Prolonged Eye Contact

stfuprolife:

theprochoicegeneration:

[TRIGGER WARNING: Blood, gore, dead bodies, aborted fetuses, pro-life jackassery]

Today, a group calling themselves the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP for short, as in, there’s a GAP in their brains where logic should go) set up a huge display or graphic and disturbing images in the middle of the Florida State University campus, right on the common green in front of our library.

They came prepared with fliers of false information, “documentation” of abortion statistics, and worst of all, giant billboards that compared abortion in America to the genocides in Rwanda, the lynchings of African Americans in the decades before and after the civil war, and the Holocaust, complete with pictures of victims of these mass murders.

Already we’re off to a wonderful start, disregarding anyone who lives on our campus. There are dorms right next to that green. They held no respect for people who may have been triggered by these images.

Here are some of the things I heard today:

“Abortion is genocide!”

No, actually, Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. The common denominator between abortions is that all of the “victims” are unborn. Thus, this would be a genocide against the unborn, or as some put it, simply very, very young. However, when a woman gets an abortion, she does not look down at her body, go “this thing is unborn or young, I will destroy it because of that.” Therefore, it is not a genocide, because the common linking factor is NOT the cause or reason of the abortion.

Also there are quite a few Jewish friends of mine who would like to have a word with you about your comparison.

“I work as an ultrasound tech, I know what i’m talking about, ive seen thousands of pregnancies!”

This does not make you a doctor. An ultrasound technician, although you must have knowledge of ailments that often happen to pregnant women and an understanding of the medical procedures they will have to go through, is not a biologist. As a matter of fact, biology is not even a base requirement. You have not learned everything there is to know about the human body. You run a machine.

“Life begins at conception! Here, look at these article snippets!”

I was then handed pamphlet with snippets of medical journals. However, all of the quotes simply stated that human development begins at conception, which no one is arguing. The word “life” was mentioned once, and that particular quote only stated that conception was the first stage in creating life, not the start of it. When I pointed this out I was met with:

“Human development and life are the same thing!”

No, no they are not. Life is a philosophical concept, human development is scientific. When I pointed out that life was a philosophical concept, I was met with this:

“No it’s not! Life and conception are one in the same”

However, when I began to argue that a fetus is not a sentient thinking being, I was met with:

“Don’t get into philosophy, only science! Life begins at conception!”

So clearly, the man I was talking to (who seemed to be the ring leader) had gotten it into this head that my definition of life was philosophical, however his definition of life was scientific fact.

Their billboards were also riddled with inaccuracy. The man I was speaking to held up a poster of an aborted fetus that claimed it was 22 weeks. However, a different angle of the same fetus on their larger billboards, claimed that it was 24. When I pointed out the inaccuracy to one of his female partners (the ultrasound tech) she initially tried to deny it. When I pointed out that the fetus has the same blood smears, the same umbilical cord placing, and the blanket it was placed on had the exact same blood pattern, she then took back her words and said that:

“When we judge when a woman gets pregnant we go by last period date, however it’s often more like two weeks after. That’s why that’s different.”

When I pointed out that it was still an inaccuracy and two weeks could make a difference between legal and illegal, she had no response for me.

The man continued on his rant, and at one point asked me this:

“As a woman, can you look at this picture? It should tear at your heart strings! It should make you want to cry!”

Which I found particularly offensive. Simply because i’m a woman does not mean I have a motherly instinct, or can’t look at a fetus without bursting into sobs. I also got this little gem before I left:

“If you had seen this picture 100 years ago, you would have wanted to know who did this! You would have wanted to string them up on a flag pole! Think about if you saw this 100 years ago!”

At which point I was just done. How am I supposed to know what I would have thought 100 years ago? I’m not a vampire. I’m not a time lord. I don’t know anything about 100 years ago besides the fact that I would have had no rights at all.

But then again, they all want it that way, don’t they?

These people make their way to schools all over the country, so if you see them coming your way, set up a counter protest with actual information, and try to record their idiocy for all to see. This is the second year they came to FSU, last year they were sponsored by the College Republicans, this year they came on their own. I called the Student Relations office to have them removed, however Landis Green is a free-speech zone, and he told me straight up that they couldn’t remove them no matter how much they wanted to, because then the GAP would go to the news and they would get even more attention, and none of the staff wants that. Some of the things that came out of these people’s mouths were so inaccurate I almost cried. They also come with a bus with pictures of aborted fetuses on them that drives around for the two days in which they stay.

If you see them, just try to ignore them. Arguing science will do nothing, as they have grown such thick skulls they can no longer accept words that do not agree with their own. Their arguments are childish and illogical, and they back it up with no scientific fact.

If you are around the Florida state University campus tomorrow, Friday the 24th, stop by Landis green and support the counter-protest. Here is the facebook group, they will probably be out there from around 10 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon if weather permits.

Spread the word.

These people are fucking disgusting. The Pro-Choice Action Network has several articles about the GAP. An excerpt:

Second, many aborted fetus pictures are NOT true—-they are distorted misrepresentations or outright lies. Most show late-term abortions, which are rare and unrepresentative of abortion. Also, most of these pictures cannot be authenticated and are of dubious origin. A recent book (Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars, by Cynthia Gorney, 1998) has documented that many aborted fetus pictures used by anti-choice groups have been carefully staged by clever anti-choice photographers using stolen body parts. Some may actually depict natural miscarriages or stillbirths, and others are so old that they date back to the days when abortion was illegal. It is ironic indeed that the anti-choice want a return to the very thing that their pictures are supposed to be protesting!

Emphasis mine. Let that fully sink in. Many of these images are showing unsafe, illegal abortions [or miscarriages and stillbirths that are being exploited without consent]. Due to the inaccessibility of abortion many of these pregnant people had to wait much longer in order to obtain an abortion, thereby providing these voyeurs with the gruesome images they are showing. Now, pregnant people are getting abortions earlier than ever and they look like this.

Or this Mifepristone abortion at 45 days gestation (2-3cm):

If they really want to protest what’s in the images they’re flaunting, they should be all for abortion with no restrictions because that’s the only way to ensure pregnant people get early abortions like the above. By making abortion illegal they would be responsible for a return to these late term abortions being routine and unsafe, not rare and medically necessary like they are now.

It must be hard being a martyr for your own self-fulfilling prophecies.

Feb

2012

503 notes

Where do anti-abortion protesters get those grisly photos?

Aaron Gouveia, a Massachusetts reporter, posted a video this week of his confrontation with anti-abortion protesters, who taunted his wife with graphic pictures of aborted fetuses. Aborted fetus pictures are also in the news in Washington, D.C., where long-shot congressional candidate Missy Reilly Smith is forcing local TV networks to air graphic anti-abortion campaign ads. Where do abortion protesters get their fetus pictures?

From dumpsters, among other places. For many years, a Madonna University professor named Monica Migliorino Miller supplied the anti-abortion movement with its imagery. As detailed by Damien Cave of the New York Times in 2009, Miller has recovered thousands of fetuses that were improperly disposed of from dumpsters outside of Midwestern health care facilities. She began photographing the fetuses in 1987.

In the late 1990s, a second major source emerged. The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform has compiled an extensive library of pictures and videos of fetuses and abortion procedures. (Note: some of the links in this article contain graphic images.) The center pays doctors and clinics to permit a contract photographer to enter the operating room and document the abortion. Selling access to an operating room is unheard of in the United States, so it’s very likely that the center’s images were all taken abroad. The center won’t say whether it obtains the patients’ consent to snap pictures.

The center distributes most of its high-resolution images to anti-abortion institutions like crisis pregnancy centers, but street protesters can order them as well. They just have to condemn violence as a tactic, agree not to alter the image, and pay between $3 and $89 to cover printing costs. (Digital images are free, and the center sometimes waives the fee upon request.) The most expensive version is 92 inches wide, 42 inches tall, and printed with weatherproof ink. Protesters have to provide their own stick for mounting. Many of the images include coins to indicate the size of the fetus, and versions with Canadian currency are available for Canuck protesters.

Explainer thanks Don Cooper of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and Angela Dinh of the American Health Information Management Association.

[So you exploit people and their aborted embryos/fetuses, often without consent, and then make a ton of money off of the resulting photoshopped images? Yup, that’s totally pro-life and charitable.]

Dec

2011

16 notes

"Fetal Remains" Bill Pleases Anti-Choice, Traumatizes Women Who Miscarry

When Michigan anti-choicers claimed they found “fetal remains” in a dumpster at an abortion clinic, state Republicans quickly stepped up to push a bill legislating how products of conception could be discarded.

In the end, it turns out that there was no proof of mishandled remains. But a law was proposed regardless, and because of it, one of the first questions that may be asked of a woman who just miscarried or had a still birth is likely to be “what do you want to do with the fetus?”

Via the Detroit News:

“I think some women will be devastated,” says Joanne Mulhere, who counsels women undergoing loss of pregnancies at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where about 175 women lose pregnancies through miscarriage or stillbirth annually.

Patients would be handed Kleenex, as well as a form to sign, requesting the remains be cremated, buried or interred.

They’ll be forced to make a potentially emotional choice that will, for some women, redefine how they think and feel.

It’s a “choice” that effectively reframes the way women are supposed to think about early pregnancy, imposing new opportunities for grief where none might have existed.

…

Unfortunately, Michigan legislators have crafted a bill that’s more sensitive to the needs of tissue that fits in a tablespoon than to grown women who, at vulnerable moments, will face a new form to sign, an unsought, disturbing decision to make.

Yet another thoughtless bill with unintended consequences that will hurt more women.

Nov

2011

Notes

Here are some reasons why this film did not make me change my mind about abortion:

1. I do not believe abortion is the moral equivalent to bulldozing Jewish people in a pit.

2. I feel conflicted about being on the same side as someone who would say to a young, pleasant woman of colour: “Hitler declared Jews as non-humans, and that’s what you’re doing when you say it’s ok to kill a child in the womb.”

3. I believe one can be moral without being a Christian.

4. I have the capacity for rational thought and am not instantly converted to an idea by being berated by talking points until I break down and say yes so the interviewer will just go away.

5. If I label myself, I do it based on what I believe, and not vice versa. I will not change my beliefs in order to fit into a category (ie “Christian”).

6. There was a really cute, self-identified gay woman in this film and it didn’t look like Comfort was able to convince her, and I still want a shot with her.

7. “It’s common practice to have a low moral standard when we free ourselves from the Ten Commandments, or when we’re unaware of their true meaning.” No.

8. It does not, in fact, concern me that if I were to die today I might end up in hell. Mostly because I follow my own moral compass and would rather suffer judgement than follow the (in my opinion, immoral) laws of a god I don’t believe in.

9. I don’t want to associate with a cause that has to put this disclaimer on their video and website: “We strongly condemn the use of any violence in connection with protesting abortion.”

and…

10. I trust women to make the right choice for them, regardless of their religious or spiritual beliefs, I want to be on the side that trusts and supports women, and I truly believe that abortion can be, and often is, an act of love.

— From a longer review on Abortion Gang “Why I Did Not Switch Sides After Watching 180”

Nov

2011

18 notes

Fake “Clinic” Cons 17-Year-Old Girl

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend to one of Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called “crisis pregnancy center” run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl’s confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their “other office” (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The “crisis pregnancy center” had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The “crisis pregnancy center” staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl’s home and calling her father’s workplace. Planned Parenthood’s clinic director reports that the girl was “scared to death to leave her house.” They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

The anti-choice movement is setting up these “crisis pregnancy centers” across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What’s more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They’re being funded by our tax dollars.

http://www.ppaction.org/
Planned Parenthood Action Fund, 24 April 2006

[Emphasis mine. Hear that folks? We are funding terrorists with our tax dollars. The fact that this is legal is absolutely mind-blowing. And when we dare complain, they cry about how they’re being persecuted and censored unfairly, and we’re infringing on their freedom of speech. No, just no. This should not be fucking allowed.]

ETA: Some people in the notes were wondering about the veracity of this story so I found the original source (the citation above was all that was given at the website I got this from). Here’s some more quotes from the original story:

We [Planned Parenthood] have obtained permission to share some of the remarks the patient and her family wrote soon after their encounter with the CPC.

“I have been getting phone calls [from the CPC volunteer] at home and on my cell phone, and they came to my work… saying ‘we will come get you and throw you in a car and take you to a place that is safe.’ I made my decision [to have an abortion]. Even though I had talked to [the CPC person] before, she has no right to be giving out information about me [and my family]. They need to quit harassing me and my family and loved ones. They have come to my home banging on my door and non-stop calling me. I have heard racial comments about my boyfriend [and me]. They keep yelling my name, my mother’s, and my boyfriend’s. They have no right giving out my information, and they need to respect my and my boyfriend’s decision. … They are trying to trap me but this is my decision and no person has forced me and I would like them to stop harassing me, my family, my boyfriend, and my work.”

Her mother added:

“These people have given [our personal contact] information to someone at [my daughter’s] school. Now it seems even the students know certain things and are giving my daughter and her boyfriend a hard time as well. Also, the faculty has heard things, too. These people [the CPC personnel] have been standing outside Planned Parenthood yelling obscenities at all who enter. My daughter’s, her boyfriend’s, and my name have been yelled out for all to hear.”

ETA #2: You might also be interested in this post I did awhile ago on more recent investigations of CPCs and their deceptive tactics.

Nov

2011

5,344 notes

Anti-Choice Group Pushes To Screen Movie Comparing Abortion To The Holocaust In High Schools

As ThinkProgress has reported, anti-abortion activists are increasingly taking their crusade to high schools and middle schools, frightening students with disturbing graphic images as they make their way to class.

Now, the creators of a movie that compares abortion to the Holocaust are taking this tactic a step further and are lobbying to screen their film in high schools. The group’s press release touts the film’s ability to change minds, and makes no distinction between the actual Holocaust and modern abortion. In fact, the creator promotes the film as the solution to a lack of education about the Holocaust in American schools:

A free DVD of the award-winning viral movie “180″ may be coming to a high school near you. The creator of www.180movie.com, Ray Comfort, said “180 received over a million views in 22 days, because it’s ‘shocking.’ […]

Late last month, between 180,000 and 200,000 copies of the 33-minute DVD were given out at 100 of America’s top universities, and now the Jewish author and TV co-host is turning his attention to high schools. “No doubt some will say that Holocaust education isn’t appropriate for high school kids. However, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says that the appropriate age is ’11 years of age and older.’ […]

Comfort added, “It’s evident that many of the States aren’t bothering to teach kids about one of the darkest periods of human history. I am concerned that we may become like the U.K. where some schools dropped teaching about the Holocaust for fear of offending Moslems, some of whom deny that the Holocaust even happened…This is more than a travesty, so we are giving hundreds of thousands of kids a free documentary.

The movie has gone viral in the anti-abortion community, with its website registering nearly 1.5 million views so far. Comfort’s mission is to essentially replace teaching about the horrors of the Holocaust of the 1940s with propaganda about abortion. He also misleadingly suggests that the Holocaust Museum endorses his video as a proper educational tool about the wholesale slaughter of Jews, gays, and other minorities that is appropriate for young children.

It’s disturbing to think that thousands of students’ first exposure to a world-changing historical atrocity would be colored by such an inaccurate and insulting argument. To equate women’s personal choices about their reproductive health to the Nazis’ systematic, coordinated operation to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population is to reduce its unique importance and confuse students.

[What in the fuck!? Ray Comfort has some fucking nerve thinking it’s acceptable to peddle his propaganda in public high schools. I really hope the ACLU is all over this.]

Nov

2011

27 notes

This is pure, unadulterated antichoice propaganda with a side of blatant inaccuracy and emotional terrorism. Hint: a heartbeat does not equal personhood.

Here’s a Jezebel article on it:

Mississippi’s jaw droppingly absurd Personhood Amendment is drumming up a lot of press, but theirs isn’t the only kooky pro-life law poised to pass this fall; Ohio’s got a bit of overreaching anti-choice legislation of its own: a fetal heartbeat bill. And supporters are about to to take to the TV airwaves to urge politicians to pass the damn thing, for the children and such. Ohioans, I hope you’re ready to get the shit annoyed out of you.

House Bill 125 is nicknamed the “Heartbeat Bill” because it would ban all abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which typically happens at around 6 weeks’ gestation, when the fetus is about the size of a lentil and has no arms, legs, or face. Not that it matters to pro-life advocates.

The group responsible for the ad is called Ohio ProLife Action, and it seems that the group exists solely for the purpose of promoting this piece of legislation. The spot features children boarding a school bus and a voiceover explaining that the Heartbeat Bill will save a big ol’ school bus full of children per day. A whole school bus full of children barely larger than the end of a pen and lacking arms, legs, and faces! Imagine that!

To put it Midwesternly, the ad certainly isn’t the smartest. First of all, Ohio, like many states, has been having some budget problems recently. With an entire new school bus full of children per day “saved” by the heartbeat bill, who is going to take care of them? It’s not like they suddenly found all this oil in Youngstown that they can sell to pay for schools for all these kids, and even if they did, with teachers’ unions being dismantled left and right, who’s going to want to teach them? Other fetuses? They’ve got heartbeats; why can’t they get their asses in gear and get their teaching degrees?

Undaunted by either science or logic, Ohio ProLife Action plans to air the ads urging people to tell their state Senators to take action on the bill on Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity, which sounds like it might be preaching to the choir until you realize that they’re actually probably preaching to the choir’s wallets.

Once the state Senate takes action on the bill, it has a decent likelihood of passing. It passed the House of Representatives in June, and the State Senate is heavily Republican — 21 members of the chamber are of the red persuasion to only 11 Democrats. Ohio’s governor is also redder than the Ohio State bleachers— he’s former Fox News host and occasional substitute Bill O’Reilly John Kasich.

Abortion foes to air ad on Ohio’s ‘Heartbeat Bill’ [Marion Star]

Nov

2011

5 notes

[Picture edited out, click through to post]

paigemd:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34

STOP ABORTION.

Do you realize this propaganda of yours has been debunked? [TW for that link, debunking of antichoice fetus gore pr0n]

Why use emotional terrorism if you’re right? Why bring “god” into the conversation if you’re right? I also think its pretty hilarious that this photo from your post has been photoshopped to make the fetus pink and bloody looking, because the original has grey skin—one of the reasons we know the fetus was dead before the procedure. You people can’t tell the truth if your lives depend on it, can you?

(via paigemd-deactivated20120101)

Oct

2011

17 notes

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

—

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor. (via tyerae)

STOP APPROPRIATING. He also said:

You have said that you are uncomfortable with the violence of the abortion debate, but when John Cardinal O’Connor first came to New York he held a press conference in which he stated that legal abortion was the “Second Holocaust.” How do you feel about abortion being likened to the genocidal slaughter of the Jews?

I am uncomfortable with the language of this debate. I resent the violence of the language the words that they use like Holocaust no it is not a Holocaust. It is blasphemy to reduce a tragedy of such monumental proportions to this human tragedy, and abortion is a human tragedy. What should be done is to give back the human proportion to the abortion issue, and when we see it as such we may be able to have much more understanding for the woman who chooses it. Women who choose abortion are consistently labeled killers, and I personally have been compared to Hitler and called a great murderer.

A woman who feels she cannot go on, and with pain and despair she decides that she has to give up her child, is this woman a killer? Really really. But look, you cannot let these words hurt you. You have to be strong not to pay any attention because those who do that call you a Hitler and relate it to the Holocaust prove that they do not know what the Holocaust was.

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor (Source)

Oct

2011

60 notes

CUDDLE FUDDLE by DEDDY