Friday 21 November 2008

Boycotts and Grrrlcotts

Do boycotts work? You betcha!

Last year around this time, we feminazis staged a Grrrlcott against the Canadian Blog Awards because the administrators cravenly caved to objections 'from some' to a feminist category.

So, this year, there is a feminist category. (But, oy, look who/what has been nominated. Feminazis are waiting to see what the wise administrators decide about these nominations before declaring another grrrrlcott.)

Here, from RH Reality Check, is another 'success' story about a combined boycott/protest campaign by fetus fetishists against a couple of hotels in New Jersey.

It happened quietly and quickly. And now, no one's allowed to talk about it.

The story comes out of New Jersey. There, the Cherry Hill Women's Center provides reproductive and gynecological health services, including abortions. It was established in the 1970s, and is a member of the National Abortion Federation and the National Coalition of Abortion Providers.

As part of the center's support services, it developed a partnership with a local hotel, the Clarion Hotel & Conference Center, to offer out-of-town abortion patients a discounted rate on a room.

On October 20, LifeNews, an online anti-abortion publication, published an article that reported on this partnership, drawing on information it received from New Jersey Right to Life.

"The Clarion Hotel in Cherry Hill offers a reduced rate of $59 for a room originally priced at $109 to women staying there from out of town to get an abortion. Women need only show a receipt from the abortion business saying an overnight stay is necessary," according to the article.

It also indicated that the Quality Inn in Maple Shade, NJ, had a similar arrangement with the same women's center.

LifeNews described how anti-abortion groups were beginning to boycott the hotels, and urged its readership to further protest a policy that it said was aiding those who want to skirt parental notification laws in other states (New Jersey itself doesn't have a parental notification law; attempts to ban interstate travel of teens seeking abortion have never become law). LifeNews offered contact information for the hotels so readers could address them directly, and, presumably, articulate their distress at the policy.

Within just a couple days, other anti-abortion groups picked up the story, and passed it to their own email lists and membership bases. The Family Research Council, in an email blast, wrote alarmingly of how the hotels are "profiting" off of abortion by offering the discounted rates. It is unclear why the FRC believes that renting rooms at less than cost to certain guests brings the hotel a profit.

. . .

Their members did just that. By October 24, Family Research Council passed on another e-newsletter to its base, this time celebrating that the email/telephone protest against the policy that spread across the larger anti-abortion community worked. The Clarion Hotel had decided to cease offering discounted rates to patients of the Cherry Hill Women's Center.


Not content with throwing up legislative and regulatory barriers (parental notification, mandatory ultra-sounds, mandatory waiting periods, etc.), fetus fetishists use the power of the boycott to further restrict abortion access with economic barriers.

(Read the whole article. It ends on a positive note about compassionate volunteers stepping up, like the National Network of Abortion Funds, which raises $3 million a year to help 20,000 women with abortion costs.)

Well, you know, sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander and all that. . .

In California, where the loathsome Proposition 8 stripped gays and lesbians of the right to marry, the power of the boycott and grrrlcott is being conjured again.

The Huffington Post's Fred Karger reports on a number of boycotts justice-minded people can participate in.

Californians Against Hate has a list of them.

As the recent US election (and, marginally, the Canadian election) demonstrated, there are more of us than there are of them.

Go forth. And boy/grrrl-cott.

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