With all of the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood's sneaking into Aurora, Illinois to build an abortion mill, things wouldn't seem complete unless Planned Parenthood made some moronic insinuation about coming from pro-lifers.
Sure enough, Planned Parenthood posted an advertisement (posted here by Jill Stanek) in the Aurora Beacon with the words dramatically whispering, "Don't Let the Extremists Deny Vital Health Care to the People of Aurora." (click here for effect). These words were just above a charming picture of the remains of a baby-killing center in Michigan, set ablaze presumably by someone who was tired of babies being killed in their community and who decided to stop it the bad way. The rest of the burnt-down clinic's abortion appointments were canceled for the week, much to the dismay of rapists who needed to scuttle their adolescent victims in for abortions without being ratted on by the Planned Parenthood staff. Grade D s, to be handed out in the community's middle schools that week, had to be imported in from the next town.
This ad annoyed several of the pro-lifers who have spent the past few weeks protesting in front of the Planned Parenthood facility, not to mention any pro-lifer who saw the ad online.
In one of the Aurora city council meetings, attended by people from both "sides", one man told the story of a rabbit who hopped up to the intimidating pro-lifers with (gasp!) PRO-LIFE SIGNS. The nerve! The man said something along the lines of, "If a dumb rabbit is smart enough to know that we're not dangerous, what's with these pro-abortion weirdos?" (OK, maybe I'm paraphrasing just a bit...)
A funny story from Jill:
Commenters were also angry, as I predicted, that PP has now insinuated they are violent. One commenter told officials, "Does this look violent to you? This is what I do." And she marched back and forth in front of the podium with her rosary beads. She talked another minute and said again, "Again, does this look violent to you? This is what I do." And did it again. It was very funny.Of course, we know that such ladies have been knocked over by the peaceful pro-choicers in the past, but we don't sit there waving that in their faces. And little known is the fact that "pro-choice " far exceeds "pro-life ", though the former is rarely reported. Sure, the pro-choicers haven't shot a pro-life advocate yet (to my knowledge) but why should they? They have fetuses to rip apart after all! Perhaps when Roe vs. Wade is overturned we will start seeing the more unstable pro-choicers clipping people off and burning Crisis Pregnancy Centers down to the ground. You know, just the stuff they say they want to do to pro-lifers. Until then, we'll just watch them destroy pro-life displays, spray paint billboards, rip apart publications, steal fetal s, steal literature, hit little old ladies praying in front of clinics, get in our faces at events while cursing at us and insinuate that we are the violent ones.
The pro-lifers in Aurora have been nothing but peaceful. "The extremists" who want to "deny people services" are protesting two things: 1) that Planned Parenthood sneaked it unlawfully and 2) that babies are being killed in their community. And now, of course, Planned Parenthood has to sue in order to get their way. Who knew that people with signs and rosaries are such a threat?
[Posted at NathanSheets.com and LiveJournal's Awesome Pro-Life Community here.]
Nathan makes some very good points. I only wonder if letting one's anger get the better of one is something we prolife folks ought to try harder to avoid. It's something I had to wrestle with bigtime, surely. I learned (from my coblogger, Emily, bless her heart) that using inflammatory speech (like accusing prochoice folks of being satisfied because they "have fetuses to rip apart") only fans the flames and doesn't help truly educate and change anyone's thinking or their heart.
Maybe we can all take a step back, and consider each other as human beings, and for those of us who are religious, we are all His children, after all. Even St. Paul started out as Saul, ripping apart the Christians every chance he got.
Emily and I learned to not call prochoice/ proabortion people "pro-aborts" just as we ask them not to call us names like "anti-choice" or "wingnut" or fundie-freak" either. All of these labels imply a kind of anger and nastiness, when you really think about it. There truly are some people who are pro-abortion and not really pro-choice, just as there are some people who are really pro-death and not pro-life. It doesn't help us even begin to try and understand one another to only ratchet up the name-calling and the warlike rhetoric.
We use some pretty neat guidelines (http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2004/05/who-we-are-and-some-guidelines-to.html ), that might find some usefulness here as well, if anyone's interested. In case you don't want to send traffic to our blog, then here's an excerpt:
Please use your creative energy to find ways to state your opinion that respect the dignity of others.
Please don't diminish, minimize, or invalidate the pain and grief experienced by an unknown number of men and women after abortion.
Please don't imply that if people experience a negative emotional aftermath following abortion, they must have been unstable to begin with. If you really believe that someone is chronically emotionally unstable, why add insult to injury?
By the same token, please don't imply that men or women who say that their abortion experience was positive are in denial.
If people are in denial, that would be because of an event that is too traumatic for them to process in the light of reality. If you really believe someone is in denial, why would you want to add insult to injury?
Before you post something, ask yourself, "Do I want to be right or do I want to be generous, kind, charitable...and right?"
Be curious about the life experiences and emotional reactions of someone who may seem very different from you.
Do your best to make it safe for others to be vulnerable.Even prochoice folks who might be getting quite an education on this blog and starting to waver privately in their beliefs, but as long as hostilities remain here, won't ever be able to admit that to us, never mind themselves.
We've had numerous prochoice folks come to our blog, guns blazing, only to find that we aren't attacking back and then, surprise! we've become friends or at least respectful listeners of each other.
I know this pokes a bit at some of my fellow PLB bloggers, but I just felt it had to be said. Sorry if I offended anyone, but then again, I suppose it wouldn't be the first time!
8^)
Sorry, still getting the hang of formatting comments here. The excerpt begins with "Please don't use the labels "anti-choice"" and ends with "vulnerable."