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Indybay Feature

Pictures & Video Of Pro-Choice Protesters Confronting Anti-Choice March

by pics & video
Some photos and video from when the anti-choice march went past the pro-choice rally
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§police and rightwingers talk before march
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§march moves up Embarcadero
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§march approachs pro-choice rally
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§Code Pink Takes To The Street
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§Code Pink Takes To The Street
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§Code Pink Takes To The Street
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§Police Keep Pro-choice crowd out of the street
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§Another group tries to block the anti-choice march
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§police clear the street
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§police line the march
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§short video from when the 2nd group took to the street
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Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:
§short video of right-wing christian yelling
by pics & video
Copy the code below to embed this movie into a web page:
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by this is so typical
two male voices shouting about what they each think is best for women, great. will the men who will never have firsthand experience of abortion please check yourself and step back? i'm talking to the prochoice ones too. yeah it's great that you showed up to the prochoice march, but could you leave your bravado at home and give some space for some articulate females to rage?
by genderless
divide-and-conquer
by Purrversatility (purrversatility [at] gmail.com)
Ok...
Two words.
Cat Herding.
That's what today's rally seemed to be like.
My boyfriend and I marched alongside the Walk for Life protesting their agenda. We had signs we made ourselves (his said "if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament" and "how can you be pro-life and pro-war" and mine said "why not outlaw heterosexuality? strike at the source!" and "against abortion? promote sex education") and we walked, with a bunch of other people alongside the Walk for Life's route. The route went through Fisherman's Wharf, which meant the sidewalks were hard to navigate... prolly partially why they chose it. I only felt really pissed off when I saw a woman dragging her poor chiuahua along behind her... it kept getting stepped on and kicked. :( I finally yelled "if you can't take care of your dog, how the fuck are you going to take care of a child?" and "can't you see your dog is upset? jesus christ!" and she picked the puppy up and carried him for the rest of the route. That infuriated me... the whole "oh, we're pro-life, but we abuse our animals, cause, well, they aren't human and don't count". WTF? Oh yeah, did I mention they told the Walk for Lifers, "no dead baby pictures"? Well, the dead baby pictures were there. I think next year I'll bring some dead Iraqi children photos, with a sign that says "oh, so pro-life doesn't count after they're born?"
Anyway, back to cat herding. Yet again, the liberals had a terrible time organizing. There was supposed to be a txtmob interface to help us organize- that failed. Several groups were there, but couldn't find all of their people, and our march was split into fast and slow walkers. There was no one offering direction, no one telling us what to do when... it was a disaster. Never mind the fact that the blurb that was sent out said SUNDAY the 21st. I wonder how many people will be there tomorrow? Plus the fact that no one had gotten a permit to march over the weekend, meaning that we had to stay on the streets and couldn't legally block the march. THAT was lame. And, because of a lack of organization, we weren't able to block it off anyway, since no one could agree when was a good time.
This worries and upsets me. First, that there were relatively few pro-choicers out there today. I mean, c'mon, people, these are YOUR RIGHTS, and the rights of your mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, daughters.... how could you not be there? You all do know that your right to choose has been steadily whittled away at... right? It really isn't that far of a stretch to get rid of Roe vs Wade... and, oh yeah, BUSH is in office? I mean... it just blows me away. I know some folks have jobs, or school- but where were the rest of them? It's SF! I would've thought there'd be a HUGE counter protest. Did you guys give up?
And I'm back to the liberals and cat herding. One thing the fundies have going for them is the abilty to put down their differences and unite for a common cause. That's why they get places, people. There's a system for creating a successful movement, and we have to take a page out of that book and get together. Unity. Without it, we'll never get anywhere. Sure, small groups get individual things done, and that's great- but DAMN, if we could work together when these kinds of things happen! We'd have had the permit, we'd have known when to sit down and refuse to stand, we'd have known what to do, and we would've had a lot more success. Where are the artists? Where are the Burners? There was a great puppet there- what else could be done? I would've thought there'd be a lot more creativity, and some great political statements being made... and there were, a few. But do Burners leave their politics of freedom in the desert, and just go after them in comfort, by complaining on websites and writing letters? What about all these people bitching at Tribe about censorship? Where were you, to protest the ultimate censorship- the censorship or choice? Men,women and everyone else needs to be vocal in this battle... it's a battle for all of us. A pro-choice man is a man who supports me in my choices, and I only date pro-choice folks. If you can't have the pillow talk about STDs, abortion, pregnancy and birth control... why're you having sex? And I'm tired of women saying that men should shut up about it. Yeah, sure, they can't have an abortion, but for those of us who date men, it's really important to have lovers who support our choices, and I damn well hope they'll be marching beside me. If they won't, well, I wonder how committed they are to their politics. If men only see pro-life men, they might not come out and say they're pro-choice. Every person who's willing to fight for women's rights, well, I want them out there fighting for it!
I'm disappointed in San Francisco. I'm glad, very glad, for the people who were there... but I'm saddened that there were so few of us waving coathangers in comparison to the bussed in masses of the Walk for Life.
by /
I think the picture of the cop shaking the hand of the fascist should be on the front page, along with our pro-abortion demonstration. It says it all about who is in the fascist march and what it is all about: Not abortion, which is just a smokescreen, but about promoting fascism. The chief victim of fascism is the workingclass. Clearly what we need is a labor movement which will eliminate these fascist marches immediately. Perhaps that is coming as we have some pending teacher's strikes this year in the Bay Area and the New York City Transit Workers rejected the weak contract presented to them after their short but glorious strike, which they did immediately upon expiration of the contract rather than waiting months or years, and in the middle of winter and in the face of vicious name-calling by the ruling class press. We all did our job gloriously and I am proud of every single person who turned out. The problems described above are typical of small organizations, but we still managed to cost the city a fortune in police, which it cannot afford and will have to think about if they grant a permit to these fascists again. Our permit is always the First Amendment. Code Pink had the right idea of jumping in front of the fascist parade and taking over the streets as they are our streets. I would like to thank the young people who were able to go the length of the 2.5 mile facist march and continue being in the face of the fascists. We each contributed what we could and we made a good stink. If we have to do this again, of course, we hope we make a bigger stink. Keep fighting!
by happinessisbunk
Don't you think that the facsist shaking the pigs hand kind of resemembles good ol' dick cheney?
by deanosor (deanosor [at] comcast.net)
...but you could NEVER get a permit to block the anti-abortion march. We just have to do it and not worry about what the cops tell us. A good place to have done this would have been in near the Aquatic Park museusm, where we we were both sharing a narrow walkway and the cops were less present.
And whether or not each individula in htis march suppports fascism is not the question. The march in its thousands is a base for the fascists in the Bush administration and in the leadership of the American Catholic Church.
by Chuck0 (chuck [at] mutualaid.org)
It's really no surprise to see the cops working hand-in-hand with the right wing extremsists. When was the last time you saw a radical march with a police escort?

I used to check out the anti-choice protests in Washington, DC. It was clear everywhere that the cops employed a double standard when it came to right wing protesters. The cops would say that our people couldn't bring signs on sticks on the subway, but they looked the other way when the anti-choice people brought signs on the subway.

The cops work for the right wing. This is why our people should never ask permission from the police so we can demonstrate.
by to Purrversatility
I honor the people who support choice and who came out and made a stand. I want them to tell their friends who also support choice and yet had "something else going on" Saturday:

It's time to get off the couch and into the streets, whether for a protest march, organizing and strategizing, informing your friends or otherwise making a noise.

We don't have the resources of the other side. We do have the knowledge that what we are doing is the right thing for young women who've never had to think about whether or not they have the right to choose an abortion should they need one.

As Purrversatility said above, one thing the rightwingers have on their side is that their people will turn out (no matter how deluded the cause).

The progressive infighting will probably always continue to some extent. But even if we don't always agree on how things should be done, we should agree on who the enemy is and unify against them. Otherwise women will die. That's worth getting off the couch for isn't it?
by dear frances
It's tissue. Whereas a woman is a breathing living human being. Something you anti-choice bible-thumpers like to forget. When does life begin? Here's an opinion from from baptist scholar Graham Spurgeon:

Q. When does personhood begin?
A. The Bible indicates that personhood begins when a baby emerges from the mother’s womb. In the Bible and in modern life, birthdays are observed on the date of the baby’s emergence from the womb. The precise moment of the beginning of personhood is when the baby takes its first breath.

Q. Why the first breath?
A. Because that’s when God infuses the baby with a soul. Genesis 2:7 says, “And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” In other words, when an infant breathes its first breath, the soul enters its body and it achieves the status of person.

Q. Doesn’t God want every fetus to grow into a person?
A. Not according to the Bible. In Ecclesiastes 6:3, God compares the rich man who has led an empty foolish life with a still-born infant and says, “it would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” The world is better off without Judases and Hitlers and Charles Mansons – who quite often begin life unwanted, grow up abused and hated, and then take out their anger on society. How many psychopaths and destructive misfits will be born if anti-abortion fanatics force women to bear unwanted children?
by charismatic megafauna
"You are not a defender of women only some women.You were just as helpless as any one of the millioms of baby girls that have been aborted in the womb. Bottom line is Your GOD given right was NOT taken away from YOU.That is why you are you are here today opposing some future mother , sister ,daughters right to do the same. If a baby cannot be safe in their mothers womb they cannot be safe anywhere."

Whenever I hear this whole potential for life, thank you mom for not aborting me crap, I think of the fact that if that person's parents had decided to copulate perhaps even an hour earlier or later, that person wouldn't be around.

Life in the womb, particularly in the first trimester (what Roe v. Wade covers) is little more than tissues. Animals have more consciousness than that. Are you a vegetarian?
by A Pro-Lifer
"It's tissue. Whereas a woman is a breathing living human being. Something you anti-choice bible-thumpers like to forget. When does life begin? Here's an opinion from from baptist scholar Graham Spurgeon:"
Calling pro-lifers "anti-choice bible-thumpers may be fun, but will ultimately not help much when pro-lifers are a diverse group who consist of religious and non-religious people, and a wide range of political beliefs on other issues (you would probably not believe how many pro-life "republicans" disagree with Bush and the rest of the party on everything but abortion, and would leave if there were another viable anti-abortion party).

"Q. When does personhood begin?
A. The Bible indicates that personhood begins when a baby emerges from the mother’s womb. In the Bible and in modern life, birthdays are observed on the date of the baby’s emergence from the womb. The precise moment of the beginning of personhood is when the baby takes its first breath."
Birthdays are in fact celebrated on the day of birth, but this is rather irrelevent. If a society were to celebrate some other day instead of a birthday, say a group of Christians were to forget birthdays and celebrate the day of their baptisms instead, it would make no difference. That wouldn't mean that life begins at baptism and not conception, any more than celebrating a birthday implies that the person does not exist before they are born. Even the strongest of pro-lifers celebrate birthdays rather than "conception days"; I suspect mostly due to the awkwardness many would feel about asking their parents about their conception.

"Q.Why the first breath?
A. Because that’s when God infuses the baby with a soul. Genesis 2:7 says, “And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” In other words, when an infant breathes its first breath, the soul enters its body and it achieves the status of person."
The word for soul is connected with the word for breath in many languages, including English (the Latin derived "Spirit" comes from the Latin word for "breath" and the Germanic derived "Ghost" is connected with words like "gust"). This part of Genesis would be considered metaphorical, unless you imagine that God has actual lungs which he uses to breath spirits into people.

“Q. Doesn’t God want every fetus to grow into a person?
A. Not according to the Bible. In Ecclesiastes 6:3, God compares the rich man who has led an empty foolish life with a still-born infant and says, “it would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” The world is better off without Judases and Hitlers and Charles Mansons – who quite often begin life unwanted, grow up abused and hated, and then take out their anger on society. How many psychopaths and destructive misfits will be born if anti-abortion fanatics force women to bear unwanted children?”
So then if Charles Manson told you he wanted to kill someone, would you have the right to kill him there on the spot? Even less so would you have the right to kill someone who you merely suspected might become evil. Furthermore, I am sure that many people who would have turned out bad have been aborted, but so too have many who would have turned out good. I’ve heard pro-lifers make this argument (think of all the scientists and leaders and great people we’ve killed by abortion!) but it’s really a poor argument, since we do not know who will do what in the future. Arguing based on what people might possibly do in the future is really a poor argument in determining whether we have a right to kill them now.
by TW
Fuck you and fuck the God you rode in on
by A Pro-Lifer
TW, it was "Dear Frances" who brought up God, not me. I responded to what he/she said, but I would ordinarilly not bring religion into this debate at all...as it happens I believe in God, but I was equally pro-life when I was an atheist.
by There are many secular humanists
who are pro-life. It's a mistake to use the arguments you might use against Catholics or Protestants. I am, incidentally a reproductive rights activist, and a woman who has had an abortion and understand theoretically and philosophically how I differ from a murderer/war criminal et all...that's what we are compared to by these folks who see an abortion on a continuum that includes dropping bombs on innocent people. It is shameful position and it's based on ignorance.
by Anthony
Dear Frances; I am still Baffled by these people Who cannot see that Life starts in the Womb. When does the life of a plant start? When it's seed starts to grow we learned this in grade school when we grew beans. It is also baffling that we here in the US protect the unborn animal and not the unborn Human, you can be finded big time for even touching an egg of a turtle or birds but it's okay to kill a human in their mothers womb. We all started the same way who are we to not allow anyone the right to continue growing because even after you are born andtake your first breath outside of the womb you continue to grow until you die. Some people say that the person in the womb is not human because it has no arms no legs; well next tiime you people see a person out in the streets with no arms and no legs tell them "I'm sorry but your not human" Frances your right I think people need to stop being selfish about their personal life and start being loving towards helpless like those who are trying to be born.
by "Loving men"
It's women you want to control. You love obedient little types like Frances and her delusional whining.

You're not loving when you force women to have babies that no one can take care of. You're doing it overseas, and denying women in poverty, women of color, women with AIDS the access to birth control.

You never will be able to take care of all of those babies. You don't take care of them when they're children, you don't take care of them when they're teenagers hooked on drugs or trapped in prostitution, you don't take care of them when they're in their 20's lying filthy and homeless on the sidewalk, and you sure as hell don't take care of them when they try to use reproductive rights to end the cycle and stop another unwanted kid from living the short and brutal life of the street. Are you going to take care of them when they have no money and are seniors trying to get into a home? When is it going to start, all this love and care for all these babies that grow into old unwanted people? I wonder.

by Anthony
Babies that no one wants to take care of??? There are plenty of people who cannot have kids who would love to adopt a kid but I hear all too often from some of the teens I have counseled "give my baby up no way I would rather die then to do that" but then turn around and abort the child as if killing the poor defencless child is a better solution. Having a life is better than no life at all don't you think? Can you imagine how life would have been if you were not born, it's a terrible thought because you are a unique one of a kind person no two people are ever totally alike.
by Hey Anthony
Adopt the people of New Orleans. Somebody seems to have overlooked them. While you're at it adopt the babies born with AIDS in Africa because the Catholic church doesn't believe in contraceptives. I think you have your hands full now. Share the love!
by In Iraq and Afghanistan
In Iraq and Afghanistan--two countries devasted by US terror. Plenty of babies that need your help over there....oops! did I point out the hypocrisy that permeates the majority of the anti-choice-religious whacko zealots? Sorry.
by more for Anthony
Babies with limbs removed by our bombs. Ah geez, I wish we'd thought of that "collateral damage" before we sent in our brave troops. "Collateral damage"? Are they really people? At what point do they become human beings that deserve to have their lives treated with respect? So many questions Anthony, and no response from any church, or any government. got any bandaids for that litttle guy who needs facial reconstruction and hasn't seen his mom and dad for months?

I guess we better talk to Amnesty International, they have a pretty good take on what country is abusing whom, regardless of the excuse.

Anthony? Anthony? Hello? Are you listening????
by JJNelli (jjnellio [at] yahoo.com)
jen_nelson_and_liberty.jpeg
Isn't it funny:

That many of our founding mothers of the beloved feminist movement were anti-abortion "fanatics"? Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton, Mattie Brinkerhoff, Victoria Woodhull, Emma Goldman, Mary Wollstonecraft, Matilda Gage, Alice Paul, Sarah Norton... to name a few.

Susan B. Anthony referred to abortion as "child-murder" on more that several occations. On July 8th, 1869, the Revolution, published one of her articles. She wrote:

"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice quilty is he who...drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!"

Elizabeth Stanton compared abortion to infanticide and touched on her views of abortion in the Revolution, Feb 5th, 1868:

"When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."

Mattie Brinkerhoff wrote in the Revolution on Sept 2, 1869:

"When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society-so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged."

Victoria Woodhull wrote:

"The rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus." In Woodhull's and Claffin's Weekly, Dec 24, 1870.

And later wrote:

"Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child (meaning not getting raped by her husband), nor think of murdering one before its birth." Appeared in the Even Standard (Wheeling, WV) on Nov 17, 1875.

Concerning abortion, Matilda Gage wrote: "

"[This] subject lies deeper down in woman's wrongs than any other...I hesitate not to assert that most of [the responsibility for] this crime lies at the door of the male sex." The Revolution, April 9, 1868.

Gage had it so right. Even today, abortion doesn't make a woman "free". If anything, she walks around wounded. Over 50% of abortions are done on women who are being pressured, mostly by the man who got them pregnant, to abort. I've had friends who were threatened with abondonment, that he was going to take her kids away and tell the courts she was an unfit mother if she didn't abort the pregnancy, blamed her for the pregnancy and asked her why she'd want to ruin his life, even outright threatened bodily harm if the pregnancy wasn't "taken care of".

Futher more, no woman "wants" to have an abortion. Women have abortions because they feel they have no other choice. They are cornered. Lack of emotional support and/or financial resources, are usually to blame, not the child she carries.

For more info: feministsforlife.org
by JJNelli (jjnellio [at] yahoo.com)
picture_for_commun_invites.jpg
Isn't it funny:

That the US has lost more people in 33 yrs than ALL the fatalities in wars, through out history, added together??? Infact, at 25yrs of age, I've lost 1/3 of my generation! And yet people will not even blink.... Jan 2000, I almost "dropped a bomb" (abortion) on my very own daughter, my FLESH and BLOOD...while she was innocently living inside of me. Why? Because I was 19 and I didn't want a baby so early in life... I had a "bright" future ahead of me.

No body cares, they call it "my right". War is sick, women and children die. But at least they can run, they can hide. They can flee the country... They have a chance for survival. They can fight back to an extent. My daughter at 9 weeks did not have any chance. Where could she hide or run to? She's trapped. She depended on me, just as a newborn or small child would have.

In Iraq, we are not going out of our way to murder women and children. Our troops are not saying, "Look there are some kids, open fire!!!" Yet we allow over 4,000 of our American children to be murdered EVERY single day in the US! (we lost less people on Sept 11, 2001)

Worse yet, it is not the "enemy" allowing this to happen, but their very own mothers! The most sacred and closest bond on earth is between mother and child... with abortion a mother is willing to destroy her own child. If we can't see value in life when it is most vulnerable, how can we respect it when it's out of the womb? What happened to parents being willing to protect their children at all costs, even if death ensued... now children are being forced to die to protect their parents. (97% of the time from non-life threatening situations)

But not only are the children the victims of abortion, their mothers are the wounded survivors. Abortion doesn't just affect the child, many may be affected... including the mother, father, grandparents, siblings, family members, friends.
by JJNelli (jjnellio [at] yahoo.com)
Isn't it funny:

People are NOT pronounced "dead" when they stop breathing, or when their heart stops (they can still be recessitated)-- but actually when their body starts decomposing...

So why wouldn't "life" begin when the body begins to be created...moments after conception (sperm meets egg and person gets their own set of unique DNA)? Why is it that a heart beat doesn't make a fetus "alive", but it has to be when she takes her first breath??? Hmmmm.... little backwards, isn't it?

Actually the fetus's heart starts beating (on it's own) at 18-24 days. Not only does the fetus create her own blood supply, but also at 8 weeks gestation, has all her organs (formed and working) that she will need for the rest of her life. (Her lungs actually function as to allow the fetus to "breath" the surrounding fluid so that her lungs can get stronger for her next home...7 months down the road.)
by JJNelli (jjnellio [at] yahoo.com)
Isn't it funny:

While attending the NOW/NARAL/Planned Parenthood rally at the steps of the Supreme Court in DC on Jan 22nd at 5pm, I and the other 200+ pro-life people (80% of us being under the age of 26) peacefully and silently counter protested (they are more than intitled to their freedom of speech and we respect them enough not to vocally interrupt) their rally.

We held signs that read "Women need love, not abortion.", "Freedom for all, born and pre-born", and the 60 or so post-abortive women and men held "I regret my abortion" and "I regret lost fatherhood".

I was suprized to see that there were only about 50-60 abortion supporters this year. (As there were close to 300 a couple years ago.) And the majority of them were over the age of 40.

During the rally, an African-American woman who was there representing her minority organization and its close ties with Planned Parenthood... called anti-abortion people "racist bigots".

(Which I thought was funny because, but hey, she's paid to say that...may be she didn't notice that we had Dr. Alveda King, Martin Luther King's niece, standing with us holding her "I regret my abortion" sign. And who calls the pro-life movement the new civil rights movement.

There was also the whole thing that her organization had made a partnership with PP who was founded by an extremely racists woman, Margaret Sanger, who had strong ties with the KKK, was involved with the "Tuskeegee Syphilis Genocide", and practiced negative eugenics.

Sanger can be quoted as saying blacks are "like human weeds" fit to be disposed of. They couldn't just go through and wipe out minorities like the Nazis did, but they could lower/put a halt to their birth rates. Smart, but a very evil lady! How did she get them to embrace this, she worked her way into the churches... even gave MLK an award. Made herself to look as a good friend, someone to be trusted...)

blackgenocide.org (of course PP denies this on their website, but this site had quoted her from her very own books.) Her tactics have worked... black population has went from 30% and decreased to 13%. Another decade or so and their vote will not even matter/not even scratch the surface. Not to mention that over 75% of PP clinics are in minority neighborhoods....

Ok, so after being called a racist, even though I come from Detroit and have NO issues with people of any minority. We were then accused of "assaulting them with our signs and our elbows!"

First of all, my sign "Women need love, not abortion" speaks volumes of truth. (And no it's not calling them names, nor does it show an aborted fetus...) and the elbow thing??? I was standing behind a couple of pro-choice women and a foot or two away. I was trying to listen and hear their side of the story during their rally... I was trying to be open minded. (Although, I was holding a sign.)

My friend, who's a 5'9 Philippino model from Hawaii, was standing behind a shorter older woman who kept shoving herself back into my friend and yelling, "Officers! She's pushing me! Help, this woman keeps pushing me." My friend kept trying to move to the left or right of the woman, but the lady wouldn't leave her alone. Because my friend was taller, the police couldn't see that the woman was actually pushing herself into my friend and gave her a warning. However, later on, they noticed what was really going on.

Maybe the pro-choice women holding the rally were upset because the media couldn't get any great group shots with out getting our pro-women/pro-life signs in the picture and that's why we were accused of "assaulting them with our elbows". When I returned home, I looked for pics on NOW's website. And the ones they show are just a few girls clustered together hear, and a few there... if the picture were to be taken from a distance, there would've been more young beautiful pro-life women in it than pro-choicers. Also, I had to laugh... in a couple of the pics, all the women are looking in one direction... they were watching the lifers silently and respectfully protest them.

http://www.now.org/issues/abortion/012406roe.html

The kicker of the night (NOW candle light vigil) was the last speaker wished everyone a safe trip home and reminded them not to engage in any conversation with us, anti-abortion people. Hmmm... Why aren't they "allowed to talk? Why isn't healthy debating encouraged, after all... wouldn't they want more people to join the "reproductive rights campaign"? Unless the pro-aborts position is based on rhetoric and not based in truth and facts.... Why else would they tell them not to engage in conversation? We aren't dangerous.

The next day, a few hours after the March for Life, a friend of mine (who did not attend the march) later asked me what I thought about "all those" pro-choice people at the end of the March who were standing at the Supreme Court waiting for us. I asked him,"What do you mean, all those people???" He said from what he heard on the radio, it sounded like there were hundreds, even a few thousand of people counter-protesting us. (You can see "all those people" for yourself in the last picture on the NOW web site I linked in this post. As for the picture they have posted, I don't remember seeing those people... so it is either that the pic was taken from a different year, they were standing in a different spot, or they left before I got there... there really are not that many pro-lifers standing around them, so I think it was taken very early into the march before the crowds got there.)

Yep, that sounds about right... I love the media's biased news coverage. But we are pretty much used to it. I informed him, that there could've been more, but I only saw 9 people standing with "keep abortion legal" signs at the Supreme Court and 6 of them were men! One of the nine was a pro-abortion lady, in her late-40's-early 50's, who was sporting a white hospital gown with a ketchup stain by her crotch.

Sorry lady, women are still dying from legal abortions
by history buff
http://www.rtis.com/touchstone/summer00/04abort.htm

WHAT THE FOUNDERS OF FEMINISM REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT ABORTION (Part One)
by Barbara Finlay, Carol Walther, and Amy Hinze

Anti-choice groups try many different tactics to discredit pro-choice arguments. One interesting example can be found on the website of the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life (BVCL). They display a page entitled "The Founders of Women's Movement All Opposed Abortion: Authentic Feminism is Pro-Life" (http://www.respectlife.org/articles/a029.htm). The BVCL lists quotes from our feminist foremothers and implies that women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were actually "pro-life."[1] We decided to research these quotes and report their true context to the faithful readers of The Touchstone.

Our research team devoted long hours to finding the original quotes attributed to the nine feminists listed on the BVCL web page and analyzing their history and context. We will report the results in a series of several articles in The Touchstone.

Abortion in the 1800s

When these early feminists were writing, abortion was a very dangerous procedure. The germ theory of disease was just gaining acceptance in the medical community.[2] Because doctors did not realize that disease could be transmitted by dirty hands and unsterilized instruments, women obtaining abortions from doctors frequently died from painful infections. State governments responded to this high mortality rate by banning abortions. By 1880, most abortions were prohibited in the US.[3]

Although abortions were illegal, many women were so desperate that they searched for other ways to end their pregnancies.[4] In the late 1890s, there were two million abortions in the US every year. Desperate women resorted to dangerous, often deadly methods, such as "inserting knitting needles and coat hangers into the uterus, douching with dangerous solutions like lye, and swallowing strong drugs or chemicals."[5]

When the "founders of feminism" criticized the practice of abortion, they were usually protesting the social conditions that led women to such desperate measures as these. Abortion was not a safe choice, but many women felt it was the only choice they had.

Emma Goldman

BVCL website says: "'The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief...So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.' (Mother Earth, 1911)"

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was "a social and labor reformer, revolutionary, anarchist, feminist, agitator for free love and free speech, and advocate of birth control"[6] at a time when the exploitation of the working classes in this country was at its height -- the early decades of the twentieth century. A Russian immigrant who came to the US at age 16, Goldman led a long political career as an anarchist activist, lecturing, organizing protests, and writing prolifically about such topics as class exploitation, the subordination of women, and the need for birth control. Jailed on numerous occasions for her activism, Goldman was arrested and eventually deported in 1917 for protesting military conscription. She spent the remainder of her life traveling and lecturing internationally, still advocating her own vision of humanist anarchy.[7]

Emma Goldman worked tirelessly for reproductive rights for women, in addition to her other causes. In 1914 she made a speaking tour of the US in which she frequently spoke in favor of birth control and the right for women to choose whether or not to conceive. In order to avoid arrest and imprisonment for speaking on the controversial subject, Goldman presented her ideas in a series of lectures on "The Social Significance of the Modern Drama." She would use such plays as Ibsen's Nora to advocate the need for women's freedom to love and to choose motherhood or not. In her discussion of Brieux's play Maternity about the plight of children born to poverty, Goldman supported "the demand that woman must be given means to prevent conception of undesired and unloved children; that she must become free and strong to choose the father of her child and to decide the number of children she is to bring into the world and under what conditions. That is the only kind of motherhood which can endure."[8] During these years, Emma worked closely with Margaret Sanger, later founder of Planned Parenthood. Sanger and Goldman were not personally close, but their common fight for "free motherhood" (birth control) made them allies.[9]

Goldman's motivations for promoting birth control were to give women control over their lives and to prevent the undue burden that many children place on poor women. She believed that excess children in the working classes also helped to keep wages down by glutting the labor market. Unlike Sanger, Goldman's support of birth control was strongly tied to her support for the working class and socialist politics. In 1916 the radical publication The Masses touted Goldman as "the woman who had done the most in the country to champion the cause of birth control."[10]

In general, Emma Goldman was strongly in favor of a woman's right to control her body and her reproduction. Abortion at the time was not only illegal, but also financially out of reach of most poor women and much less safe than today. In her autobiography Living My Life,[11] Goldman writes about her distress when as a young woman and midwife in the 1890s (before she knew about methods of birth control) she was often witness to the anguish of poor women who had unwanted pregnancies and who often saw their condition as "a curse of God." Many of the women begged her to help them induce an abortion "for the sake of the poor little ones already here," which she refused to do for fear of harming the women: "They knew that some doctors and midwives did such things, but the price was beyond their means... I tried to explain to them that it was not monetary considerations that held me back; it was concern for their life and health."[12]

Goldman relates that she could not bring herself to perform the operation because she lacked faith in her own skills and had seen the often tragic results of illegal abortion as it was practiced in that day. Goldman had also been told by a Vienna physician that even a seemingly successful operation might undermine the health of the woman. She specifically states that her concern was not for the "sanctity of life" of the fetus but for the life and health of the mother: "It was not any moral consideration for the sanctity of life; a life unwanted and forced into abject poverty did not seem sacred to me."[13]

Later, after Goldman learned of methods of birth control, she worked tirelessly to spread this knowledge and to oppose legal restrictions. She risked her own freedom so that others could have access to safe and secure methods of avoiding conception. When she occasionally lamented the high US abortion rate (as in the BVCL quote from her 1911 essay "The Hypocrisy of Puritanism"[14]), it was because of the "utmost danger" to the lives of the women involved and the fact that most of the unwanted pregnancies could have been prevented, not because she opposed abortion in theory. Most of today's feminists would agree with that part of her work, even though many might not understand other aspects of her anarchist politics. Nevertheless, Goldman was a strong and courageous advocate for the working classes at a time when exploitation was at its zenith. Her methods and ideas seem radical today in part because of the extremity of the exploitation and suffering that she was responding to in the industrial cities of this nation.

Therefore, to call Emma Goldman anti-abortion is to greatly distort her position. She wanted to help women to avoid unwanted pregnancies; but she was concerned to preserve the life and health of women in an era when abortion was not only illegal but frequently unsafe. She saw women's control of reproduction as one of the most important issues in their struggle for liberation and equality. In today's world, it seems clear that Goldman would be a strong supporter of legal, safe abortion, as well as of the broadest possible dissemination of information and means for contraception.

Alice Paul

BVCL website says: "The author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923) opposed the later trend linking it with abortion. A colleague recalls her expressing the opinion that 'abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.'"

Alice Paul is best remembered as the determined author of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. Although she did not want the ERA to be linked with Abortion, it was for political, rather than ideological or moral, reasons.

Alice Paul was born in 1885 to devout Quaker parents in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. Her father was one of the founders of Swarthmore College, and he encouraged his wife to attend school there. Paul accompanied her mother to suffragist meetings as she grew up. Her parents gave her a strong feminist background with their belief in and support of equality between men and women.[15]

Paul attended Swarthmore College and then enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania for her master's degree in sociology. She soon earned a fellowship to study in England, where she encountered her first opposition to the suffragist movement. Paul attended a lecture of Christabel Pankhurst, who was booed off of the stage by the men in the crowd. After finishing her academic work in England, Paul took part in her first suffrage parade in 1908. Through her work in England, Paul met Lucy Burns who became her partner in the American suffrage campaign.[16] In 1910, Paul was jailed for the first time for participating in the suffragist movement in England.[17]

Upon returning to America, Paul began a career of activism, first for voting rights and then for an Equal Rights Amendment. As the charismatic leader of the National Women's Party, Alice Paul demanded total support of suffrage. Exclusively focused on the passage of voting rights for women, Paul excluded all other issues, even World War I. Irwin wrote that she refused to read newspapers or books because it took time away from the movement.[18]

Upon passage of the nineteenth amendment, Paul turned her complete attention to the equal rights amendment. Paul wrote and introduced the ERA for the first time in 1923, continuing to introduce it in Congress every year after. As with the suffragist movement, Paul was focused on the sole issue of getting the ERA through Congress. She refused to deal with any issues that might distract from the passage of the ERA.

Alice Paul did oppose the linkage between the ERA and abortion, but that was because of her political astuteness rather than any disagreement with abortion. Paul felt that by linking the ERA with abortion, the ERA would not pass through Congress. Willis wrote, "She did not address issues of birth control, i.e., abortion, or even women's sexuality, and was concerned that the radical women of the 1960's might alienate support by emphasizing these issues...[S]he said that even if women did want to do many things that she wished they would not do with their freedom, it was not her business to tell them what to do with it, but to see that they had it."[19] This demonstrates that Alice Paul supported equal rights for women, including the right to choose abortion. Paul died on July 9, 1977, with only three states left to ratify the ERA.

Mattie Brinkerhoff

BVCL website says: "'When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society -- so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.' (The Revolution 3(9): 138-9 September 2, 1869)"

This quote appears not only on the list promoted by the BVCL but also on many anti-choice web pages across the web. (Evidently they all copied the quote from the same source, because all repeat the same mistake made above; the quote is not from volume 3, but from volume 4.) However, no other information is available on Mattie Brinkerhoff. She apparently had no other publications. She is not mentioned in the most thorough texts about the women's movement. In fact, the article in which this quote appeared was not an article at all, but a letter to the editor. This raises the suspicion that whoever compiled the BVCL list had to search through a vast number of early feminist publications to find anything that could be interpreted as anti-choice.

Brinkerhoff's letter to the editor of The Revolution, a feminist newspaper published by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, is in response to a previous letter that suggested motherhood was the only proper endeavor for women. Her letter details the harm of this belief. The central point of Brinkerhoff's letter is that men should not be able to control women's reproduction. She attributes the incidence of abortion to the fact that women in the 1800s did not have the right to refuse to have sex with their husbands or the ability to obtain birth control.

Brinkerhoff stated that women should be able to decide when they want to bear children. She wrote, "We are forced to ask, by what law shall we decide when woman is sufficiently developed in mind and body to be a good mother? Before what tribunal shall she be judged? Does not reason answer, the council chamber of her own being?"[20] In order to achieve this, Brinkerhoff advocated "making the mother...the owner of her own body, in short, the controller of her own destiny."[21]

This example shows the lengths to which the anti-choice movement will go to find arguments that support their position. Even when they expand their definition of prominent leaders of the early feminist movement to include a woman who only wrote a letter to the editor, in these cases they are unable to find a quote that truly supports their stance on abortion.

Notes

1. One interesting fact is that the BVCL did not write this article at all; they lifted it from Feminists for Life without crediting them. It also appears that the BVCL did not take the trouble to verify the quotes they then plagiarized.

2. Mistakes in the citations of quotes made in the original Feminists for Life article are duplicated on the BVCL website.

3. "Germ Theory." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://search.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=37266&sctn=1 [Accessed June 8 2000]

4. Boston Women's Health Book Collective. The New Our Bodies, Ourselves. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. p. 308

5. Ibid. p. 309.

6. Ibid.

7. Candace Falk. Love Anarchy and Emma Goldman: A Biography. Rutgers University Press, 1990. Cover notes.

8. Notable American Women.

9. quoted in Falk, p. 132.

9. Information in this paragraph and the next comes from Falk's Chapter 9 on Goldman's birth control activism, pp. 131-154.

10. Falk, 153.

11. Goldman, Emma. Living My Life. Alfred Knopf, 1931.

12. Goldman, Living, p. 186.

13. Goldman, Living, Chapter 15, p. 186.

14. Emma Goldman, "The Hypocrisy of Puritanism," pp. 173-182 in Anarchism and Other Essays, Second Revised Edition. Mother Earth Publishing Company.

15. Christine A. Lunardini. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, 1910-1928. New York University, 1986, and Inez Hayes Irwin. The Story of Alice Paul and The National Woman's Party. Fairfax, Virginia: Denlinger's Publishers, LTD, 1977.

16. Lunardini, p. 13-14.

17. Lunardini and Irwin.

18. Irwin.

19. Jean L. Willis. "Alice Paul: The Quintessential Feminist (1885-1977)." Feminist Theorists: Three Centuries of Key Women Thinkers. Ed. Dale Spender. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. p. 294.

20. Mattie Brinkerhoff. "Woman and Motherhood." The Revolution, September 2, 1869. 4(9):138-39.

21. Ibid. p. 139.
by 300 v 15,000
Yeah we kicked your butts in number. America's very pro-life and your pro-abortion side is shrinking daily. See you next year! Expect more of us because we just keeep getting bigger.
Totus Tuos
by ABORTION KILLS!
A babies heart is beating 18 DAYS AFTER CONCEPTION!!! Conception: When the sperm unites with the egg to form a new human being.Listen to an ultrasound and you'll hear it.
EVERY ABORTION KILLS A HUMAN BEING.
What about the women killed BY LEGAL ABORTION! I bet you never hear how they were slaughtered in those "health centers"!
Give me 50 names of women who have died of "illegal" abortion and I'll give you the names of 50 women KILLED BY LEGAL ABORTION.
Por-Vida Sin Exceptiones.
by just wondering
but hide a rebuttal? For shame, Indybay, for shame. Whose side are you on, anyway?
by how could they?
But they did:

http://www.indybay.org/news/hidden.php?id=1797061#1801257
by just wondering
But, as of yet, they haven't hidden the pointer to the hidden comment. That's political incoherence. What's wrong with these people? Don't they think *anything* all the way through?
by you got that right
You can't be pro-choice and anti-choice at the same time, any more than you can be anti-racist and pro-racist at the same time. Yet you try. Why?
You're anti-racist vis-a-vis racism against most peoples/tribes/religions, yet racist against Jews/Judaism. Ergo, you're politically incoherent at best.
by gehrig
"Ergo, you're politically incoherent at best."

Nessie politically incoherent? Let me count the ways.

@%<
by another Zionist lie
To oppose Zionism is not the same as opposing Jews or Judaism. They aren't even in the same catagories. Jews are an ethnic group. Judaism is a religion. Zionism is a political ideology.

To equate them is like saying that to oppose Nazism is to oppose Germans and Christianity. It's bunk logic.
by another Zionist lie
Note the lack of a substantiating URL.
by simple explanation
There's no accompanying URL because one doesn't exist.
by simplistic cretin
because one wants to yet.

by there they go again
Still no URL. Still trying to distract you from its absence.
by there the goes again
You're not referred to as a cockroach because no one wants to yet. You'tr trying to distract us from the fact that you are one.

by TW
How did this thread get diverted onto this bullshit?

Oh that's right: Harriet and gehrig did it

Wow, they must be ***REALLY*** desparate

Good work, folks, let's see if we can reduce them to jabbering psychosis, like we did with CT.
by Kafka
Better a cockroach than a Zionist.
by gehrig
Read up on it. Gregor Samsa wasn't a cockroach. Although, just like nessie, he never denied being one.

@%<
by against a psychotic with anger issues
A psychopat with anger management issues, TW, projects his jabbering psychosis onto another. Extremely trite. Extremely expected.
by to jjnelli
"Sanger can be quoted as saying blacks are "like human weeds" fit to be disposed of. They couldn't just go through and wipe out minorities like the Nazis did, but they could lower/put a halt to their birth rates. Smart, but a very evil lady!"

So I assume JJ has reconciled to our founding fathers acceptance of slavery (and embrace, if you're talking Thomas Jefferson)? Are you a good little patriot, JJ?

Right wing extremists are doing a fine job of keeping women of color and women in povery in their "place". You know best for them don't you? If so, then you are a racist bigot, no matter how you try to "color" it.

And don't you love how the righty tighties remain in denial about the comparitive risks of carrying a pregnancy to term vs having a legal abortion? tsk tsk.

Finally I want to compliment JJ about the sincerity of her smugness. Even though it doesn't matter. We will have abortions one way or another. Hopefully you won't have killed too many teenagers and adult women, because we will do our best to stop you.

Have a nice day bigot!
by JJNelli
5 yrs later I stumbled upon your response to some of my posts. U called me a bigot racist. You know nothing about me or the shoes I have walked in,but I will tell you this... true pro-life people are the kindest n most loving people you will meet.They will help any pregnant mother who needs help whether she is Asian, Black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, White, Indian...even if suffering from drug addiction or w/ illness. Love does not see skin color or Nationality. All children r equal n have the same value. The mother is not loved more than the child, nor child more than the mother, they r BOTH loved. We r not your enemy! I am so sorry that u felt so hopeless n alone at the time of pregnancy.You r no different than any other mother.We would have helped u too n never expected a thing in return. Anger is a coping mechanizism for pain. I am not insulted by your words, but have compassion for u. I am sorry for ur loss,the precious person taken from u. U r still loved. Peace, Jen http://www.180themovie.com
by liar
anti-choice movement is anti-woman...that's all there is to it. y'all can't "rescue" every woman who needs/wants an abortion. don't kid yourself. cuz you are not fooling us for a moment
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