Protesting Planned Parenthood's "Condom Coulture" Fashion Fundraising Show

A few of us protested Planned Parenthood in Asheville last Saturday night. We were under the Vance Monument at a busy intersection while PP held a condom fashion show across town. Several people stopped by to express their support including a Ukrainian couple who had been attending a huge marriage building seminar at a hotel.  Of course we had the usual honks of support and screams of hatred.  The two girls in the photo above approached us to sweetly ask permission to take our photograph.  The girl on the left posed next to our sign that said, "Abortion Hurts Women."  As they walked away afterwards, the girl in the red turned to say, "Rot in Hell!"

Monday, They Called Their Press Event a Rally

Click on photos to enlarge.




























The speaker at the podium in the first two photos is Caitlin Owen, manager at the local PP killing center.  Frank Kracher of WLOS-TV news, the ABC affiliate is on the right of the second photo, in the white shirt.  You can see us to the left in this photo, in the background.  In photo #4 Clare, a college student, is being interviewed by Fox 21 news. Photo #5 shows one of the abortion guys talking with our people.  I overheard him say something like, "I went to Catholic school and I'm was glad to leave because I didn't have to be around people like you." Photo #6 shows his face, which seems to explain a lot. The last picture is of the back of the wall facing Frank Kracher who is about to begin a live broadcast for his station's 6:PM news program. I took this picture and then stood behind them holding high one of our "Abortion KILLS Children" signs, which got a live close up shot and commentary.

Note that the supposed quote about McCrory's promise contains a lie. The question that he answered actually asked “If you are elected governor, what further restrictions on abortion would you agree to sign?”  The words, "agree to" were left out.  He could sign protections for pre-natal children without agreeing to sign them.

The Last Shift

"Anon Jim" left a comment with a link to this short article about a volunteer escort's last shift at the abortion place, "Femkill".  It appeared in the Asheville Blade on June 15.

It begins with an introduction by the publisher:

At the end of this month FemCare, currently the last clinic in the Asheville area providing abortion services, will close. Last year, the clinic was controversially shut down for nearly a month by NC inspectors during a fight about new state legislation sharply restricting access to abortion. For almost a decade, local activist, author and Pagan clergy member Byron Ballard worked as a volunteer escort, accompanying women in and out of the clinic to ensure their safety. Here she tells the story of her last shift. -DF

By Byron Ballard

Read the full article here.

I will post a reply soon.

Abortion letter was ignorant and hateful

Published in the Daily Tar Heel, 03/18/14 11:24pm

TO THE EDITOR:

Yesterday’s letter to the editor titled “Abortion should be considered genocide” is ignorant, hateful and dangerous. The author, Meredith Hunt, runs an anti-choice blog that publishes names, cars and photos of pro-choice advocates in Asheville, NC.

There is no reasonable, informed argument linking abortion to genocide. First, the comparison implicitly says that women who choose to terminate a pregnancy are equivalent to Young Turks, Nazi soldiers and Hutu extremists. This assertion is ludicrous and prejudiced toward women.

Second, the comparison is factually absurd. Hunt’s clumsy primer invoking Raphael Lemkin and Samantha Power is nothing more than a poorly written Wikipedia paragraph. In order for abortion to be considered genocide, there would need to a group of mothers campaigning to kill all unborn children and each abortion would have to be carried out because of hatred toward the fetus. In reality, there is a network of compassionate advocates and supportive medical professionals solely looking out for the health of women.

Anti-choice advocates are free to make whatever claims they would like, but it’s worth noting their implications. Creating an anti-choice narrative involving genocide means creating an anti-woman narrative. It bolsters a right-wing policy agenda to which our governor and Republican legislators subscribe.

This summer’s “Motorcycle Safety” bill proves that people like Meredith Hunt, Pat McCrory and Thom Tillis will stop at nothing to curb women’s’ rights, even if it means comparing smart, reasonable women to a bloodthirsty killer.

Reject Meredith Hunt’s argument by supporting women, facts, and history.

Sean Langberg ’14
Global Studies
Geography

Here is a link to the original article.

The photograph is of "protestors" of our 3/31-4/1 2014 GAP display at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, home of the Tar Heels.  Note my reply, not published by the Daily Tar Heel, in a following post.

"Abortion COULD Be Considered Genocide"

The Daily Tar Heel of the University of North Carolina published the following letter to the editor of mine on March 18, 2014.

Abortion Should be Considered Genocide

Genocide is a powerful word.

In her Pulitzer winning book “A Problem from Hell” Samantha Power suggested the word would “chill listeners and invite immediate condemnation” and “carry in it society’s revulsion and indignation.”

Human rights activists are warning that present violence and chaos in two areas of the world, Central African Republic and Myanmar, put certain peoples there at risk of genocide.

The UN defined genocide in 1948 as specific “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group...”

Those acts are:

• Killing;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm;
• Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction;
• Imposing measures to prevent births;
• Forcibly transferring children.

Some individual nations expand the definition of genocide to include groups classified by age, sexual orientation, gender, political “condition”, health, or, as with France, “any other arbitrary criterion.”

And while the UN Convention limits prosecutable genocide, UN Resolution 96, passed in 1946, describes genocide as, “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups”, “when racial, religious, political or other groups have been destroyed in whole or in part”, and whether committed by “private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political, or any other grounds…”

When Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide in the mid 1940s, he focused on one shade of meaning of the roots gen and genos, one with the suggestion of race. But there are other shades attached to them as seen in the English words genesis, engender, genetics, generate, generation, and genius, which imply “beginnings” and “family.” Progeny means “offspring.”

So, given the power and potential breadth of the word “genocide”, and given that every person’s life begins at fertilization, the violent, widespread, government-protected abortion of pre-natal children could be considered genocide based on age. No other existing single word captures the full reality of what abortion is.

Link to the original story.

A slightly longer version was published on March 21 in NC State's student newspaper, The Technician.

"Femcare" May Close for Good

According to a story yesterday by Jon Elliston of the Carolina Public Press, the abortion site "Femcare" may be closing permanently.









UPDATE/BREAKING NEWS: Asheville abortion clinic for sale, could close; Planned Parenthood plans new clinic

The plant is a weed growing in front of the abortion place.

Arrested at Biden Event



Photo by John Fletcher, Asheville Citizen-Times




By M. Hunt

On Tuesday, October 2 my wife Edie and I went to the campus of UNCA with a sign that said, “Abortion Hurts Women.”  VP Joe Biden was scheduled to campaign at the Justice Athletic Center.   My purpose in going was simply to take a stand against abortion with a truth that is difficult to rebut, one that should be a concern of politically liberal people

When we arrived on campus we drove around trying to decide where to be.  Edie dropped me off in front of the cafeteria so I could talk with the six or eight Romney supporters and anti-Obama/Biden protestors.  The area there is a longstanding “free speech zone.”  The protestors were not happy about being so far away from the event—the Justice Center was about three blocks away.  I decided to go down there to see if I could persuade police to let me stay and, if so, I’d call the other protestors to join me.  I noted the phone number of one of the protestors, a Romney supporter and also a student at UNCA.

Edie then dropped me near the Justice Center with my sign.  I stood on the sidewalk near the UNCA Bulldog mascot statue and the media trucks.  I was there a few seconds only when I noticed a man who appeared to be Secret Service walk down next to me and beckon to a police officer across the road with his finger.

My argument to the police was that the press and I both were present under the auspices of the First Amendment.  I did not prevail in convincing them that I had a right to be there on the sidewalk of a public university.   I did say, “If a Secret Service agent tells me to move, I will move.”  No Secret Service agent did so.  The one person who appeared to be Secret Service refused to identify himself as such, saying, “We’re not discussing any security arrangements we may or may not have.”

The police told me that where I was standing was a “secure area.”  I replied that they should allow the protestors to be there.  I offered to be searched.  Video from the Asheville Citizen-Times that I found later shows the Biden motorcade passing right by the location and moving toward the parking spaces that had been taped off.

The campus police chief arrived, talked with me, and then consulted with someone on the phone, probably an administrator.  He came back to me to say that it was University policy not to allow me to stand there with a sign.  When I respectfully declined to move to the designated free speech area, I was arrested, handcuffed, taken to jail, and charged with second degree trespassing.    After two hours of processing and waiting, I was fingerprinted and released on a signature bond.  First court appearance is set for December 4.

I hope people realize that my sign and its message probably had little to do with why I was told to move and why I was arrested.  I think anyone with any sign would have received the same treatment.  It’s likely that in those minutes prior to the motorcade arriving, the police would have prevented any non-law enforcement people from being there.  There also is the issue of trespassing on public property.  Yes, it was public property and yes it was a sidewalk, but it was on a college campus and the law for this kind of public property is somewhat different than it is in the rest of Asheville.  The difference is that the priority of the campus is serving students and university programs and not the public at large.  The general public does have access to the university, but the university is within its legal rights to limit or prohibit access that interferes with or disrupts university functions.

The problem is when the university suppresses free speech activity that does not interfere or disrupt university functions.   This unjustified suppression is common on campuses and not only of the general public but of a university’s own students.  Keeping students within a small artificial “zone” is a prime example.  The zone has an upside for non-university people in that they can just show up without notice, and by the way, without alarming campus police.  But it has a downside because it implies that the rest of the campus, the outdoor spaces, is off limits.

I have been engaged in free speech activity on perhaps 50 campuses across the eastern United States and as far west as Oklahoma and South Dakota.  I have seen numerous loud and raucous protests—against the display I helped bring.  Protest members are students and faculty as well as non-university people.   In each of these cases, the university allowed the protests to proceed, deciding that they did not interfere with the functions of the university, in fact they understood that the protests augmented them!  They encouraged debate and the interchange of ideas.  They encouraged social activism.

Last year at a major university in Virginia we set up our large prolife display (eighteen 4 x 8 panels) at a busy foot traffic intersection.  The university gave two spots for counterdemonstrations, one on each side of us—a gay rights group fairly close, and a Planned Parenthood group about a block away.   The police kept the PP group at a distance so to minimize conflict, as they thought.  We have enough experience to know that protestors near the display only increase the attention it gets, so we never encourage the university to keep protestors away, unless, of course, they put up large sheets so others cannot see  our signs. It has happened. By the second day, most of the PP and pro-abortion-choice students were in right in front of our display engaged in multiple, long and sometimes intense conversation.

In short, universities limit educational opportunities when they unnecessarily suppress free speech as does UNCA and also, by the way, AB-Tech.

One thing I told the campus police.  I had as much right to stand on the sidewalk in that location with my sign as Vice President Joe Biden had to campaign for himself and President Obama inside the Justice Center.  We both were using public university facilities for private purposes.  One difference is that Biden did disturb university functions.

Biden and the general public were going inside and the university should have made provision for me and the general public to express our opposition to Biden and his agenda, express it directly to those who support him.  There is no legitimate reason why they could not have set up a secure protest area in proximity to the Justice Center.

My stand that lead to the arrest represents a simple concept--that I as a citizen of the United States have certain rights.  I have a fundamental right of free speech.  I have a right to be on public property if I have not done anything that revokes that right.  I did not disrupt any university function.  I was not a security risk to anyone.   Consider this, what does it say about our nation when a person, even in the special circumstances at UNCA, is arrested for simply holding a sign on a sidewalk?

Oh, and by the way, abortion hurts women.  What does that say about our nation?

A student at the University of Alabama meditates upon images of the Genocide Awareness Project in the spring of 2007.