Sometimes I wish we protested “crisis pregnancy centers.” The effect would be twofold: radical forced birthers would get a tiny idea of what it’s like for health care providers and patients across the country*, and women who might be duped into going to those centers would realize the truth before they even walked in the door.
We could even make signs with pictures of women who have died from back alley abortions, which I guarantee would be far more gruesome than pictures of dead “babies” supposedly killed by abortion.
I realize that this would most likely escalate tensions, and that most reproductive rights advocates have better things to do than stand outside a building full of zealots and liars all day**, but FUCK THEY ARE NEVER EVER EVER GOING TO STOP. EVER. Maybe the fact that I despise them is making me unreasonable, but if we can tweak them a little and make them feel uncomfortable, I’m quite okay with that.
*I’m not advocating that we engage in the same level of violence or threatening activity as they do, however. Yelling at them when they come into work every day is sufficient enough, I think.
**Do anti-abortion activists have jobs? I’m asking this seriously. Who the fuck has time to stand around all day and harass people and post pictures of their license plates on the internet? Maybe they should start masturbating more often.
Acoustic! Kitty! 
Intriguing idea. For maximum effect, maximum surprise, and maximum coverage, I suggest carefully picking one spot, one specific facility to target. Organize it online, selecting the target, finding out the best time for people. Get enough people so that there’s a goodly crowd. Have all the signs and banners prepared before hand. (Great way to vent and mock and blow off some steam in big bold letters and pictures,btw)
Plan on specific hours–say a four-hour demonstration. Saturate the local media with e-mail announcements on the morning of the event.
You’ll have to file the necessary permits before, of course, so it can’t really be kept a complete secret. They’ll know something’s coming, but they won’t expect a fucking freight train. Make sure you have some one in the group skilled with video-taping and simple editing: Whatever coverage you get from Trad-Mad, you will have nice You-Tube viral bomb to spread it around the internet.
Operations. Good times.
I was really thinking of a guerrilla hit-and-run attack, not sustained a day-after-day thing at the facility. As you point out, the Very Godly seem not to have any jerbs at all. They can withstand a day-after-day siege. Also, launching it as a one-day raid lessens the chance of escalation.
Indeed, you’ll be prepared to avoid escalation: You will have the advantage in numbers, organization–do some chants!–and prepared props.
Just tossing some ideas out there.
One other thought: Getting a viral video out would be such a morale booster to reproductive rights defenders everywhere. I think you’re on to something, T&U.
And you’re in a university town, if I guess correctly. There is probably a good pool of enlightened people in your area–especially women students–to draw upon. It would be so fine to see this happen in the Heartland–no the Very Holy don’t own it or have the only voice. Missouri would be fucking brilliant, T&U. (If, as I guess, you are about in the middle of the state, the event might even get media coverage in both the KC and St Louis markets.)
Dint mean to monopolize the comments. I think you’re on to something, T&U.
Admittedly, standing outside screaming slogans and THREATENING that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will deal with them…or whatever more believable being…sounds appealing.
The Variants, I think if I was just going to do it for one occasion, I would do it in Wichita. And invite Randall Terry, the fuck.
Intriguing idea. For maximum effect, maximum surprise, and maximum coverage, I suggest carefully picking one spot…
Getting a viral video out…
Wait, wait, are we all talking about T&U’s “masturbating more often” suggestion?
I think me masturbating in public will get rid of many many people.
How about picketing a church which has a pastor who uses violent anti-choice rhetoric? Make the churchgoers run a gantlet before they can enter the building.
I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, BBBB. After all, the most likely candidates are probably in states that allow packing heat in churches.
Spot on. I’d sign up to go protest those clinics/centers/bastions of BS. Seriously, as a health care professional and academic, it offends me the lies about abortion and medicine that those “Pregnancy Centers” dispense. If you want to hate abortion, fine. However, you’ll hate it from my rules: with facts and logic.
I think me masturbating in public will get rid of many many people
So you go around serially impregnating women?
See, I try, but my sperm are as old as I am, and once ejaculated, look for the remote and a beer.
AG–That’s the thing that pisses me off the most. The fact that they are LIARS, because they know if they told the truth, they’d lose.