In 1973, The legendary Roe Vs Wade case was brought to the supreme court. The decision made was that the right to privacy stated in the US constitution did indeed protect a woman in her personal decision to have an abortion. Of course this decision sparked a lot of controversy, especially within religious and conservative people.
People like Mike, who I interviewed this morning at around 10, a whole two hours after he had arrived. He said he didn't know how long he planned on staying, it simply depended on the lighting. Mike was (and as of this moment still is) standing on the corner of Hempstead turnpike, right next to the freshman dorms. He chose the spot because of the "visibility" it gave him. I asked him what responses he had received at that point and he told me he had not received any negative responses, but two young girls gave him a very positive response as they walked by. Considering he was standing at the edge of a campus full of very liberal students, down the street from a planned parenthood organization, I found that a bit odd. But that was just the beginning.
Mike told me that he had been actively protesting abortion clinics for a total of 20 years. 20 whole years and he has never had any former education of abortion or sexual reproduction. He says "you don't need an education" because the information is available online. Information such as his statistic that more than 90% of abortions are performed out of "convenience." He then stated that "less than 2% of abortions are performed for health reasons." Statistics he stated he got online.
Realizing that he had no formal education or even basic knowledge of abortions, I asked him the latest time a woman could get an abortion. He said very quickly "up to nine months." As I went further into questioning, knowing that this was a false statement, he changed his answer to "up to nine months in Maryland, it's not the same in New York. In New York it's until the third trimester. But that also can change in the interest of the mother." He then went on to tell me a huge "secret" that is being kept.
According to Mike, the government is planning to change abortion policies to allow women to have abortions at any point of their pregnancy. Not only that, there is a plan to change the meaning of what the needs of the mother are. As opposed to "for the life of the mother," the term will become "for the health of the mother" including mental, physical, familial, and financial health, thus "giving women any reason to abort."
The question I really wanted to ask was "how did you manage to spend 20 years surrounding yourself in all of this and still remain so misinformed?" I refrained, of course. What I did ask, though, was if he could explain the abortion process to me. His response was "It doesn't really matter." Obviously this man wasn't particularly knowledgeable, but he still had an opinion.
His opinion being that "abortion is a terrible injustice." Mike may not know much about what he is defending, but he knows what he thinks about it. Mike thinks that women should just raise the children they don't want. I asked him if he thought that women who had experienced sexual assault should be forced to do that as well and his response was that I should "think about all the ancestors who were sexually assaulted, they raised their kids!" I was absolutely disgusted by his lack of compassion to the women who are suffering because of the choices they aren't allowed to make. He stated that in those cases of sexual assault where a women seeks to have an abortion, "killing an innocent child compounds their guilt." So in sum, he thinks that after a women loses control over her body in one of the most traumatizing ways possible, he is doing them a favor by making them have no say in what goes on with their bodies once more.
We also discussed the main goal of his protesting. I asked if he would like to see all planned parenthood's shut down despite the other resources they provide. He absolutely thinks they should be shut down because he does not support the access to sex education due to its "promotion of promiscuity," and reasons that it is the start of the problem. According to him it is like "having a class on drunk driving and not saying that alcohol is bad."
The last question I asked Mr. Mike was
"Do you think if you take these resources away from women there will be an increase of unsafe at-home practices such as 'coat-hanger abortions'?"
To which he replied that the year of the Roe V Wade decision "there were only 39 deaths from illegal abortions, not the thousands that people think there were." Which he somehow thought would help his argument. I asked again if he thought there would be an increase in deaths from these unsafe practices as a result of the lack of resources. "It's possible. There could be a slight increase, it's possible."
This was only one man from the anti-women --I'm sorry, 'Pro-life'-- movement. One self mis-educated man spreading incredibly wrong and damaging information, and practically every pro-life person I've met has the same reasoning! This is the exact reason why we need resources like planned parenthood. Knowledge is power and we need to keep ourselves charging.
