Nationwide “Walks for Choice” limped
This past Saturday, February 26, pro-aborts tried to organize a “Walk for Choice” in various cities around the country. The goal was to show support for Planned Parenthood in the face of our effort to defund it.
Remember the pro-life flash mob, for instance? It was in response to Chicago’s Walk for Choice, whose videographer devoted more time to our much larger presence – organized in less time – than their own.
But while pro-lifers have a great ground game in every nook and cranny of the country, pro-aborts don’t. Nor do they have the communication network we do.
And so we saw, for example, a clash in timing between the New York W4C with Planned Parenthood’s rally, which resulted in this…
Interesting that NY W4C organizers didn’t redirect their people to attend the PP rally, which pro-lifers would have done in a similar situation. Dissension?
RH Reality Check devoted an entire post to rebutting complaints that the DC W4C “was poorly advertised [and] the turn-out was depressingly small.”
I did a spot check of some of the other promoted W4Cs. Here’s Minneapolis…
And Phoenix…
Seattle’s event was larger, although “the rally broke a bit earlier than originally planned, mostly because of the cold.” Namby Pambys for Choice would be more like it. They’d never survive even 15 minutes of the 4 hour March for Life held every January in DC…
MSM coverage of the Nashville W4C optimistically reported “more than 100” participants, but news video shows this could only have been true if they were counting people in dog years.
News coverage of the Hawaii W4C showed 1) weak attendance, 2) B-footage strangely cutting to several ultrasounds of very pregnant mothers, and 3) it was organized by PP, not an organically grown show of support for abortion.
Theind.com reported that “a small group” pro-aborts showed up for Lafayette, LA’s, W4C. An optimistic reporter counted “more than a dozen.” If it were a pro-life crowd, I’m betting the same reporter would have counted “less than 20″…
Because there was no rally wrap-up or photos, I’m speculating the Santa Fe rally never got off the ground; nor the rally in Gainesville, FL; nor the rally in Youngstown, OH. Again, I just did a spot check. But the list of W4Cs was way more bark than bite.
Here’s a photo of the little Little Rock W4C, giving an example of what I often saw – many PP-supplied, “I stand with Planned Parenthood” and “Don’t take away my breast exams” posters, leading me to wonder how many PP employees were compelled to organize and/or attend these events…
Finally, I read a ton of these on the sites I perused – excuses…
Pro-lifers have something the other side will never, never, ever, ever have: Passionate support for our cause in every pocket of America, come rain, snow, sleet, or dark of night.
We’ll see a ready example only next week when the largest ever 40 Days for Life campaign kicks off in a record-breaking 247 cities across the US, Armenia, Australia, Belize, Canada, England, Georgia, Ireland, and Spain.
Back to you, pro-choice.
[HT: Friend Andrew and Pro-Life Wisconsin]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Jill, I think it would be a good idea to blur the full names that appear on the FB image. Otherwise there will probably be a lot of accusations about targeting pro-choicers. It’s always best to err on the side of caution and courtesy, IMO.
Ugh, I could smell their hippie clothing from here. JoAnna, while I agree, there is something Pro-lifers have that pro-aborts don’t. A conscience. It’s not right and I doubt any pro-lifer would purposely contact these doofuses and make pro-lifers look bad. Not worth it. But yea, wise indeed to remove last names. :)
I would like to point out that in Nashville they marched in the most liberal area of the city and by their own account received boos and disparaging comments from by standers and you are right…at best there were 30 but the biased news reports puffed that up considerably. If they cannot march in East Nashville without boos and disparaging calls they are really in trouble.
The same station gave scant coverage to our Vigil on Valentines day in front of PP that was put together quickly had over 50 in attendance but it was down played with no reporter etc. just a quick shot and sound bite of maybe 20 seconds and no interview. Most stations and the daily paper which is a left wing rag ignored it completely as they do our annual rally for life.
The truth is ultimately more compelling than lies. :) Makes me proud to be on the side of the truth and light.
These women mostly look pretty angry, their signs often carrying gross and vulgar statements (“Keep your Boehner off my body”?!?).
When I went to the March for Life, which was in January in DC and lasted for hours, everyone seemed happy to be there and I met people from allover the country who took time off work, family, other commitments to show solidarity to the unborn. The difference between the pro-death side and the pro-life side is astounding!! :)
From the facebook page of Minneapolis Walk for Choice 2011
When Jill Stanek calls you “namby pambys for choice” you KNOW you’re doing something right. I wish I could have been among you. Next time!
LOL
I noticed 144 said they would be attending. I counted 15 in the photo.
Why would the Walk for Choice logo have a red slash across a persons neck? That slas made me think of blood. That certainly is a disgusting and tellimg logo.
Carla:
“From the facebook page of Minneapolis Walk for Choice 2011
When Jill Stanek calls you “namby pambys for choice” you KNOW you’re doing something right. I wish I could have been among you. Next time!”
I don’t get that. When someone calls you a weakling, you’re doing something right? Exactly what are you doing right?
Joan, and friends,
Thank you for your earnest review, and the result being that by attempting to ‘diss’ this event, you have simply empowered it. Keep up that predictable approach, and you’ll find that being ‘AGAINST” human rights, is always a ZERO sum game for those that are against it.
Ahh..and the 40 Days of Prayer vigil is coordinated with established churches. Well, apples and organges lady.
But, that is your reality. See you out there.
You’d think they could have at least astroturfed it. Sounds like their friends in the Rent a Rabble business are distancing themselves.
Peg:
Are you expecting the abortionists to make logical sense?
“being ‘AGAINST” human rights, is always a ZERO sum game for those that are against it.”
Very true. That’s why your side will lose. Life is the most basic of human rights, and you are most surely AGAINST it.
“Joan” is a pro-choice commenter here, and I don’t see her name on this thread anywhere…
JILL is the author of this blog. Super observant, are we?
Your guess is as good as mine, Peg.
One more comment from the facebook page. :)
Haha have you read her blog about it? She quotes you! She seems to forget that pro-choice organizations do not have the time, or the money to waste organizing events, as they actually provide services to women. Or that this event wasn’t coordinated by NOW, NARAL or Planned Parenthood, or the fact that it was a walk (ie people joined and left throughout the route), or that that was one picture, or the fact that it was snowing all freaking day. Oh well, let her make whatever assumptions she wants. Pro-Life events are always tacky religious events. People show up to those in the same way that they show up to church.
1,419 invited. 15 smiled for the picture.
The reason that pro-lifers show up is because we’re fighting for something worth fighting for. We’re fighting for the lives of our fellow human beings. Abortion supporters are fighting for the “right” to kill. It doesn’t exactly inspire you, does it?
And they will even bring their small children out in 105 degree weather to protest abortion clinics. Let the kids suffer from heat exhaustion. After all, they are tools for the adult agenda!
So having children outside in hot weather is horrible. Twisting off their arms and legs and crushing their skulls- not so much? Nothing is more disgusting that when people who support killing children feign to care about children.
Oh, and when a person kills their own child in order not to inhibit their agenda of selfishness- who is using a child as a tool?
Hello, maybe the pro-choice crowd is small because they have aborted potential pro-choicers. The pro-lifers probably give birth to more people whom they raise to be appreciative of all life. Of course, I am making generalizations and don’t have statistics to back me up.
Pro-life people are busy caring for woman. My mom was part of a secular group of women who made baby quilts for Birthright. That’s just one small example of caring.
Lena,
I don’t believe that is a generalization. It stands to reason that those that are prolife will have the children they conceive and raise them to be prolife. Proaborts will abort their children and the children they allow to live will be raised proabortion.
Paints a rather bleak picture for the future of their movement.
Very good point(s), Jacqueline! (pretty name, too!) :)
If I diss people who pick their noses in public, does that empower them? I’m not seeing the logic here.
I love it, “pro-choice organizations don’t have time to organize events.” That might make sense if there had been no event, but there was one, and very few people showed up. If you’re going to have an event in the first place, you organize it.
The Roe Effect is the nickname for the sociopolitical theory which suggests that support for abortion will ultimately degrade over time due to the fact that abortion supporters tend to have fewer children and are more likely to abort their children.
While it’s not a perfect theory (not all children always agree with their parents about everything, not all pro-aborts have abortions, not all pro-lifers have children, and various other factors), in the main, it is difficult to dismiss outright, and a good many of the underpinning assumptions are supported statistically.
Great wrap-up, Jill!
Sadly I wasn’t able to be in downtown Chicago for the flash mob because of a family commitment, but I was watching on Twitter and FB and seeing almost nothing from the other side. There were supposed to be endless tweets, making #march4choice a trending topic, but — crickets!
And I’m sure you’re right about the PP staffers. Their rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza was comprised almost entirely of PP staffers from their HQ on Michigan Avenue. We had someone there walking over to Federal Plaza with them when they came out.
Pro-life owns the grassroots!
Eric Scheidler
Executive Director
Pro-Life Action League
At the choice event in Chicago, some of them were holding up a sign that said, “Life begins when you stand up to Christian facsists.” Wow, that’s like so scientific. And it dismisses the large number of secular pro-life advocates. Bernard Nathanson changed his mind YEARS before he even considered converting to Christianity.
How come Minneapolis men get to have a say?? Do they have ovaries?? Do they have a uterus??
Thought abortion was between a woman and her abortionist??
I assume there was an event here in Philly, but I didn’t hear anything about it.
Someone explain why a hijab-wearing woman is supporting abortion in the Pheonix group photo.
Islam forbids it. She should know better.
*shakes head* Too busy to organize an event? Guess they aren’t THAT worried about us pro-lifers having any wins in congress or in the legal system. They’re so comfortable that abortion will always be legal they don’t have to do anything but sit around and scream that every pro-lifer is a (as someone put it) “Christian facist”, is it? LOL I’ve heard of pro-lifers who aren’t even Christian.
You know Wicca has their rede that says “do harm to no one” (or something to that effect)…wouldn’t surprise me based off that to learn there was some pro-life Wiccans out there.
What about atheists? (I think I’ve come across some pro-life atheists in my day).
Or some pro-life Jews (of course to hear some people talk all Jews are pro-choice, but I don’t believe that).
Yep, all pro-lifers are ONLY Christians…oookay…so they’ve interviewed every single pro-lifer out there? They do realize there’s some Christians that say they’re pro-choice, right?
Sounds like a lot of “snap judgments” (as I like to call “jumping to conclusions”).
Ahh..and the 40 Days of Prayer vigil is coordinated with established churches. Well, apples and organges lady.
Hysterical. So the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights doesn’t actually have that big presence in established churches we’ve always heard about? Hmmm.
You sound almost like CC with your “apples and organges [sic].” Hey CC, I wonder why more Episcopalians didn’t get up of their posh posteriors to attend. Too busy polishing their oh-so manicured fingernails? Visting their tony country-clubs? Updating their DAR memerships? Or maye they don’t care about abortion as much as you think they do.
We can all be Pro-Choice and Christian (Catholic or Protestant). If a woman is pregnant, she can either keep her baby OR she can give it up for adoption. HER CHOICE.
Wouldn’t the media be laughing themselves stupid and reporting the paltry numbers if this had been pro-lifers?
Does anyone remember around 1990 when PA forces, angered by some Supreme Court decision, when on the offensive with the help of their media buddies?
A “sleeping giant” had awakened. “Complacent” PA voters would descend on the polling booths like the hordes of Ghengis Khan. People were supposedly beating down the doors of NARAL and NOW in their eargerness to join. I will say they had politicians turning tail, politicians by the way who lost at the polls until they finally figured out that NEITHER side trusts a flipflopper.
It was a year in which the PA side vowed to take no prisoners while assuring PL politicians of certain defeat and predicting doom for PLs. If someone was elected dogcatcher, this was evidence of PA political prowess.
Our local paper considered it a newsworthy event when the local chapter of NOW gained 10 new members. You would have thought a local PA voter meeting had people hanging from the rafters until the paper admitted it was less than 100 attending. Of course the PA organizers of the meeting were supposedly overjoyed with the attendance.
I remember the election that followed and a TV commentator remarking that being PC didn’t seem to help candidates after all. Otherwise there seemed to be a deafening silence. Where were all these great victories? Where were the PAvoters who were to rival the hordes of Ghengis Khan? Apparently still sleeping. Of course the PA crowd crowed about how “happy” they were to do “almost as well” as the PL side.
Uh folks, you didn’t vow to do “almost as well” as PLs, you vowed to wipe us out.
Of course their media buddies didn’t bother to point this out.
“I’ll be there in spirit.” Do pro-abortion advocates even think they have one?
The abortion culture carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. One is that abortion supporters have fewer children than pro-lifers, on average.
An even bigger thing is a mistaken belief in the pro-abort community, that if they can get women to have abortions, those women will be in the pro-choice camp for the rest of their lives–NOT! The exact opposite happens, especially with women who are forced, coerced, or manipulated into an abortion that they didn’t really want. Nothing turns a person off to a cause more than being manipulated into appearing to support it. This experience usually promotes rebellion against the cause and hurts the cause in the long run. Women forced or manipulated into abortions often rebel and go completely pro-life. The pro-aborts can whine about how they helped these women and now they’re being ungrateful. But these women have a real reason to be ungrateful and are under no obligation to support the pro-choice cause.
Plus, when a woman is forced or manipulated into an abortion she doesn’t want, her future children will grow up hearing that there is somebody missing in their life. They will hear that they’re supposed to have an older sibling, but tragically. . . . . Children who grow up hearing such things don’t stand much of a chance of growing up pro-choice.
I find it interesting that the drawing of a woman in the Walk for Abortion poster has a pagan “ankh” around her neck, rather than, say, a Latin Cross, Star of David, etc. Perhaps it was supposed to be the “female” symbol and they just drew it wrong?
John ,
Even more ironic is that the ankh is the Egyptian symbol for life. But when I first looked at it I thought it was a female symbol, and I just googled it to confirm. Sadly, it is not an ankh.
Here’s video footage of the DC “Walk for Choice.” Their FB event page had 1,000+ yes, but it looks like they barely got 1/10 of that number, if that.
http://vimeo.com/20527103
Mother in Texas,
You’re correct in saying that they are making snap judgements and are in fact stereotyping in assuming that all or even the majority of pro-lifers are WASPs/Catholic, conservative or males for that point, when in fact the pro-life movement is quite diverse and consists of both genders, but predominantly females (although there are vocal male leaders in some organizations) & of individuals from all sorts of backgrounds & belief systems. The following actual pro-life organizations represents how divserse we are:
Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League
http://www.godlessprolifers.org/
Consistant Life
http://www.consistent-life.org/
Democrats for Life
http://www.democratsforlife.org/
Feminism and Non-Violence Studies
http://www.fnsa.org/
Feminists For Life
http://www.feministsforlife.org/
Libertarians for Life
http://www.l4l.org/
Non-Violent Choice Directory
http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/
Operation Outcry
http://www.operationoutcry.org/
Pagan & Pro-Life
http://people.tribe.net/mind-n-magick/blog/66c0477b-7ffd-4432-b9ed-48ced7cb1c42
PLAGAL: Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians
http://www.plagal.org/
Pro-Lifers Against Clinic Violence
http://lifepeace.tripod.com/
Silent No More Awareness
http://silentnomoreawareness.org/
Susan B. Anthony List
http://www.sba-list.org/
Interesting how some minds work. They’re with Walk4Choice in spirit, but they can’t be bothered to take time out from their busy schedules to support this critical “right”. Whereas we fascist pro-lifers are apparently all rich, with oodles of time on our hands to do nothing but go to church and and to the silly, time-wasting protests. Of course, if a Walk4Choice is conveniently timed, they’ll show up … unless it’s too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or there’s something more interesting to do …. Their mothers—or, more likely, their college professors—at least had the comfortable illusion that they were fighting for the rights of future generations of women; this generation of pro-choicers is too busy soaking in their self-indulgence to even recognize a threat.
Mods,
I have a post pending moderation. Thanks!
Thanks, Miss Pamela! :)
” Pro-lifers have something the other side will never,never, ever, ever have: passionate support for our cause in every pocket of America.come rain,snow, sleet, or dark of night”.
Sure. Don’t underestimate pro-choicers. There are a heck of a lot more of them in America than you anti-choicers realize,and they too are in every corner of America and the world.,and they’re not going to go away fortunately . I don’t know what percentage of Americans are pro-or anti-choice and I’m skeptical about the accuracy of polls. But a lot more Amerficans are opposed to trying to force women to give birth against their will and regardless of the adverse circumstances and consequences of this violation of women’s rights ,lives and health, but there are a lot more than you think , and THEY VOTE.
I love that quote “Life begins when you stand up to Christian fascists”.
Ironic since Robert B shares the same fascist disrespect for human life which is opposed to Christian moral values.
I disrespect human life ? That’s a laugh ! And only Christians are moral? Don’t make me laugh again !
Robert,
What Punisher is saying is that by supporting abortion (whether it be the abortion itself or a woman chosing or being coerced into an abortion) you have a disrespect for that pre-born human being which is a life, thus a disrespect for life.
Also, Punisher didn’t say anything about only Christians having morals. Punisher said your stance was an opposition to Christian morals, which abortion is.
If abortion keep up much longer all the Pro-Choicers will be there in spirit because of the Roe Effect.