Not Playing Nicely

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If you work at or seek services at a clinic that provides abortions, you should probably be prepared to find protesters outside the building.  These anti-choice protests have become a staple of the movement to rescind a woman's right to abortion. 

If you attend a Back To School Night at your child's middle school, you would probably not be prepared to find protesters outside the building, nor should you be. However, this is exactly what the parents of children at Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville, MD found last Thursday. It seems that the protesters decided that the middle school would be a good place to march around with signs and banners with pictures of aborted fetuses that read "Please STOP the Child Killing." Why here? The landlord of the building that houses an abortion clinic has a child who attends the school.

Reproductive Health Services in Germantown, MD.  is a private clinic that provides abortions. Its staff is all too familiar with anti-choice protesters.  The clinic physician, LeRoy Carhart, M.D., arrived in December of last year and is one of the few doctors who openly acknowledges performing late pregnancy abortions. He has been the target not only of protests but of numerous death threats from "pro-lifers."  The activists have reportedly been trying for months to get the clinic shut down and thought that the middle school would make a good public venue for their protest.  In addition to their slogans and pictures of dead babies, the protesters also held a banner that showed the landlord's photo, full name, and phone number.

Besides being totally appalling and inappropriate, I find it hypocritical that a group of people who say they respect life show such blatant disrespect for the lives of those who are already here. It seems as though the only lives they respect are those still in the womb. What about the life of the landlord's child who attends that middle school? What about the lives of the other parents who were subjected to that protest that night? What about their children, many of whom may have been too young to understand what the pictures were even about but may have been frightened by the whole ordeal?

I can respect those whose opinions differ from my own, but do these zealots really think they are going to change anyone's mind by their methods? When someone attacks my beliefs, they become more entrenched. When someone yells at me, I tune them out. Maybe these protesters should go back to school and learn to play nice.