First rally: Monday, Nov. 5, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., public sidewalk in front of Flagstaff Planned Parenthood on South Plaza Way.

As many of you know, Flagstaff Planned Parenthood has recently begun to experience weekly anti-choice protests by fundamentalist Christians (see background information below). The protestors are not simply exercising their First Amendment right to free speech – they are harassing patients, family and friends by shouting through bullhorns, taking photographs of people entering and leaving the clinic, standing in the shopping center parking lot and handing people pamphlets, and generally behaving in an abusive manner. Several protestors have been cited for disorderly conduct. Nearby business owners and patrons have also spoken of harassment. These protests take place on Thursdays.

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact me and I’ll send you a weekly e-mail to let you know the day and time of the weekly rally. Lisa Rayner, Lisa@LisaRayner.com

Background on the anti-choice protestors

The protestors belong to NAU Students for Life and the Flagstaff Chapter of Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. Members have also been tabling with graphic photographs of late term fetuses on the NAU campus and outside Flagstaff high schools. Members attended a fundamentalist “pro-life boot camp” this summer. They hold extremist views on sex and contraception. For example, they lie to people about hormonal birth control and emergency contraception, claiming that birth control causes abortion (in reality, hormonal birth control methods prevent ovulation). They consider a single-celled fertilized egg that has not yet implanted in a uterus to be the moral equivalent of an infant (or adult woman for that matter). “Survivors” chapter leader “Bud” Shaver was arrested in July in Wichita, Kansas for entering a Lutheran church during the Sunday service and screaming Bible verses at the congregation (a doctor who runs a women’s clinic is a church member).

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 9:17 pm and is filed under feminist, local events, take action. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.