kagablog

Pro-choice marchers counter Walk for Life’s silent treatment

Henry K. Lee, Wyatt Buchanan, Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writers

Sunday, January 22, 2006

The nationwide battle over abortion rights drew thousands to San Francisco on Saturday for dueling demonstrations that combined elements of prayer meeting, political rally and street theater as they rolled along the waterfront — carefully watched by police who kept them as far apart physically as they are ideologically.

Abortion foes from all over the West converged on San Francisco for the second Walk for Life, an event designed to show that opposition to abortion exists even in the liberal Bay Area.

“We want people to know that there is another kind of voice in San Francisco,'’ said Eva Muntean, a San Franciscan and co-chairwoman of the Walk for Life.

That voice was, by design, mostly silent. Marchers were urged to leave photos of aborted fetuses and signs equating abortion to murder at home. And at a rally before the march, they were urged to ignore those who might try to goad them into an argument.

“We ask you to hold your tongues today,'’ Muntean said. “This isn’t a day for interaction.'’

Saturday’s events come at a pivotal moment in the fight over abortion rights. The Senate is soon expected to confirm conservative Judge Samuel Alito’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, which pro-choice activists fear will endanger Roe vs. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion 33 years ago.

In addition, the anti-abortion movement is gaining ground in California, with forces narrowly failing last fall to get a ballot measure passed requiring parental consent before minors could get an abortion. They are preparing to gather signatures next month that could lead to another vote in November.

Abortion rights advocates, concerned that the Bay Area movement has become too complacent, showed up en masse to protest the march. And they took a different approach. Although they were easily outnumbered by the marchers, the pro-choice supporters were loud and confrontational.

Many jeered and taunted the marchers, while others stood along the street, waved wire hangers and chanted slogans.

One group wore sheets and gowns dipped in red paint to symbolize their image of back-alley abortions.

Some sang “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one'’ to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”

“We’re here today because abortion is a right, not a choice,'’ said Maya Jones of Oakland, a volunteer with the anti-war group Not in Our Name. “As we come up against this Christian fascism that is condoned by our government, it is more important than ever for people to come into the streets and take a stand.'’

Abortion opponents gathered in late morning in Justin Herman Plaza, where they listened to prayers, sang the national anthem and heard speakers, including women from Democrats for Life and Feminists for Life, who said they wanted to combat the perception that those who are against abortion rights are all conservative Republicans.

Carol Crossed, vice president of Democrats for Life, told the crowd someone had asked her if the group’s members were “real Democrats.”

“We are the only real Democrats,'’ she said. “We don’t exclude anyone.'’

Many speeches urged conciliation over confrontation. Most marchers heeded organizers’ entreaties to tone down their side of the debate. While many carried handmade signs with such personal messages as “Thanks Mom for not having an abortion,'’ most waved printed white on black signs that read “Women deserve better than abortion.'’

But at least three brought signs with gory photos of aborted fetuses, saying they thought it was a message that needed to be seen.

“We wanted the truth to be known,'’ said Carol Anderson of San Luis Obispo, wearing a black veil and holding a life-size poster of an aborted fetus.

Her friend, Charles Fetylou, also of San Luis Obispo, carried an oversize photo of an aborted fetus’ head. Both were taken aback when organizers asked them not to join the marchers, a request they ignored.

“I felt a little rejected,'’ Fetylou said.

One marcher, Joyce Newlun, held a sign reading “Choose life'’ decorated with pictures of babies. She and several other relatives got in a van in Tacoma, Wash., on Wednesday afternoon to travel to San Francisco for the event.

“This is where we believe we can make a difference. We’re pro-life. I don’t know what more to say than that,'’ Newlun said.

Many others held signs showing where they came from, including Yuba City (Sutter County) and Clovis (Fresno County), and many brought children in strollers.

Marchers left Justin Herman Plaza at 11:45 a. m. and took to the nearby Embarcadero, where their procession stretched for nearly a mile.

Marching behind a banner reading “Abortion hurts women,'’ they headed north toward Pier 7, where abortion rights supporters had rallied forces for a counterdemonstration that aimed to disrupt the march.

As marchers closed in on the counterprotest, some softly singing “Ave Maria” or reciting prayers, police kept them in the street and herded abortion rights advocates onto the sidewalk, inserting a line of officers between the two.

Underscoring the polarizing nature of a debate where people rarely find middle ground, the police maintained a 10-foot buffer zone between the two groups, who occasionally yelled back and forth.

At Pier 7, abortion rights supporters held green balloons and a variety of handmade signs that ranged from the obscene, “F — your agenda,” to the snide, “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.'’ And they chanted: “March for Life, that’s a lie, you don’t care if women die,'’ referring to fears of unsafe, back-alley abortions if the procedure were to be outlawed. Some mixed in signs and shouted messages of opposition to President Bush and the war in Iraq.

Sara Jane of San Francisco, a supporter of abortion rights, said she couldn’t let the Walk for Life march happen without showing up and speaking out.

“I think it’s important for us as women and feminists to not let this statement be made without any sort of resistance,'’ said Jane, 24. “I want to let them know they can’t come in and just do and say what they want.”

When the demonstrations reached Pier 39, they began attracting the attention of wide-eyed tourists.

Katie Selenski, 27, of Sacramento was in San Francisco for the day for lunch with a couple of relatives. Had she been marching, she would have been a counterprotester, she said, but she doesn’t think such marches change people’s minds.

“It’s a polarizing issue, and people stand firmly,” she said.

Still, there was some dialogue between the two sides. Meddle Bolger, 30, and Nicole Brennan, 21, both of Berkeley, support abortion rights but chose to march with Walk for Life and try to engage people in conversation. They didn’t advertise their stance.

Bolger asked one marcher what he thought about the hangers people were carrying, and the marcher replied, “That’s a terrible choice to force onto somebody.”

Bolger said he doubted he would have received such an honest reply if he had been trying to convince the man that his position on abortion was wrong.

“I think that people don’t want to give anything to the other side, so if you say you’re on one side, the other side takes the hard line,” Brennan said. “I think we have middle ground but no way to talk about it.”

E-mail the writers at hlee@sfchronicle.com, wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com and mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle and on sfgate.com

Add Your Comment

prolifetruth4u
1/22/2008 7:22:30 PM

It is interesting, and disappointing, how you have tried to portray this. If you were there, you must have noticed that there were about 25,000 on the pro life side, versus about 500 on the pro abortion side. Don’t you think that responsible reporting requires those types of facts? I’m afraid that your bias is showing.

A Carthusian

For Bo I. Cavefors

The Pill slaughters nobility, slaughters
The heart, slaughters faith in the Son of God.
The Pill overthrows temples, depletes
Rank and file, nuns an extinct race,
Priests a dwindling, oppressed few whose power
The heal, to sanctify, is a rusty blade.

The Pill rages triumphantly, slaughters
The hidden force of life, the higher force
Of love and purpose, maims, blinds, mocks.
The Pill slaughters freedom, enslaves man
To lust, the fierce addiction, renders love
An absurd dream and life a masquerade.

The Pill blinds and deadens the mind, slaughters
The babe who enters the unreceptive womb,
The innocent unwelcome in loveless hearts.
The Pill devours the City of God, exalts
The City of Lost Purpose and Plush Death
Degrading life to a puerile escapade.

The Pill slaughters morality, slaughters
The fabric of human togetherness. The Pill
Seeps into the mind unnoticed, perverts
The very purpose of life, to produce souls
Of heroic love: descent to savagery.
The Pill has killed Christ in man and maid…

first published on bo cavefors’ blog

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa: Deaths from back street abortions have dropped by 91 percent in the decade since South Africa became one of the few African countries to legalize abortion, health care workers said.

Speaking on International Women’s Day at a conference, Elizabeth Maguire, president of Ipas, an U.S.-based reproductive rights organization, hailed the progress South Africa has made in making safe abortions accessible to more women. But health care workers said abortion still carried a stigma, and an anti-abortion group said the anniversary was no cause for celebration.

“South Africa stands as a great success story and clearly leads the region in advancing women’s reproductive health and rights,” she said Thursday.

South African legislation, passed in 1996, allows unrestricted abortions until the 12th week of pregnancy. Nearly 530,000 women had abortions between 1997 and 2006, according to figures provided by Ipas South Africa with 11 percent being provided to girls under 18 years old.

The risk of death from unsafe abortions is higher in Africa than in any other region with about 4.2 million unsafe operations being performed and 30,000 related deaths a year, said Maguire.
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“The greatest tragedy is that the deaths and injuries from unsafe abortions are largely preventable. This has been shown very dramatically in South Africa,” she said.

Maguire said a number of African countries are introducing abortion law reform. Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Swaziland and Togo have enacted additional conditions under which abortion is legal. Mozambique is also considering liberalizing its abortion laws, she said.

But many health workers in South Africa spoke of those who performed operations being shunned by their communities or colleagues.

“It is traumatizing, especially when you see patients coming back for repeat abortions,” said nursing sister Vuyisile Makhatini. “But we do get counseling and you get used to it. I feel I must assist all those women who come for help.”

Maguire said anti-abortion forces in the United States were helping fuel a “well-organized and financed” opposition to abortion in Africa. But opposition also was rooted in traditional culture on the continent.

While safe abortions have been made accessible to more women, speakers at the conference said the practice was still not seen as totally socially acceptable, especially in more rural conservative communities.

“It is still seen as a taboo. This is often why women come for terminations late in their pregnancies,” said Makhatini.

Of the abortions performed in South Africa, 24 percent were provided to women in the second trimester.

Makhatini said women wanting abortions cited socio-economic reasons, breakdowns in relationships, unemployment and wanting to continue studies.

Professor Charles Ngwenya, head of the Department of Constitutional Law at the University of the Free State, emphasized that abortion should be seen as a last resort and that there was a need for greater contraception programs to be put in place.

“We need to celebrate that more women have access to abortions and that we have been able to reduce maternal deaths. But we can’t celebrate if the number increases for a long time. Abortion must not be the only choice for women,” he said.

However, John Smyth, spokesman for the anti-abortion organization Doctors For Life, said a decade of abortion in South Africa was no cause for celebration. He said there was concern that the law was not being followed properly and pregnant women were not being thoroughly counseled.

“The abortion figures are horrifying and there are many wounded and hurting women who wish they hadn’t had an abortion,” he said.

The organization is assisting 21-year-old Crystal Osler who was subjected to an illegal abortion at 28 weeks in 2004 while in her last year of school. Osler and her parents are suing the school, accused of arranging the abortion behind her parents back, and the clinic where the abortion took place. The case is expected to be heard in the Durban High Court next month.

this article first appeared on the international herald tribune website

gardens, cape town, 21 october 2008

Twenty five years went by.
It was still the same music in
the jukebox. Van Morrison. Bob
Marley. John Lee Hooker. The world
begins and ends when you’re a teenager.
All the shit that comes after is just the run
down to the end. Endless decay. The same scene
night after night. Stroh rum. Tequila. Eternally recurring
headaches. Doubles. Tots. Time’s running out. Death’s creeping
in. Have you ever seen the rain? Marina from Russia on her second
night in this hellish bar. The world is closing in. Inch by inch. Death
crawling in. Into the joints. The cracks between the joints. Poetry in the
decay. Dirty poetry. Rotten poetry. Poetry of slime and filth. The world
crawling by. Life retching. Vomit covered streets. Puke sounds from
the cess pits of heaven. You mean so much more to me. Maybe I
fucked it up. Twenty five minutes went by. A life time in a juke
box. My rising sign is in in Libra. Have something to just sip
on. The till doesn’t close. The till doesn’t open. Can I have
another Jagermeister? The music changes. Artists whose
names he doesn’t recognize. Beats from synthetic
wastelands. The eternally recurring now. Always
nowness. Draining the soul. Teenagers grow
old overnight. Even older than their
parents ever were. Older than
death. Formless and unin-
formed. Death sprinting
in now. In a glass of
Jameson’s. Neat.
No ice. Double
it. Double it.
Most of the
time I
want
to
be
a teen-
ager again.
No acne. No
complexes. Just
dancing and being.
No tomorrow. Marina
sips her rum and lemonade.
There is no Southern Comfort.
I’ve got something for your mind,
your body, and your soul. Twenty five
seconds went by. He gulped down his Jamesons.
Neat. No ice. Stumbled into the night. Bracing winter
air. Joburg. His city. His death. His problem was he couldn’t
be bothered to stay sober long enough to pick up women. Instead
of getting them drunk he would stagger out legless. Disgusted with
women. Disgusted with himself. Last night’s diseased hangover barely
ended, tonight’s already on its way. He sat down in the gallery. Noticed
he was dying. Could smell himself. A shield deodorant commercial. To cover
up the stench of decay. Incesticide. His melancholy mood deepened as the
now surfaced again and again, invading his private domain, his solitude.
The now, always new, squeaky clean. In a café on Jan Smuts Avenue.
Traffic bursting past. Edith Piaf imposing European sensibilities on
his beloved Joburg hubbub. Around him at the café tables all
the talk is about property prices, the strength of the rand,
holiday homes at the sea. The Jewish discourse. Another
day ebbs itself into twilight’s ghostly sulking. Then it’s
Melville. The Unplugged. The jukebox luring tired
regulars into the familiar cobweb of rhythm
and vocals. Country-tinged inflections in
the eighties rock. White trash lang-
arming persistently. Memories
are a curse. The now is a
curse. All accursed. And
what of the future?
Curse the future.
The future has
been delayed
indefinitely.
It’s not
Godot
he’s
waiting
for. Waiting.
Waiting. All his
life waiting for destiny
to shake her tail at him.
To catch up with his dreams.
Dreams of freedom. Of a curse-free
existence. He sips on his double Jameson’s.
Catches a glimpse of himself in the fast lane to
inebriation. More of the same. It’s always and only
more of the same. Everything slows down. The night
slows down into death. Death slows down into another Jameson’s.
Thousands of hours of waiting in shabby bars. Waiting for himself to
emerge from the cocoon of himself that he’s taken shelter in. Always
watching the scenes unfold. Never pitching in. Never daring to share in
the splendour of the now. To participate. Bars and drunks. Drunks and bars.
It wasn’t just a foetus that died when we had the abortion, it was the
relationship itself. We killed it. Everything afterwards has been
good manners; a strangled attempt to keep face. I don’t
want to fuck her anymore. Her pussy is a grave site.
I have to close my eyes and fantasize about other,
younger women, in order to get an erection
when she’s lying naked next to me. I feel
so much pain in her pussy my dick
shrivels up. We lie next to each
other for hours. Cuddling.
Cuddling. Like asexual
preteens. Horrified
by our genitals,
that have,
overnight,
become instruments
of murder. We are both
outraged by the cruel potential
that sexuality has exposed itself as
having. A dead baby hangs in our bedroom
like smoke from a once passionately blazing fire.
Our love has been cremated. We are in our ashes.
Unlike other sorrowful passages in our lives, this baby
refuses to transform itself into a poem or a carefully staged
composition. This abortion manifests itself as a block, a chronic
depression. We don’t even know whether it was a girl or a boy. A piece
of mucous-like membrane that was scraped out of her with a vacuum
cleaner, savagely. A few day’s bleeding. A month later the
contraceptive injection. But we’re both still bleeding.
We sinned. We fucked heedlessly; with no regard
or respect for the sanctity of life. A soul was
given material form and we chose to
destroy that matter. We murdered
our baby.

Geri Santoro

Induced abortion is one of the most performed medical interventions. Making abortion illegal does not reduce the number of abortions. 20 million of the 42 million abortions performed annually are illegal and unsafe. Legalization of abortion can prevent unnecessary suffering and death of women.

Worldwide more than 1/3 of all pregnancies are unplanned. Every year nearly 1/4 of all pregnant women worldwide choose to have an abortion. The legal status of abortion makes little difference to overall levels of abortion incidence. Where illegal, most abortions are done with unsafe methods. Where illegal, it is primarily women without financial means who take recourse to unsafe abortion methods, resulting in the death of a woman every 8 minutes.

At the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, unsafe abortion was recognized as a major public health problem. The WHO estimates that 20 million of the 42 million pregnancies which are terminated by induced abortion every year are performed under unsafe conditions and in an adverse social and legal climate, resulting in approximately 70,000 deaths each year due to infection, hemorrhages, uterine injury and the toxic effects of agents taken to induce abortion.

At this moment approximately 25% of the world population lives in 54 countries (mainly in Africa, Latin America and Asia) with highly restrictive laws that either ban abortion entirely or permit it only to save the life of the pregnant women.

The poorer women are, the more likely it is that, faced with unwanted pregnancy, they will provoke an abortion themselves or go to a person without medical training, increasing health risks and the risk of hospitalization due to complications. Availability of safe and above all affordable abortion will also have implications for the future financial situation of such women and/or their families and can therefore be considered part of the struggle against poverty.

Rumania provides a unique case study of the factors that influence the use of unsafe abortion: in 1966 legal abortion was restricted and the abortion-related maternal mortality rate increased sharply, ten times higher than the average for the rest of Europe; in 1989 abortion was again made available on request and the number of maternal deaths fell sharply. By contrast the Netherlands has the lowest reported abortion rate because of a non-restrictive abortion law within a comprehensive framework that includes universal sex education in schools and easily accessible family planning services and the provision of emergency contraception. Of the 29,266 abortions performed there in 1997, the complication rate for first trimester treatments was 0,3% with no resulting deaths whatsoever.

Restrictive abortion laws violate women’s human rights based on agreements made at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 1 & 3 &12 &19 & 27.1).

*
this article originally appeared on womenonwaves.org

© August 2003 by Paul J. Hill

(This is a revised version of a paper published in an anthology in the Current Controversies Series: The Abortion Controversy, Greenhaven Press, 2001.)

I didn’t normally stand in the middle of the driveway leading to the abortion clinic. But this day was different. I was determined to do everything in my power to prevent John Britton from killing any children that day—or ever again. I had made up my mind that the clinic door would not close and lock behind the abortionist—protecting him (as he had in the past) as he dismembered over thirty unborn children.

Taking this “defensive action” first occurred to me eight days earlier, on July 21, 1994. I had a business touching up cars at dealerships and used car lots. I was working at a car lot in the afternoon, wondering who would act next, when the idea of taking action myself struck; it hit hard. During the next two or three hours, as I continued to work in a distracted manner, I began to consider what would happen if I were to shoot an abortionist.

The man who had previously shot an abortionist in Pensacola on March 10, 1993, Michael Griffin, had been dismissed because what he said about shooting abortionists contradicted his actions. But I wanted to put my beliefs about defending the unborn into consistent action.

God graciously converted my proud and rebellious heart when I was seventeen. Though I am a slow learner, I managed to graduate from seminary in 1984. The Lord then opened the door for me to serve as a minister in both the Presbyterian Church in America, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. After seven years of rather unfruitful ministry, I turned from both these denominations because I became convinced that they were inconsistently providing baptism to infants while denying them communion. (Taking this stand was made much easier by my diminishing desire to continue my unsuccessful preaching career.) I then started my own business, and moved my family to Pensacola to join a reformed Presbyterian church that practiced both infant baptism and infant communion.

In God’s amazing providence, I began to engage in pro-life activism at the Ladies Center in Pensacola a couple of months before Michael Griffin shot and killed the abortionist, Dr. David Gunn. (I knew of Dr. Gunn before his death, and had seen him entering the clinic.) Two days after Michael Griffin killed Dr. Gunn, I called the Phil Donahue Show and told them I supported the shooting. Three days later, I appeared on the show with the abortionist’s son, and compared killing Dr. Gunn to killing a Nazi concentration camp “doctor.”

The Lord then led me to contact Advocates for Life Ministries (Portland, Oregon). They graciously published an article I wrote for their magazine, Life Advocate, and provided the contacts necessary for numerous activists to sign a “DEFENSIVE ACTION” statement justifying Griffin’s actions. After this, through another set of amazing providential occurrences, I appeared on ABC’s Nightline, and justified Shelley Shannon’s shooting of an abortionist in Wichita, Kansas in August, 1993.

Fighting for Life

During the Nightline broadcast, I defended the shooting on the basis of the Sixth Commandment (which not only forbids murder, but also requires the means necessary to prevent murder). It is not enough to refrain from committing murder; innocent people must also be protected.

Most people don’t realize that legal abortion requires a sin of omission by forbidding people to intervene as mass murder is taking place. By legalizing abortion the government has robbed you of your right to defend your own relatives, and neighbors, from a bloody death. It’s as though a machine gunner is taking aim on bound peasants, huddled before a mass grave, and you are forbidden to stop him. In much the same way, the abortionist’s knife is pressed to the throat of the unborn, and you are forbidden to stop him. It’s as though the police are holding a gun on you, and forcing you to submit to murder— possibly the murder of your own child or grandchild.

The scriptures teach that when the government requires sin of its people that they “… must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29b). No human government can remove the individual’s duty to keep each of the Ten Commandments: these duties are inalienable. When the government, thus, will not defend the people’s children—as required by the Sixth Commandment—this duty necessarily reverts to the people. You don’t need the government’s permission before defending your own or your neighbor’s child. If the people’s children will not be defended by the government, they must be defended by the people, or they will not be defended at all.

And if you want your fellow citizens, and the government, to recognize this duty, you must assert it. The outrage is not that some people use the means necessary to defend the unborn, but that since most people deny that this duty exists the government will not perform it on the people’s behalf.

Could it be that those who point the finger, and accuse Michael Griffin of murder—even though he obviously prevented murder—are themselves guilty of complying with murder? Instead of faulting Griffin for going too far, is it possible that people should be accusing themselves of not going far enough? As distasteful as it is to kill a murderer, isn’t it infinitely more repulsive to allow him to murder, not just one or two, but hundreds and thousands of unborn children?

keep reading this article here

Johannesburg.
The city I was
born in. 39
years ago.
My father
paid my
mother
fifty
pound
sterling
to have
an abortion.
Instead, she
took the money
and went to live
on a guest farm in
the neighbourhood
of Pietersburg. I was
a ten and a half pound
baby. An abortion these
days costs about twelve
hundred rand and takes
only fifteen minutes. The
depression and guilt last a
lot longer. My father never
made any spelling mistakes.
The scrupulously pleasant staff
in the abortion clinics lie to the
young women who come to them
for advice. Tell them that the entire
process is a piece of cake. It’s not. It’s
a horror story. That drags on forever in
the memory and the sub-conscious. Festers,
Poisons and pollutes the relationship of the would-
not-be-parents towards their own genitals as well as
to the opposite sex in general and each other in particular.
Both parties have become accomplices to a murder. Abortion is murder.
The ghost of the baby
haunts both parents.
My father used
Sheik brand
condoms
in the
sixties.
But not often.
He preferred abortion
as a birth control method.
When we discussed the issue
he was 69 years old. He told me
he had had dozens of abortions in
the sixties and seventies. Rich Jewish
doctors who murdered for cash. My father
never got receipts, so he couldn’t get the abortion
fees back from the tax office. This was his
biggest regret. I have had three abortions
to date. Two in Amsterdam, one in
Sandton. The Amsterdam
abortions were free. The
Sandton abortion cost
me R1250,00 for
which I have the
receipt. What I
hate most
in life is
hypocrisy,
except for my
own, of which I
am very accepting.
I’m 39 years old. I live in
Johannesburg.

2003