Jenee Desmond-Harris at The Root reports that the dishonest pro-forced-birth ‘Life Always’ billboards in Chicago have been targeted by activists:
Controversial billboards in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood that feature an image of President Barack Obama and the words “Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted” were covered with fabric banners with messages scrawled in red paint today.
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One banner says: “In 21 minutes this sign should be gone.” Another, blown down by the wind, reads, “Abort Racism.”
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A group described as “social workers and community members,” claimed responsibility for the act in a statement emailed to the Chicago Tribune. The group said the ads were disrespectful and did not represent the views of the community and that “it wanted to replace the negative, condemning message with a positive one.”…
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But is covering up the message the best idea? There has to be a more effective response to these troubling — and ever-increasing — tactics than chasing them around hanging sheets over them…
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How about another billboard explaining what The Daily Beast reported today?
The DB article was written by Michelle Goldberg, who covers “Christian nationalism” as well as reproductive-rights politics:
It’s just the latest attempt by the antiabortion movement to wrap itself in the cloak of the civil-rights struggle. In February, Life Always erected a giant billboard in New York’s SoHo with a photograph of a young black girl under the words “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.” That was also the month white Republicans discovered their passion for racial justice, choosing a congressional debate to accuse Planned Parenthood of targeting African Americans.
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The website of Life Always lists its founder as a Texas African-American pastor named Stephen Broden… But dig a little deeper, and it’s clear that the man behind Life Always is Brian Follett, a white conservative activist from Austin, Texas. Follett was a major backer of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, donating more than $40,000 to the famous smear campaign. A passionate foe of abortion, in 2004 he founded a group called Majella Cares Outreach, with the goal of “reducing abortion through mass media education,” according to its website. In 2009, Majella rebranded itself as Heroic Media and expanded into Chicago and then into Florida. Life Always is simply a front for Heroic Media—Texas state records list Follett as Life Always’ registered agent, and both organizations have the same official address in Austin.
When ABL discussed these billboards last week, my suspicion was that Life Always is less interested in “educational outreach” than in concern-trolling for profit. Its NYC billboard got pulled, IIRC, after the rental company found some loophole in the terms-of-service agreement; Life Always used a stock photo of a young girl whose mother was not happy about it. But public outrage during its brief airing garnered them a ton of free press coverage, which I’m sure they’ll be using in fund-raising letters for years to come. The Chicago billboards seem like a blatant attempt to attract attention from the White House (the administration did once ‘discourage’ an outerwear company from using a stock photo of Obama on a Times Square billboard), in the (fortunately, so far, vain) hope of some negative comment that could be used as evidence of Big Brother government suppression of Tha Truth! ! ! next time Life-A needed to gin up donations.
I didn’t know, then, that Life-Always was a straight-up astroturfing scam with a fat white Texan bankroll behind it. But of course, as with Scooter Libby’s aspens, Republican activists“turn in clusters, because their roots are connected…”
Tom Levenson
The accumulation of data on just this blog in the last few days demonstrating the degree to which our “discourse” is a hall of mirrors is flat out depressing. It’s going to be a long road back to the point where it becomes possible even to imagine an actual useful public debate on just about anything. If we ever get back.
+2. Heading for +3…or more.
James E Powell
@Tom Levenson:
First, I don’t get the hall of mirrors metaphor.
Second, there are some issues on which people disagree strongly and permanently; no actual public debate will ever be useful. Abortion rights is probably the best example.
JITC
This campaign is insidious and gross on many levels. But the level that offends me the most is that it intends to convince people to de-fund and shut down their own gynecologist offices.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@James E Powell: Kind of like how that one Catholic guy can generate a shit ton of letters to the FCC and the like. A small cadre of activists work to look like a large mass of people on their side. If you look at all the voices that are bouncing around, they really only represent very few individual voices.
James E Powell
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Thanks.
I am not sure what we can do to get more people involved in public discussions of important issues.
piratedan
well who is funding these folks stalking abortion docs full time? These are the usual intimidation tactics employed by folks that are looking to impose their beliefs through whatever means necessary. Let me be clear on this, I’m not a big believer in abortion per se. I like it as an option of last resort for folks. I would be much more in favor of more funding for planned parenthood to offer reasonable alternatives for women that wish to be sexually active without getting pregnant. I’m all for the “morning after” pill (RU-586?) for anyone who unexpectedly was engaged in intercourse.
What bothers me about the abortion concern trolls is the tragic way that they use a fetus and the choice that a woman has to make regarding carrying a child to term as a method for imposing their ideology.
It would be reasonable to think that the effort that is made on behalf of the unborn would also include concern for their care while in the womb and after they are born. After all, these are innocent lives that should be cherished, if not nurtured, true? Regardless if “Mom” was raped, a drug addict, a drunk coed, if there was a case of incest, perhaps even that there is a danger to the health of the mother or even if the child is simply not wanted. It’s plainly obvious that the pro-life folks have little concern for the health of the child while it is being carried to term or what kind of life it will/could have once it is born because there is no money allotted for prenatal care or for the care and education of that child once it is born.
If we’re speaking purely on financial terms alone, who is going to enforce these new laws and statutes? Who is going to follow up on the paperwork to ensure that no violation of the law occurred? Nary a penny has been allocated for that as well. All of this culture war grandstanding just so these folks can have the joy of passing along this little financial tidbit to assuage their own feelings about poor women having sex.
No one of Importance
That’s nice, but as a man, your opinion on the subject is utterly irrelevant. Until, of course, you can get pregnant yourself.
Yes because it’s obviously – with it being so expensive in the USA, hard to get in many countries, and completely illegal in some of them – the option of first resort. Women so like getting their vaginas inspected and their moral character derided that they’re like, just queuing up in their lunch hours to get an abortion. It’s fun! It’s the in thing!
It’s humiliating, distressing and difficult. Shut your yap about ‘last resorts’.
Huh? You want abortion to be a last resort, but you’re ‘all for’ non-surgical abortions? Do you think it’s somehow less morally repugnant to your fine self if the conceptus is small enough to flush down the loo, rather than needing the intervention of a surgeon? If you don’t like abortion (see above) then you should be against the “morning after” pill. The pregnancy is still terminated. It’s aborted. Over. If you believe life begins at conception, it’s bye bye baby.
I’m all for non-surgical abortions. But I’d be even more for non-moralistic decisions about terminations that focus on what’s best for the mother and not about what PJ O’Rourke once referred to “a gob of meiotic cells that wouldn’t fill a coke spoon.”
I’m sure you consider yourself a liberal on this subject and a supporter of women’s rights. But your thinking is fuzzy and you still assume, as a man, you have any right to comment on something that you can never experience and will never ever need. Maybe you should work on that, sparky.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@No one of Importance:
honest question, sparkette.
so you have witnessed choice under attack, you have seen all manner of reversals, retreats, demagoguery on the issue. is it really a good time to beat up on people who ostensibly agree with you, merely because they have a penis. sure, in the personal decision of whether or not to have an abortion, i can see where you can say that it is the woman’s right, not the man’s. however, as a matter of law and public policy when the battle is enjoined on many fronts, why are you rejecting willing allies? are you saying that when the right wing, with no compunction about crossing gender, attacks a politician for a vote on the grounds that it “encourages” women to have abortion, a lowly man isn’t sufficient to debunk the conservative argument? you are really saying men don’t or shouldn’t have opinions on abortion? how absurd would it sound if i said women shouldn’t have opinions on war because its men that fight in them, mostly. regardless of how they may feel personally on abortion, and how one feels personally, is actually a seperate issue from whether or not abortion should be legal, you ought not to be alienating allies by telling them they don’t have a right to argue the same side you are arguing. in fact, maybe its men that are needed, to explain to the pro-life men, why abortion should be legal, because they sure aren’t hearing it from women.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Said it before and I’ll say it again (something which inspired enough flamewars at the GOS to get me banned 3 times) – this war was lost by the most ardent feminists of the early to mid 1970s.
They took the libertarian gift that Blackmun delivered – that there are inherently private issues in people’s lives that government may not intrude in – and immediately cut half the men out of the decision by framing the issue as “right to choose”.
That was fucked up in the extreme. Had abortion rights been treated seriously in the broader sense, the rhetorical field would not have been ceded to the preening moralists. At that point, all they had to do was to pick at all the underpinnings.
Remember the mocking derision of conservatives as to the notion of penumbras and rights to privacy? How about the complete takeover of the libertarian movement, when you’d get the libertarians whining about the judicial activism involved in abortion decisions, and decrying the notion that a judge would tell government to leave you alone?
What this country would have looked like without the hyperfem retards of the 70s wrecking a good libertarian decision – for abortion rights, for gay rights, for 4th amendment issues, for drug testing, for schools, etc.
For all their whimpering and whining, those hyperfems didn’t accomplish shit, except to disengage men from their causes.
No one of Importance
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Any man who wants to overlay any discussion about access to abortion with his personal moral judgement, is not an ally in this matter.
Very fucking absurd, as by your own statement, war is not fought exclusively by men. Unless you’ve got some awesome data to share with the class, pregnancy is the sole preoccupation and burden of those with female organs.
Tell you what. Men can exercise their moral judgement over abortion when women get to veto treatments for erectile dysfunction on the basis that sex is naughty, and on prostate cancer treatments on the basis that they’re unnatural and against God’s will. Or how about we make unanaesthetised circumcision mandatory for all adult males because some women like the look of cut dicks?
Sound fair to you?
I’m not. I’m telling a so-called ally to check his privilege and keep his prissy moral (and inconsistent) judgements to himself because they’re totally unwanted and unhelpful. If said so-called ally withdraws his support for the right to choose because he’s got his ickle fee fees hurt, then he was never an ally in the first place. Which is my point.
Why don’t you take your tone argument and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine? I’m not going to vagina-foot around a man waving his privileged dick in the air like it’s something clever or novel.
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
You have got to be shitting me. Feminists make men sexist? So sexism is all women’s fault?
Which cave did you crawl out of, Grog?
Doesn’t take much scratching to find the not-so-hidden misogynists on this blog, does it?
niknik
/Somebody/ got up on the wrong side of her vagina today.
Paul in KY
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: I look forward to your response. Yevgraf’s too.
weaselswords
@Tom Levenson:
Yeah, well the depressing part is that something that turns out to be a facade has been granted so much power, but I have to believe the upside is confirmation that our opposition is even smaller than suspected.
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
I think your overall argument is wrong (really? let’s blame the feminists?), but quotes like that just make you sound like an ass. You may not have been banned for your ideas….
piratedan
@No one of Importance:
You make the false assumption that I believe that a person begins at conception and I don’t believe that the answer is that simple (although in your opinion, I may be) and your subsequent “tower of shame” arguments that follow that implication are unhelpful and miss my point regarding the rights of women, and perhaps that is because I made it badly. I guess I’m part of the problem then? I didn’t realize that my fuzzy thinking had so affected the “discussion” that has led us down this path. Thanks for the clarity and the earnest discussion. I actually do believe that women should have a choice, that government shouldn’t be involved in that choice and any attempt to deprive her of that choice should be defended in words and deeds.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@No one of Importance:
yes how dare those silly menfolk dare to reach a moral opinion. don’t those silly geese know, morality is for girls. i think this current of the pro-choice movement is why it is losing ground.
i would say war is a fairly apt analogy actually,women’s role in war is about on par with men’s role in conception. title 9 is a better one, because women’s college athletics, much less the nascent attempts at women’s professional sports would not exist were it not for the revenues generated by men.
basically your argument is this, men make their choice when they choose to have sex. if they do, they are then consenting to a child being born, because they have no say in the matter after that. remember i am not talking about being the final authority on the matter, i am just talking about a final say.
so whereas your complaint against people who want to restrict access to abortion is that they want to take away rights from women,more broadly, that it is an attack against women. you see nothing wrong with taking the right away from men to have any input, even merely a moral or ethical opinion by the time conception is taking place. so from ejaculation to birth men have no rights, then after birth men magically have rights(fathers do have rights don’t they) and certainly financial obligations.
your rationale is as disconnected as the one you oppose.
the bottom line is, in the real world, abortion should be legal. we agree on that much. personally i have no moral qualms with it. i do think the father’s ability to provide for a child, not just financially should be a consideration.you seem to think men should function as mere cash registers,with all decision making after ejaculation being in the hands of the woman. they say when a man treats a woman as an amusing plaything she has the right to treat him as a cash register. the opposite is also true. you seem to advocate for the men who choose to see women as mere playthings. you aren’t leaving them any other terms to negotiate.
No one of Importance
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Abortion is a women’s health issue, not a moral football. Do you ask Baby Jesus whether your girlfriend should use tampons or pads? Do you want men to decide if women should have breast scans every year or two years?
Until the foetus is outside the woman’s body and draws its first breath, legally it has the same status as a tapeworm (at least in countries where the legislature isn’t *insane*.) Do you want a moral veto over tapeworms now?
So your real objection isn’t moral, it’s financial. Well, that fits with your overall self-centered views. But okay, say you have a point. We give men rights over the foetus because of their genetic input. How far does that go? Do we allow me to sue because their woman does or does not have an abortion as they wish? Do we allow men to tie women down and either injected her belly with brine to kill the foetus inside her, as they do with eight-month-pregnant women in China, or keep her immobile until she delivers your property intact?
Should you be allowed to impound a woman once you know she’s pregnant with your property, and prevent her from doing anything that might damage what’s yours, including driving, walking, eating leafy green vegetables (radiation, you see) or even talking to other women because they might encourage her to have an abortion?
If your woman’s in a coma and close to giving birth, do we allow you to cut your property from her womb just in case she dies and deprives you of an asset?
What about in a still birth situation? Should we cut the corpse in two and hand half over to you so you can carry out your ‘right’ to burial?
Do you get to sue your woman’s doctor if he aborts your property? Do you get to sue him if he doesn’t?
I’m sure in your world, none of the above is actually all that unreasonable.
In my world, you’re just fucking creepy. Keep your thoughts off my goddamn body and out of my uterus. If you’re so worried about being forced to pay for a child, then wear a little rubber thing on your cock, get a vasectomy, or stick to masturbation.