7/31 Abortion Demo in DC

The BBQ Pit
#1

So yesterday I managed to get out of work early, and I am driving home from downtown DC along 14th street to the bridge, then to the GW Parkway. Traffic of course is hellish, and 14th St across the mall is bumper to bumper.

Looking around, I see the tail end of a demonstration, a bunch of people standing by the roadside with their anti-abortion placards showing pitcures of aborted fetuses. I give them a cheery wave and point to the NOW bumper sticker on my vehicle proclaiming “Keep Abortion Legal.”

Now I have no problem with them demonstrating, and no problem with the placards as such. I’m a pretty hard core First Amendment person, and this is an area I think the ACLU (despite being a card carrying member) has simply got wrong - they are on the wrong side when they support the use of civil lawsuits and in particular Civil RICO to suppress anti-abortion protestors.

But that’s not the point here. As I get to the corner of the Mall, I realize why they chose this spot for the demonstration. It was centered on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. And those protestors left outside that place included many carrying placards not with pictures of fetuses, but instead pictures from extermination camps, carry a slogan along the lines of “They weren’t people either.”

I was stunned. I wanted to stop my car and start arguing, or at least give them the finger, but I could not see how I would get across that while I would go to the wall to defend their legal right to protest, they had chosen a despicable place and manner to do it. I hope they felt, in their warped little minds, it was worth it. I can’t imagine how it made any survivors or descendents of voctims who were visiting the place feel.

#2

It seems to be part of an organized movement. One of the recent talking points seems to be using the word eugenics to link Hitler and liberals and abortion. See this brief discussion at the Washington Monthly, for example.

Given that most people support abortion rights, hopefully this is the kind of over the top rhetoric that just turns people off, and resonates only with the pre-fooled.

Obviously it is exceptionally stupid to use the word eugenics in such a way. These people don’t care.

#3

I’m pro-choice but I sure wouldn’t want to see a demonstration of abortion.
Wait. . . that’s not what you meant at all, was it?
Arguing with a person who believes a zygote is the same as a fully developed Jew (or any other religion, race or creed) is useless. Good thing you didn’t bother to get out of your car to do it.

#4

Where are Jake & Elwood when you need 'em?

#5

The abortion debate has officially invoked Godwin’s Law.

#6

Huh. If only those nice jews had been adopted into loving families.

#7

All abortions are the same thing as the holocaust.

And all anti-choice protesters are a bunch of doctor killing, women hating, embryo worshipping backwards theocrats who want to outlaw not only abortion but birth control, IVF, evolution, working women, public schools, bikinis, optional church attendance and floridation.

See how that works? :wink:

#8

So if Bush = Hitler, and Hitler killed Jews, and Jews = abortion victims, that means…Bush is pro-choice? I am confused.

#9

I’m pro-choice, but I’m always astounded at the continual absence of realization that the other side believes that we’re killing babies.

If YOU believed we were killing babies through some action, wouldn’t YOU try to equate it with the holocaust? I would. I might even shoot people who were performing the baby killing activity. Well, I probably wouldn’t, but I could justify it.

#10

Yep. Although I doubt I’d go around killing abortion doctors. There are typically a million abortions (plus or minus) in the US every year. Frankly, I have no problem with that whatsoever. But… if I thought fetus = baby, I’d have a tremendous problem with that.

The fact is, there is no objective way to determine when a human being comes into existence through the process of conception, pregnancy, and birth. Being an atheist, I take a simple scientific approach to the matter. But if I were religious, especially of the Christian variety, I’d probably have a very difficult time rationalizing the idea that fetus ≠ baby.

#11

No, no, no, understanding is only a one way street.

#12

But…they DON’T actually believe that. If their real cause was preventing abortion rather than yelling at people and waving placards in front of the Holocaust museum, they wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail against birth control. The anti-abortion people are doing things that is making abortion more necessary and more common, and it’s not a coincidence. That’s why these people are so despicable–they’re just angry at the world and looking for an excuse to start a fight, and they have based their entire fake “belief” system on that desire.

#13

Case in point.

#14

I do so understand this. Which is why I said it was useless to try to argue with them.

#15

Yes, clearly anti-abortion folks show a thorough understanding of the other side of the debate.

#16

Clearly that is not what he said.

#17

And?

#18

:rolleyes:

#19

Yes, I know that is what they think. I also know Fred Phelps considers homosexuality to be a sin deserving execution, and considers the US government enables homosexuals, but I still think he is the scum of the earth for picketing funerals of homosexuals and military dead.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum isn’t the right place for that, even if you are trying to draw that comparison. If a bunch of protestors outraged at the death of children in developing countries caused by preventable diseases spread by water being used to make formula rather than breast feeding decided to protest outside the the Holocaust Museum against formula manufacturers, holding placards comparing a dead African infant to a pile of bodies waiting to be burned at Auschwitz, I would think they were total scum too. It’s not about the rightness of their cause, or not understanding them. It is about the total and utter lack of respect for a Memorial to the murder of millions upon millions of people, that is visited by survivors, descendants of survivors and victims, and those simply wishing to learn and memorialize. Given that, I don’t give a shit if they think abortion kills babies. They were in the wrong place.

#20

Maybe you are whooshing me, but if not, my point was that ignorance is not something to aspire too, even if your opponents are guilty of the same. Since brevity is the soul of wit, I thought “And?” was a much wittier response.