Women and men, in D.C., San Francisco, Austin, Houston, and other cities mobilized last week to confront Christian Fundamentalists out to abolish abortion. As Jamilah Hoffman said on a Houston tv station, “if women don’t have control over their bodies, they are enslaved”. The protests against those out to enslave women were important, angry, and powerful – but they must grow in numbers and determination.
Below are some notes from Debra Sweet’s blog, and a video from the San Francisco protest.
In front of the Supreme Court on January 22, 2010, I waded into the crowds of anti-abortion kids (followed by photographers and video, including the clip below featured in the Washington Post coverage) on a mission. I wanted to know what and how they think; how they are being told to think, and challenge them. In every group, there was that one or two who listened, and looked me in the eye, and communicated that they had never heard anyone say what I said, and were intrigued and thinking.
I’ve met enough people who were once Christian fundamentalists, and even people who participated in these fascist social movements, to know some can be peeled away if we struggle with them over what reality is, and don’t give up on them and their capacity to understand the world and transform themselves and change, even dramatically.
Across the country, the symbolic protest of youth wearing red tape over their mouths with the word LIFE is said to unify the message, and show silent protest. A pro-choice friend watching this in Houston outside Planned Parenthood earlier in the week, seeing them for the first time, wrote: “We are a hell of a lot more interesting than they are. We have facts and we can speak. They have no facts and they are gagged. If they do this again, I’m making a sign that says, WOMEN WILL NOT BE GAGGED!
“Until I was in this huge crowd of people, all with tape over their mouths, I did not realize how goofy that was. It was hard to imagine. Once we were in this crowd, watching them act like a bunch of people who were hypnotized, it reminded me of Jim Jones. Several times I got a really creepy feeling. I wish I had taken a picture of that horrible guy with the doll impaled on the pitchfork.”