Mocking the Predators: Guelph Report

40 Days of Preyers seems to be rather a fizzle in Canada this year.

First, they're down to only 8 cities -- and a part-time vigil in Saskatoon -- from 15 in the fall last year.

There's not much bragging on social media of huge turn-outs or of women successfully coerced convinced to turn around.

And if a Québécois MNA is successful with her private member's bill, all such predatory demonstrations would be barred in Quebec.

Shorter: Anti-choice is losing in Canada and they know it.

We reported on one counter protest in Calgary.

Now here's a report by pro-choice activist Wednesday Bell from Guelph, where, note, the fetus freaks of targetted Guelph General Hospital which does NOT perform abortions. Go figger.

The counter protest was awesome! We outnumbered the anti-choicers the entire time, and they left before we did!

Best moments:

1. One girl wanting a group hug from us

2. A man thanking us because his wife had been complaining about the anti choicers for two weeks and was happy to see some resistance to them

3. The hospital security guard supporting us!

Weird moments:

1. When the anti choicers claimed it was illegal for us to be there because we were blocking the sidewalk...while they were blocking the sidewalk

2. One guy walking up to us just to tell us he was pro-life. Okay? Good for you?

And the signs were fabulous.

Push Back Time: Mock #40DaysOfPreyers

Among animals, predators seek the slow, the old, the sick. Among humans, street criminals target the frail, the encumbered, the solitary. Child sexual predators look for the lonely child, the "odd" child, the neglected child. Sexual predators focus on people they figure will be manageable, quiescent, compliant.

In short, predation requires vulnerability.

Of course, all predators make mistakes and take on "prey" who turn out to be stronger, louder, faster, and smarter than they thought. (The Ghomeshi trial comes to mind.)

The spring session of 40 Days of Harassment is set to begin on February 10. (It took me years to figure out that there are TWO of these bunfests a year. There's another in the fall.)

Organizers target particular abortion facilities (or non-abortion facilities, see Guelph below) for "prayer vigils," which amount to 40 days of non-stop harassment of clients and staff at often already-beleaguered clinics.

Let's call it what it is: bullying.

Let's refine that: it is self-righteous bullies preying on vulnerable people at what may be major crisis points in their lives.

Or in the case of abortion providers, preying on healthcare providers who daily face stalking, surveillance, and violence just for offering a safe, legal, common medical procedure. (See the recently published Living in the Crosshairs for first-person stories of what these heroic people go through.)

All predators expect a reward. Lions get a meal. Muggers get a wallet. Sexual predators get orgasms.

And anti-abortion predators get what we call martyrgasms. A strange satisfaction from shrieking epithets and threats at ordinary people going about their personal business.

Back in November, I said that here now in Canada we have the perfect opportunity to secure reproductive rights and access once and for all.

It seems to me this year's first anti-choice martyr-fest would be a good place to start.

Beginning with social media, let's use the tag #40DaysOfPreyers. (I'm not the coiner of that one; I'll reveal the author after I've gotten permission*.) Other suggestions are welcome, like #StayOutOfMyUterus, #HandsOffMyCunt, #NoBullyInMyLadyBits, and the one I and others have been using for years, #40DaysOfHarassment.

Let's take photos of them and their dumb-ass signs and post them on social media and/or dedicate a Tumblr or somesuch to the effort.

Let's counter-demonstrate. I love this story from a couple of years ago about a couple in North Carolina who made witty and weird signs to mock regular preyers at a local clinic.

In Canada, Campaign Lie has targetted clinics in nine cities:

Edmonton.

Vancouver.

Victoria.

a hospital in Guelph, where apparently no abortions are performed.

Oakville.

Scarborough.

Windsor.

Montreal.

In Saskatoon, they don't seem able to muster 40 days' worth of bullying and so are going for "40 Hours for Life in front of Saskatoon City Hospital."

The times will be from 9:00 am to 12:00 noon Monday to Friday, and 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm every day. Call 1-800-891-2070 for more information.

In the UK in 2011, pro-choice people responded with 40 Days of Treats. Bring snacks or little gifts to targetted clinics, donate to pro-choice causes. In short, respond to cruelty and bullying with kindness and support.

Let's push back. Let's reveal and mock these bullies for what all bullies are: pathetic losers with a weird hobby.

Who have no damn right to prey on vulnerable people.

DJ! will stay on this for all 40 days. Send photos, links, suggestions for hashtags.



* Coiner of phrase is modest, declined acknowledgment.

World War on Women

Women's rights are in peril again -- now in the UK too.

The new Minister for Women, Maria Miller, who has the gall to call herself 'a very modern feminist', wants to lower the legal abortion limit from 24 to 20 weeks.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May also back a reduction to 20 weeks.

And now the new Minister of Health, Jeremy Hunt, is going even further. He wants to lower the limit to 12 weeks.

Note that this Minister of Health backs homeopathy, or as a science blogger put it, 'he believes in magic'.

And of course there, as here, women's rights are considered a frippery, subject to a free fucking vote.

And there, as here, women's rights are always open for negotiation. Abortion came up in the 2010 election, not long after a similar reduction in the time limit was voted down in 2008 but only because Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, whipped her party members, demonstrating again why people call her Harriet Hardwoman.

To add insult to injury, 40 Days of Harassment has slithered across the pond. Abortion clinics are under siege from Christian nutters, who learned from their USian counterparts.

This is at least the second year the UK has been invaded by clinic harassers. Last year I started following someone calling herself @40daysoftreats, who countered the fetus fetishists' efforts by encouraging people to bring treats for clinic workers and patients. Insults outside, Jammie Dodgers inside.

Natch, the Brits are appalled. There, as here, sane people watch what's going in the USian War on Women in slack-jawed wonder, thinking: 'That can't possibly happen here'.

Oh yeah?

The UK rightly prides itself on its abortion law. It's been legal there since 1967, albeit with some conditions.

Conditions that sane people would like to see liberalized, not CONservatized.

Viz, the first comment here by Josh Kutchinsky.

UK law should be brought in line with that of Canada in relation to abortion, i.e. repealed so as to decriminalise abortion.

I am more pro-life than many who usurp the name but not the meaning. I would provide good sex and relationships education. I would provide support and counselling. I would provide contraceptives and knowledge as to how to use them properly. This is how to reduce all abortions not just control some in order to increase the number of back street ones or encourage self administered procedures. Numbers of foetuses aborted would be reduced, number of women dying reduced, number of unwanted, malnourished, sick and dying children reduced. Respect for women as autonomous human beings to be treated with dignity and equality and not patronised and infantalised would be much increased. That's really pro-life.

Yep. That's what I would call pro-life too.


ADDED: A call to arms from a British blogger, who warns that anti-choice will win if pro-choicers aren't prepared. A lesson we've learned well in Canada,eh?

Synchronicity, Baby!

Some weird synchronicity is going to occur on September 26, 2012.

The vote to kill Woody's Wank, aka M312, aka the Motion to Create a Sub-Class of Canadians Formerly Known as Pregnant Women, will be held. At 5:00 p.m., we're told.

By the power of whatever body that declares such things, it is also designated World Contraception Day, or as we sluts call it, World Sex Without Squalling Consequences Day.

And, in consolation perhaps for their Crushing Defeat on M312, fetus fetishists will begin their bi-annual Persecution and Prayer Fest, 40 Days of Harassment.

Sounds to me like a good day for a party.

Turning the tables on the Fetus Lobby.

From here - it means to reverse a situation and gain the upper hand.

Read and rejoice:

[Todd] Stave is the landlord of a medical clinic in Germantown that offers abortions. Reproductive Health Services Clinic became a big focus of anti-abortion protesters when it was leased to LeRoy Carhart, one of the few doctors in the nation who acknowledges performing late-term abortions.

There are always protesters outside the office park property quietly praying or holding a vigil, with signs, rosaries, statues of Mary and bloody, gory posters of mangled fetuses.

“Totally appropriate. It’s their right. They are protected by the First Amendment. And outside the clinic is probably the most appropriate place for them to express their views,” he told me this week.

This has been a way of life for Stave. He’s not just a landlord. That office was his father’s clinic. Then his sister ran it.

“I’ve been a member of this fight since Roe v. Wade. Since I was 5 years old,” he said. The office was firebombed when he was kid, and protesters gathered outside his father’s home as he was growing up. So he’s no stranger to the harassment and bullying of doctors and their families.

It’s become routine for protesters to distribute fliers, posters and create Web sites with all of a doctor’s personal information and urge others to target them. Kansas doctor George Tiller was killed in 2009 and his protegé, Carhart, had his farm burned to the ground. [...]

But his harassers crossed the line last fall, when a big group showed up at his daughter’s middle school on the first day of classes and again at back-to-school night. They had signs with his name and contact information as well as those awful images of the fetuses.

Soon after that, the harassing calls from protesters started coming to his home. By the dozens, at all hours. Friends asked him how they could help. He began to take the names and phone numbers down of anyone who contacted him with an unwanted call. And he gave those lists to his friends and asked them to call these folks back.

“In a very calm, very respectful voice, they said that the Stave family thanks you for your prayers,” he said. “They cannot terminate the lease, and they do not want to. They support women’s rights.”

This started with a dozen or so friends, then grew. Soon, there were more than a thousand volunteers dialing.

If they could find the information, Stave’s callers would even ask the family how their children were doing, and mention their names and the name of their school. “And then we’d tell them that we bless their home on such and such street,” giving them their address.

In some cases, the family of a protester who called Stave’s home could get up to 5,000 calls in return.

Hmm ... I know a couple of women in their sixties, wonderful grandes dames who belonged to Les filles d'Isabelle (the Knights of Columbus Ladies' Auxiliary) until they couldn't stand the sight of their peers being told to suffer silently while their ostentatiously pious businessmen husbands abused them, beat their children and eventually dumped their families for young trophy girlfriends.

How difficult could it be for them to infiltrate the local Fetus Lobby group that organizes 40 days of Harassment©™ and vigils outside the Women's Clinic - to get their hands on a database of all the shrieeeking abortion-criminalizing wingnuts?

To paraphrase the Golden Rule: Do unto others as they would do unto you.

And also: remember when Blob Blogging Wingnut suggested, in HER typical passive-aggressive manner, that "abortionists" (and their supporters) in Canada should be documented?

Did it hurt?

Now what could possibly go wrong with this situation?



The photo was taken yesterday outside the Kensington Clinic in Calgary where the 365 Days of Harassment continues.

According to a member of DJ!'s crack team of nationwide fetus-fetishist watchers, the kid in the tree belongs to the woman with the “Mommy will it hurt?” sign.

Perhaps the kid should have been holding the sign.

Because, predictably, the little tree could not support her and she fell, luckily missing the fence.

Mommy and gang continued to ignore her. And after a few anxious (well, at least clinic staff were anxious) seconds on the ground, she got up, seemingly OK.

One wonders: if the kid had needed medical treatment, would the clinic harassers have allowed one of the medical professionals (aka Evul Abortionists) take a look at her?

Or, worse, if the kid had needed an ambulance, would the fetus fetishizing liars gone all SHRIEEKY with their usual 'Ambulance Called to Abortuary. Again!11!!!' headlines?

Me, I'd bet a fair amount of dough that the clinic workers would NOT have been dancing in the streets.

We're reminded again, as Saint George of Carlin said about the zygote zealots, 'To them, if you're pre-born, you're fine. If you're pre-school, you're fucked'.

Fetus Lobby® Poster-Boy

With yet another fetus fetishist bunfest going on -- called 40 Days of Harassment -- Luna has written a thoughtful post from a Christian perspective at Dr Dawg's. It's sparked a lively debate -- 147 comments when I last looked.

She calls the clinic harassers 'a bunch of old white jerks'.

Which, of course, immediately brought this video of the 2009 March for Lies in Ottawa to mind.

Here it is again.




Hateful misogynists? Nah, loving, peaceful Xianists.

BONUS: Read The Mound of Sound's The Older I Get, the Less I Like Old People. To which I say, amen.

In Your Face!

Under assault from Operation Scumbag, Whole Women's Health, a women's clinic in Austin, Texas, is fighting back.

According to this blogger, that banner is the work of artist and activist Heather Ault. Visit her webpage, some good stuff there.

40 Days of Treats

This is a great idea! 40 Days of Harassment has begun. Here's a push-back a 'regular person' in the UK started that needs to go international.

Instead of -- or maybe in addition to -- the usual counter-rallies at abortion clinics, pro-choicers are asked to participate in 40 Days of Treats.

Blogger Squeamish Bikini explains.

The 40 Days for Life people are back in the UK. Funnily enough I am not going to link to them. For those who need filling in these people hold vigil for 40 days outside clinics where abortions are performed in the hope of deterring people going in. Pro-Choicers have had a rather marvellous idea. Instead of holding debates or protesting the pro-life vigil, Pro-Choice people have organised their own 40 days.

Apparently coming out of nowhere, a Tumblr has been set up urging people to take treats in a show of support for those working at BPAS and other such charities. Squeamish Bikini thinks this is just bloody lovely and will cheer those who are just trying to do their job.

If you want to take part you can find out where your nearest clinic is at here and go deliver them a treat to brighten their day.

The 40 Days of Treats begins now. Pass it on.

Squeamish Bikini includes a link to a list of UK clinics.

Here's a list (PDF) of clinics in Canada.

Or, just contribute some kind words of appreciation and support on Twitter @40daysoftreats.

As Squeamish says: Pass it on.

Image source: the hilarious Cake Wrecks. Do NOT click unless you have some serious time to waste. :D

ADDED: 40 Days of Treats is happy to share the name.

ADDED: 40 Days of Treats makes it into the Gruniad.

ADDED: Link to PDF of clinics isn't working and I don't know why. Here it is in plain text; copy and paste. www.arcc-cdac.ca/list-abortion-clinics-canada.pdf

Just when you think . . .

. . . the fetus fetishists can't sink any lower than race baiting,
there's -- I don't know what to call it -- this from Virginia:

State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God's punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.

He made that statement Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood.

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," said Marshall, a Republican.

"In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

I have nothing to say.

But in the spirit of The 40 Days of Harassment Campaign now on, I'm reposting the video of 'Anti-Choice Poster Boy'. If you're in Ottawa and see him hanging around outside a women's health clinic, ask him how he likes being the Canadian face of misogyny.



Psst. Bloggers, let's post this vid a few more times. But WARNING: if you go to the YouTube site for the code, there is some violently insane crap in the comments.

h/t feministe

Update on the Humpty-Dumpty Initiative

Here we go again. Another 40 Days of Harassment begins, not that it ever ends. (Lard, I'm dim betimes. I just realized that there are two of these bun-fests a year. The persecution high is too intense for only once a year.)

So, over the next while, when you see tiny shivering groups of DUOPs (dried-up old prunes) holding tattered signs with the usual fetal pr0n, you'll know you must be near a women's health clinic.

I thought this might be an opportune moment to update the Egg as Person Initiative.

There are 31 USian states working on crafting legislation or amending their constitutions to redefine 'person' as a fertilized human egg.

But the campaign is not going too well.

First up, Colorado, where the fetus fetishists are banging their collective head against a wall trying again despite being clobbered by a 3 to 1 margin the last time they tried this.

On Friday, Personhood Colorado turned into the Secretary of State 79,817 signatures in support of its initiative – not even 4,000 more than the 76,047 needed to land its proposed anti-abortion “personhood” proposal on the ballot in November. Thousands of signatures are routinely thrown out in the process of validating initiative petitions. The group’s amendment seeks to grant fertilized human eggs the full spectrum of rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens. The difficulty its sponsors seem to have had gathering support suggests the idea they are promoting is no more attractive now to Coloradans than it was in 2008, when they defeated a similar proposal in a landslide vote.

Next, that free-wheeling state of Nevada.

The Personhood Nevada organization has filed a state Supreme Court appeal of a district judge's decision prohibiting the circulation of a petition aimed at ending abortion.

Kenneth Wilson, treasurer of the organization, said Monday the group hopes that justices will overturn District Judge James Todd Russell's decision and allow the circulation of the petition. Russell ruled the petition was too vague and violated a state law that limits a ballot question to one subject.

On to Mississippi, where, it seems, the entire exercise was a charade from the git-go.

It appears to be all over but the cryin' for supporters of the Mississippi "egg-as-a-person" initiative to ban abortion. RH Reality Check has discovered that a unique provision in the state's Constitution prohibits modifying the Bill of Rights by voter referendum.

A fact known by the Personhood campaign and ignored for political reasons.

Facts? Pish, say the fetus fetishists.

More Quixotic efforts in Montana.

Legislative efforts similar to CI-102 failed in Montana in 2007 and 2009 and another initiative in 2008 fell about 18,000 votes short of making the ballot.

And Iowa and 26 other benighted places.

So, while it's encouraging that the Humpty Dumpty Initiative is falling off the wall all over the place, what's depressing is that we -- the normal people -- have to keep fighting. There is so much work to be done to improve the lives of people in so many ways, but the fetus fetishists keep sucking us into this kind of idiocy.

And it must be fought. Every time. Everywhere.

With hard times facing individuals, organizations, and governments everywhere, precious time, energy, and money is spent countering this dippy delusion.

Leave aside the whole abortion/contraception bollocks and women's rights problem for a moment and consider this.

During the last Colorado battle, I read an argument against the amendment from a lawyer who did not declare her- or himself on either side. The argument was: The word 'person' occurs about 10,000 times in Colorado state law. If this measure passes, thousands and thousands of lawyer hours will be billed to the state to examine every instance of 'person', to determine how the new definition impacts that law and what should be done about it.

Property law, inheritance law, family law, criminal law. Every kind of law would have to be revisited with the new definition of person in mind.

What a colossal waste of time and money.

And the fetus fetishists have the gall to label us pro-choicers as 'selfish'.

(Isn't that a gorgeous illustration?)

MASSIVE DUOP Turnout

Forty days of Harassment is on!

Today, I passed the women's clinic on Gerrard, one of two targets in Toronto, twice by streetcar. At about 12:30, two dried-up old prunes (DUOPs), one male, one female. About 3:30, one DUOP, male. I wasn't paying enough attention to be able to say whether it was the 12:30 DUOP.

MASSIVE turn-out. :p

Criminalizing Contraception

As 40 Days of Harassment kicks off, many bloggers and columnists are noting -- yet again -- the idiocy of the 'pro-life' position on contraception.

You'd think the people most dead-set against abortion would be the most avid cheerleaders for contraception.

You'd be dead wrong.

Antonia Zerbisias often reposts on her blog what she calls her treeware column with links added. Here's yesterday's, with a clarification added.

There are states – most recently Florida – where there are bills to ban contraception. Some pharmacists and doctors, both here and in the U.S., are refusing to provide the pill to patients, even married adult women.

We interrupt this column for a clarification:

The proposal in Florida is for a state constitutional amendment that critics assert would result in criminalization of the Pill. It wouldn't be the first time there have been legislative moves to ban some contraceptives, including the pill.

Then she links to my post about the celebrations the fetus fetishists are having over the success of their many incremental attacks in various US statehouses. Note that there were 300 initiatives against abortion and 60 against contraception.

At RH Reality Check, blogger Hunter Stewart ventures to Wisconsin to check out the 40 Days of Harassment campaign there.

There are two family planning clinics in central Wisconsin – one in Wausau, one in Stevens Point – that have been picketed by typical religious right-wing anti-choicers over the past two years. What’s not typical is that these clinics do not provide abortions. Nor do they provide referrals or even medical counseling for abortions, because their federal grant restrictions explicitly prohibit them from doing so. The people of Wisconsin know this. The protesters know this. So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that this family planning clinic dispenses contraception – condoms, birth control pills, and emergency contraception. The protesters I spoke with in Wisconsin believe that “the morning-after pill” is the equivalent of murder. They even believe that the birth control pill is a form of murder. (Since in some cases it prevents the fertilized egg – which they would call “the embryonic person” – from implanting in the uterine wall.)

And condoms? One protester told me that condoms encourage men to use women “for sex without repercussions.” But isn’t it the woman who has to deal with the real “repercussions” of a pregnancy? You would think an anti-abortion activist, of all people, would see the use of condoms.

But no. “If you want to have sex,” he told me, waving his finger in the air, “make sure you can deal with the consequences. Which are children.”

Are we clear on this? Fetus fetishists are NOT about the baybeez. They are about control and punishment of mainly women, but men too, who have sex for reasons other then procreation.

The campaign is incremental. Throwing up niggling little laws here and there to restrict access to both abortion and contraception. Howling about pharmacists FORCED to dispense products a patient's doctor has ordered, but that the pill-counter finds morally objectionable. Launching idiotic bullshit campaigns like The Pill Kills. Lying about what emergency contraception or Plan B actually does. Lying about what ordinary hormonal contraception actually does. Shrieeeeking about the life-threatening dangers of the abortion pill.

Because, ultimately, what they want is CONTROL over everybody's reproductive systems. To that end, they want to criminalize abortion AND all forms of 'artificial' contraception.

Make no mistake about it. There is no common ground with these people.

Perversion

USian fetus fetishists are congratulating themselves on their efforts to impede, infantilize, patronize, and stigmatize women seeking legal abortions.

Americans United for Life (AUL) today released their 2009 State Legislative Session Report. This year's report confirms that the majority of states continue to successfully pursue and implement a life-affirming legislative agenda.
. . .
According to the report, several notable and promising developments and trends emerged in 2009:

* Approximately 60 life-affirming measures were enacted in 2009, a substantial increase from 2008 activity levels.

* The states considered approximately 300 abortion-related measures, the vast majority of them life-affirming, and virtually every state considered at least one pro-life measure.

* Several states introduced resolutions opposing the federal Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), radical legislation that would enshrine abortion-on-demand into American law and override all federal and state laws regulating or restricting abortion. Meanwhile, attempts in five states to enact a state version of FOCA were handily defeated.

* Further, states continued to seek to protect the unborn in contexts other than abortion by enacting protections for unborn victims of violence, encouraging substance abuse treatment for pregnant woman, and providing legal recourse for families whose unborn children are killed through the criminal acts or neglect of others.

* Measures to regulate biotechnologies and to prohibit or restrict technologies that destroy nascent life increased by nearly 20% -- the first increase in such legislation in three years.

* For the first time in three years, measures to protect conscience outpaced measures to violate or compel conscience by a margin of 2 to 1.

Full report here.

Among the 300 abortion-related meddlings were all the usual hoops and hurdles: 'personhood' (fertilized egg = person) legislation, bans on various types of abortion (because state legislators all have medical degrees and know more than any woman's doctor), parental notification/consent laws, rigorous reporting regulations for providers, mandatory ultrasounds, mandatory waiting periods, funding for Crisis Pregnancy Centres (a.k.a., lying, manipulative, guilt-trippers), and so on and so on and so on.

One of my fave manoeuvres is 'informed consent' legislation. The Guttmacher Institute says that 33 states have such laws, but only 10 of them incorporate correct medical information. The other 23 states use bullshit to attempt to guilt or scare women out of abortion.

('Information' is also the ruse invoked by sidewalk counsellors abortion clinic harassers.)

Thing is -- as Antonia Zerbisias reports in a blogpost titled Brute Force -- such measures don't work.

She quotes a policy review from the Guttmacher Institute (I'm bolding the same bit she did):

Providing women information specifically geared to dissuading them from having an abortion is a perversion of medical ethics in general and the informed consent process in particular. But no matter how well-worn the tactic, it does not appear to be effective in its purported goal of materially reducing the number of procedures performed. In fact, there is no persuasive evidence that state abortion policies aimed, in one way or another, at talking women out of an abortion stop large numbers of women from having them. At most, there is some indication from the data that erecting substantial, direct roadblocks in the path of women seeing an abortion -- such as denying Medicaid subsidies to poor women or requiring women to make two separate trips to a facility to receive in-person counseling, and then wait 24 hours before the abortion —- may have that result.

Wow. Imagine that. Women making up their own minds and sticking with their decisions.

And another wow. 'Direct roadblocks' on the other hand may work.

Something to think about as fetus fetishists across North America assemble outside women's clinics for their 40 Days of Harassment starting today: what those perverts are doing may be intimidating, but ultimately it is FUTILE.