Opposition Builds Against Anti-Abortion Rallies Planned in Major Cities

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/activism/opposition-builds-against-anti-abortion-rallies-planned-major-cities


The Trust Women Silver Ribbon Campaign, a movement that brings together groups supporting reproductive freedom, has petitioned San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to take down these banners, calling their statements hate speech and false.
Photo Credit: Alex Parkin

The lightposts alongside San Francisco’s Market St., its main thoroughfare, usually provide a welcoming touch to the city, adorned with snowflakes in the winter or rainbow flags during Pride. But the current banners are causing alarm—they read: “Abortion Hurts Women,” in advertisement for the anti-abortion Walk for Life rally happening in the city on January 25.

The Trust Women Silver Ribbon Campaign, a movement that brings together groups supporting reproductive freedom, has petitioned San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to take down the banners, calling their statements hate speech and false.

The campaign’s co-director, Ellen Shaffer, told the local ABC News: "The truth is that abortion is one of the safest procedures women can have.… access to safe and legal abortions are critical to women's health."

While the mayor rejected the campaign’s demand, the city’s Board of Supervisors has come out in support of the banners’ removal.

[PeaceNikki]

1. It's notable that it's a Catholic run organization behind that - with FULL support of the Vatican.

So yeah, they're still focusing on taking away our rights.

[MH1]

5. Yes, two steps forward are only two steps forward, not the entire journey.

I'm referring of course, to some welcome improvements in some aspects that are coming from the Vatican of late, but if they got an 'F' on human rights before, a few improvements in some areas doesn't mean they get an 'A' now. I'd say the anti-reproductive rights aspect caps their potential grade at a D. Well actually I guess I have to say they're still an F because reproductive freedom is non-negotiable. So they could suddenly become an A+ on LGBT and I'd still have to give them an F.

[Shrike47]

2. Unwanted pregancies hurt women. Back alley abortions hurt women.

Their position is mean and offensive.

[MadrasT]

3. K&R

[bettyellen]

4. kick

[Dawson Leery]

6. It is all about forcing women to submit to their husbands.

because the mythological fairytale book says so.

"People come out whenever they try to pass legal restrictions and say it’s for the health of the mother … and they tone down their message. But when you are there on the street you actually hear people praying to break the curse of independence that has afflicted women. You hear people praying and being open about how women should submit to their husbands as they do to the lord, which is in the Bible. You hear these things being said, so it’s sort of a sobering and educating experience for those who stand up against this on the pro-choice side."

[Comrade Grumpy]

7. San Francisco and Washington, DC, this weekend. A chance for real world activism.

But the banners are only part of the larger story on what’s in store next week for both San Francisco and Washington, D.C. On Wednesday, January 22, the March for Life in D.C. may draw hundreds of thousands of people; last year 650,000 people joined the march. In San Francisco on Saturday, January 25, tens of thousands may march down Market St. About 50,000 people attended last year’s event. Big church groups and Christian schools bus many of these marchers into the cities.

“A lot of them are kids who have never heard a counter opinion,” says Sunsara Taylor. Taylor is an initiator of Stop Patriarchy, a national movement against all forms of degradation of women, which, for its second year, is holding counter-protests in both cities. “So we feel it’s of great importance having them be exposed to a scientific-based, reality-based concept of what a fetus actually is, and what implications it has for women’s lives if they don’t have abortion rights.”

[theHandpuppet]

8. And many of these kids are denied sex ed

There's a battle going on in Maine right now over this very issue. Yet such kids are bussed in for these demonstrations. Shameful. Time to FIGHT BACK.