms of spreading harmful misinformation? Should campus authorities be able to step in an rule against groups like this from putting up displays on campus? You can’t tell me that it’s freedom of expression – no one should be allowed to yell fire in a crowded theatre.

  39. Here at the University of South Dakota, we call the “Anit-Genocide Coalition” the ‘abortion crazies’ and they aren’t afraid to show up in the freezing cold. But for the most part they are fenced in. I think we should send people over to tell them dead baby jokes, just to piss them off. But my favorite was that they had a kid that was about 6 handing out flyers! That’s right, brainwashing starts early!!
    I love your blog and pix!!

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