Gearing up for abortion protests

Source: Omaha World Herald-AP

By Leia Baez-Mendoza

Vanessa Klinetobe needs sleeping pills just to fall asleep at night.

Since the killing of Wichita, Kan., abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in May and recent threats of protests in her Bellevue neighborhood, Klinetobe has become increasingly fearful for her life. So fearful, in fact, that Friday she sought a protection order in Sarpy County District Court against Larry Donlan, the director of anti-abortion group Rescue the Heartland.

Her petition is one sign that the stakes in the abortion wars have risen locally. Her boss, Dr. LeRoy Carhart, says he is bracing for the worst. And law enforcement agencies are stepping up their watch. A protest scheduled later this month is drawing the national anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

The protest is part of a national campaign to block Carhart’s efforts to open a late-term abortion clinic somewhere in the Midwest to replace Tiller’s former clinic in Wichita.


Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20090817/NEWS01/708179958

is outrageous.

http://www.alternet.org/politics/141863/federal_marshals_abandon_doctor_targeted_by_anti-abortion_extremists/

I had no idea....

I'll be keeping an eye open for follow-up.....


god, unbelievable.

I wonder what would things would look like if our own U.S. of A. religious extremist/terrorism/murder squads had their crosshairs on some different group they wanted to control? How do you think law enforcement agencies would prioritize that, I wonder........

Abortion attacks

Murderer protected by Catholic Church - Nice, eh?

We need our politicians to send a clear message that this war is over and done with, that abortion and any other medical procedure for women is legal and that terrorism will not be tolerated.

of Randal Terry. That ought to be a clear message. At least a public horse whipping.

Hardly better, I know. Maybe we could pray to God that He'd kidnap Terry off the streets and for Extraordinary Rendition in Hell, and bring him back as a changed man.

I was thinking more along the lines of serious fines and prison time for terroristic activities, enforcing the laws we already have, and the mainline Republicans forcing these people out of the party.

Terrorist groups they need to use the same tactics against these groups. These groups are beyond menancing they are in fact terrorists. These groups have gotten several people killed or maimed they are no different than the Mafia and they need to be crushed.

a couple of blocks away from us who provided abortions at the Planned Parenthood Clinic there.
The anti-choice crowd would protest in front of his home; followed his wife to work until her employer
let her go; picketed the church where he was a member (a deacon, too) holding up huge graphics
of abortion remains. They were always surrounding the Planned Parenthood Clinic.

I can't tell you how happy I was to get out of that environment. They are ruthless and determined
to make life hell for anybody who disagrees with them. What a bunch of authoritarian, intolerant, misogynistic, unempathic, bigoted a$$holes. I'm sure they would have all made great Nazis.

Better to stay. Otherwise, they win.

It is now clear that the anti-choice movement is self-perpetuating in this environment. If Pro-Choice stays on the defensive, simply trying to protect a woman's right, there is no end in sight until we are too tired to fight. For radical anti-choicers, they make a life of threats, harassment and incitements until somebody in their hellbent hordes gets up the guts to shoot or throw a bomb. While they keep up constant pressure, they groom volunteers to commit murder, and we all know that now. Their reward is simple and to the point: close the clinic, remove the doctors and the health workers. They'll do this clinic-by-clinic.

We have to think of it as a larger war against religious radicalism, and there is no doubt that this is what we are faced with. Now, I'm not saying that anti-choice is necessarily a religious position, but the radical anti-choicers have their roots in radical Christianity. Certain churches and congregations are the spawning grounds of these fanatics.

Look for the radical congregations behind the protests, often times, I believe, there will be one main one and some associated ones. Take some pro-choice protests there, and expose these criminal organizations and don't stop until they are closed. Block the entrances of people trying to go in and tell them of what bloody-minded, cowardly, murderers the Congregants are. What I suggest are counter-protests. Go to the churches behind this. Show the gory, Mel Gibson picture of Jesus scourged or bloody depictions of the crusades to show their actual mentality is not peaceful. Have some operatives inside, find out where the anti-choice meetings are, usually at somebody's home, and then disrupt them or protest them. Meanwhile, you don't leave the ministers or priests alone about it. Don't let them get any sleep until they leave the ministry, or if they are less radical than that, expel the real radicals.

And I mean, persist. Do it every weekend.

We should even be willing to do it even with Catholic Dioceses. For abortion protests, however, the Catholics are probably the most moderate compared to the other sects, though they are inflexible about Choice and Birth Control.

And, really, if we don't have the motivation to do this, to widen the fight, Pro-Choice will lose. Of this, I am now convinced.

We have to recruit for such organizations, though. As a practical matter, though, there probably aren't enough volunteers right now to defend against the anti-choice protests and protest the radical sects behind it. We have to find a way to recruit for the larger cause. We have to become radicals against radicals.

when they were picketing Westminster Presbyterian Church on Sheridan Blvd. in Lincoln. They'd been doing it for months. Young couples were telling their children to hide on the floor of their vans as they drove
into the parking lot so they wouldn't see the horrific, enlarged signs. The church was losing membership.

We belonged to one of the "liberal" churches in town. After my confrontation with these nutjobs
made the local newspaper (Lincoln Journal Star)the senior pastor of our church called me. I suggested
that we needed to fight fire with fire--we needed to organize counter-protestors to block these
jerks from showing off their sign. I talked to someone who belonged to Westminster and asked them
why they didn't send people out on the sidewalk to outnumber them. Both churches thought it was a losing
game. Why? Because the town is 40+% Catholic--right wing Catholic--and they didn't want to get into
a war with the Catholics.

If the people who live there won't confront these jerks, then screw it. I'm not going to waste my life
fighting a battle in a town that wants to go back to the Dark Ages.

So, I've been there and done that in both towns when I lived in the "heartland". Fuck 'em. Twelve years
of my life living amongst the righteous and holy in hell holes carrying the pro-choice flag was enough. Time for somebody else to take up the charge.

You have my admiration. I agree you should have a rest and deserve to be away from it, but nobody should go out there against them alone-- for twelve years. If they were afraid of the Catholics, there are moderate Catholics, though they are out of favor, and the Catholic Church has no reason to moderate itself if nobody is going to oppose it. It is hardly as monolithic as it looks.

They thought it was a losing game? Nothing loses like cowardice. Did he think the Catholics were going to start the 30-year war again? If they do, they'd be fighting their allies in the radical protestant and non-dom churches. Nothing better than that.

I'm sorry, if I reconciled myself to letting the heartland fall into the Dark Ages, there wouldn't be enough anti-depressants in the world to keep me in it. Best I could think of is that somebody else could stop it.

I'd probably leave religion out of it, though. ;)

Doesn't matter what their religion is or isn't. They're the ones who want to make it about their religion. They may not. There lies the point.

They are right-wing, and their agenda is an item on the right-wing agenda. They are one head of the Gorgon of gun militants, publishers of bigoted cartoons, porn and prostitution merchants, spewers of homophobic bigotry on campuses, blamers of people of colour for their problems - the ones who cloak themselves in liberal values, who exploit the discourse of rights and freedoms, when they spit on those values every time they open their mouths.

To them, rights are a weapon to be used against other people, and most especially the vulnerable, individually or collectively. Their rights.

A new discourse is needed. The discourse of the public interest. In the existing legal order, it may not be possible to actually prohibit much of what they do, but until that changes, they and what they do needs to be named.

Don't give a toss what right or freedom they are exercising. They have a right to scream in front of abortion clincis, to attend political rallies displaying firearms on their persons, to publish all manner of nastiness. Who cares??

There are lots of things that people have a right to do, that decent people do not do.

Call them what they are. Thugs. Thugs who would put on the jackboots at the first opportunity. Right-wing, anti-democratic, anti-human thugs.

I've been doing it a fair bit around here in the last couple of days, and believe me, it feels good. ;)

that church. We lined the walkway to separate the members attending the service and the protesters. I still get tears in my eyes when I remember that night. So many people thanked us, but I was so grateful that so many members of that church supported the doctor.

I just remember hearing about the plan and I had to be there.
What they were doing made me sick.
I wanted to get the names and addresses of all the protesters and picket their homes with bloody pictures of rape victims, botched back alley abortions and abused children.

It was distressing to find out how little protection Dr. Tiller was given considering the likes of Bill O'Reilly were inciting so many nut jobs to do him harm. This anti-abortion crap has been going on way too long and these religious creeps (most of the violent ones are men - why is that?) should mind their own lives, take care of their own families and stop being intolerant of the beliefs of others. Forget local police, Homeland Security and the FBI should be all over this sucker. It's the law. Enforce it.

But I find it so interesting that you have progressives fighting to save whales and campaign against wearing fur (protect life, right?) yet are pro abortion. I find that very interesting.............

not here on DU....

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Whales, animals, women, I'd like to save them all. What's odd about that?

And I'm not pro-abortion. I'm pro-choice.

I'm probably one of the people you're thinking of. I object strongly to the exploitation of non-consenting animals. I support the rights of women to receive medical care with informed consent. There is no conflict there.

-- no, I don't. I find it boring. Boring that you would spend time posting this bit of nasty stupidness on this site, and that I wasted my time reading it.

If you have something to say, say it and face the music. Or crawl off to whatever misogynistic hellhole you spend your life in, and leave decent people alone.

I don't waste my time in this issue, I need to move forward not stay static

Cripes, I thought you were gone.