Abortion Clinic Protesters Complain Pro-Choice Counter Protest Makes Them Feel Unsafe

[Matariki]

http://jezebel.com/abortion-clinic-protesters-complain-pro-choice-counter-1738000697?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Abortion clinic protesters outside of North Dakota’s only abortion clinic are very unhappy this week, because they’re being counter-protested by a guy holding signs reading “Hail Satan” and sarcastically referring to them as “women’s rights experts.” The anti-abortion protesters say their counter-protester is making them feel “uneasy.” Oh?

One of the anti-abortion protesters, a man named Bartholomew Schumacher, says Severson has them all wrong, and complains he refuses to listen to them.

“He just wouldn’t engage,” Schumacher told WDAY. “He just kept saying we’re oppressive white men who want to control women’s lives and stuff. I don’t want that. I just want protection of the innocent.”

That’s a very interesting thing for Schumacher to say, because according to the City of Fargo’s sex offender registry, he is a level two sex offender, convicted of raping a female family member in August 2011. He is required to remain on the sex offender registry until 2039.

more here

[hobbit709]

1. I think Schumacher should be met with a Sex Offender sign every time he shows up.

[Matariki]

3. Seriously. Outside his house as well. The way they target doctors.

The irony of a fucking rapist claiming it's not about controlling women. What a pig.

[moabfan]

2. Oh, so the anti-choicers now needs a paid-for escort to their protest site?

Oh, the irony.

[niyad]

5. welcome to du

[Wounded Bear]

4. We need more of this...

religious zealots should not feel safe while trying to intimidate others. Hell, we mostly did it to the Westboro Baptist assholes. Now they just announce their protests and usually don't go because they know they'll be confronted.

Need to do it to the forced birth crowd, too.

[niyad]

6. awww, the pooooor scared widdle woman-hating gestational slavers. hate getting a taste

of your own medicine, you woman-hating scum????? tooooooo freaking bad. I hope that this continues. may you receive everything you deserve, you thugs.

[hunter]

7. I may slow down my car and flip them off, but I'm not going to shoot them or rape their children.

With these morons sex is all about dominance over girls and women. Even among the culture's moron women. And they sometimes do shoot people and rape children.

My mom is a "choose life" sort of religious person, but she's also the child of a strongly matriarchal society that had zero tolerance for bad men. Nor was she afraid to talk frankly about sex and birth control. I knew most practical aspects of human sexuality long before it mattered to me, including the fact that I'd someday think sex was a whole lot of fun when practiced safely. My mom answered questions, and if that wasn't enough, my science artist dad would draw it. (He likes to draw pictures of women, especially my mom, naked.)

As a Catholic sort of person, my mom also said she'd accept any accidental children into the family. My siblings and I were so terrified of having more children in our crazy overcrowded multi-generational household, and of changing dirty diapers, that all of us avoided reproducing until we were well established and living far away, on our own.

But no, we never heard that "masturbation is a sin" or any "abstinence only" bullshit.

Want fewer abortions? Teach your children about safe sex and birth control before it becomes an issue for them. Warn them about sexual predators. Tell them, yes, someday you'll think sex is fun, and normal, and this is how you stay out of trouble.

Practical stuff. Tools for living a good life.

[progressoid]

8. Love trolling anti-choicers.

http://saturdaychores.tumblr.com/

[hifiguy]

10. "As seen on Christian Mingle.com"

"Hail Santa"

That guy ROCKS!

[Eleanors38]

15. My Mamma (lived to 99) said her family went to see the Holy Rollers...

and being a little puker, I asked her: "But aren't we Methodist?"

She said it wasn't about that: "It was fun seein' 'em roll 'round on the altar, on the floor... sometimes a boy & girl get together and roll right on out the door."

[hifiguy]

17. Did they have snakes, too?

The really hard-core dingbats and loons have poisonous snakes.

[Eleanors38]

19. At least it's handle at your own risk!

[Matariki]

11. !!!!!

"Weird Hobby"

Thanks for posting those

[MohRokTah]

13. I like to scream "DOCTOR MURDERERS!!!" and "WOMAN KILLERS!!!!" at the nutbag. eom

[hifiguy]

9. Mother of Dog.

[surrealAmerican]

12. not the Onion, huh?

Did this rapist serve any jail time? How about probation? Do the terms of his probation conflict in any way with harassing women at health care facilities?

[KamaAina]

14. "Hail Satan". I should have tried that!

At one point, due to infighting between factions , I was defending* a clinic in NOLA singlehandedly. That would have worked nicely!

[Eleanors38]

16. Well, gun-control doesn't come up at a repro clinic.

[Liberal_in_LA]

18. ..

[captain disgruntled]

20. No sign of Schumacher this week...

I was there volunteering as an escort when Severson showed up, and his demeanor made *everybody* very uncomfortable.
As Ms. Kromenaker observes, the patients at the clinic would just like to have their procedures and return to a normal life. The end.
NOBODY wants to arrive at the clinic--and remember, not only is this the only clinic in the state performing surgical abortions, meaning that patients may drive (public transportation is all but nonexistent) hundreds of miles to get here, but the state legislators also require a 24-hour waiting period--and be confronted by a circus.
The sidewalk isn't that wide, and it's just building, sidewalk, curb, street. A busy street, in a busy part of town. The anti-choicers are generally minimally courteous (aka law-abiding) in not blocking the sidewalk; among other things, the clinic entrance is on the same block as two popular lunch spots, whose staff don't appreciate the nonsense either.
Anyway, escorts aren't there to change anybody's mind. We are directed not to engage or even acknowledge protesters. We are there to neutralize their presence as much as possible, to serve patients as they need. We may be dismissed from scheduled shifts early if there are either no more patients or no more protesters. We're not there to make a political statement: if no patients need to be screened from protesters, we disappear.
Severson's signs weren't funny, they were confrontational ("Pray to end pedophile priests," etc.) and he was literally walking up to protesters and haranguing them. He spent five minutes calling a 70-something-year-old "Hodor," when the guy probably doesn't even have basic cable. Standing six inches in front of a protester to abuse them with profanity just narrowed the sidewalk further.
More than one escort tried (after removing the escort vest) to talk to Severson to ask him to tone it down a little, but he had no interest. The local paper reports that he returned later (escorts are only deployed on days the clinic sees patients, but the protesters are currently winding down a national "40 Days" thing) and got into a physical altercation with an anti-choicer.
Ugh.
Imaging having to traverse all that every time you went for a dental cleaning....
I came looking for a topic like this because this week we didn't get Nik Severson's company, but we did get a whole bus full of students from a religious middle or high school ca. 110 miles away (!), accompanied by a friar in a cloak that made him look like Gandalf in disguise. Kiddies lined up at the curb and proceeded to gesture to passing delivery drivers to get them to honk in support of their signs, which would surely hasten the end of massacre of the innocents. At one point, the two priests went down the rows of students sprinkling them with what I was told was probably ashes and then holy water.
I'm down with quiet recitation of the rosary, if that's your thing, but the friar was delivering a full service. Loudly. A couple of escorts began singing nonsense songs, because it was grating and irritating. I've read other anti-choice sites condemning escorts who did the macarena outside their clinic, citing it as evidence of their satanic possession.
I don't think ANY of us think lightly of what we do, but damn, it was weird out there!! Plus it was only 43 degrees, and standing stoically still for two hours was not just boring, it was cold! If you don't want to see escorts being goofy (when there were no patients in sight, obviously), then don't harass people at the clinic and we won't have to go there.
At the conclusion of this performance, the priest called for all the students to line up to have their photo taken. A commemoration of their triumph. Some escorts went to stand in front of them, and one priest scolded us for "ruining the kids' picture. Real mature."
Okaaaay... because that's what the women's clinic is there for, to be a photo backdrop for your fantasies.
It was creepy and weird and I am so ready for this country to MOVE ON.