Anti-choice invaders in my community!

Hello everyone.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve been around here.  Technical difficulties, and lot’s of work to do have kept me away, but I now find myself returning for a special occasion; the invasion of MY area by perhaps the most radical of the nations prominent pro-life groups,  and MY first chance to get out and DO something about this issue in the REAL WORLD, instead of just ranting on the internet.

I live in a small town in New Mexico, called Los Lunas.  It’s an easy half hour drive to Albuquerque, which is one of only two real cities in this state.  Since the horrific death of Dr. Tiller, in Kansas, Operation Rescue, headed up by it’s truly insane, misogynistic president Troy Newman, has declared Albuquerque the New "abortion capitol".  You see, a new doctor, Dr. Curtis Boyd, has just opened an abortion clinic in Albuquerque, which offers late term abortions, now the third such clinic in the nation.

I subscribe to the e-mail news letters of several anti-choice groups to keep tabs on them, and from an Operation Rescue news letter, I have learned that they have already sent their "truth truck" to scope things out.  IT seems that they will be renting a permanent office space near Dr. Boyd’s clinic, to make it trivial to drive down the street a couple blocks and terrorize him, and his patients.

I doubt I can actually stop this, but I think it would be of great benefit to meet Operation rescue with as much resistance as possible, if nothing else, to let Dr. Boyd, who just opened his clinic, and his patients, know that they have support.  Our support could even help keep this new clinic open, and keep this brave doctor from going elsewere.  Albuquerque has a large Catholic population that isn’t friendly to abortion doctors.

I have heard nothing from any of the pro-choice groups whose news letters I get, and I chack a variety of blogs.  So far, there is nothing about any form of demonstration, so I have decided to orchestrate one myself.  I have friends, and they have friends, and I believe I can accumulate 50-100 in the comming weeks, and possibly even more. with help from social netwroking sites.

Unfortunately, I don’t quite now what I’m doing.  I have never had any opportunity to da anything like this before.  I just turned 18 in  April, so I could have done very little in the past.  I aslo live in a very rural state, and there seems to be very little consequential political or social action out here.  This is the exception.  Another potential problem is that I am male.  Other’s have known about these events much longer than I have.  I found other feminist sites blogging about it.  One even helplessly asks "if anyone hears abuot a protest or something, let us know."  The clock is ticking, no one is doing a thing, and I’m local.  But the only reason I speak on abortion at all is because, if some horde of religious nuts tried to impose an irrational restriction on me, like, say, forcing me to save every sperm cell my body ever makes, I would NOT want my female friends to abandon me, saying "I’m a girl, it’s none of my business."  I would want their help, and the vast majority of women I know feel similarly.  However, It may look bad to have a male orchestrator, especially since most pro-life people are men, and this incident would make it look like al the leaders on all sides are male, which would NOT be good at all.

What should we do?  Chain someone to their door?  Egg their vehicles?  Just march and be obnoxious?  Should I find a female friend to take charge of the event?  Please share thoughts and ideas.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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