Abortion

12th & Delaware - Abortion and CPCs

Boring, boring, boring.

Last night I watched the new HBO documentary entitled “12th and Delaware.”  On the corner of that street in Fort Pierce, Florida there is an abortion clinic called “A Woman’s World” and right across the road is an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center” called, uh, well I don’t remember their name and I’m too lazy to do the research but it’s something like Pregnancy Center.

The show basically depicted a week (or so) in the lives of the folks who work in each facility.  The cameras focused more on the anti-abortion center and their efforts to persuade women from having abortions.

They started off by taking us inside the anti-abortion center where some “counselor” is trying to convince a young woman to have the baby.  The one thing that they didn’t tell us was how the young girl actually got into the anti-abortion center.   Did she go there thinking she was going to an abortion facility or did she just go there on her own free will?   I ask because the pro-choice movement makes a big deal out of these center luring women under false pretenses.  But I suspect that these women, and several others after her, went in on their own and just sat there and listened to a bunch of drivel about how abortion causes breast cancer, how it makes it more difficult to have future babies, how it makes you go psycho, etc.  A few of the women actually told the counselor that they were going to have the abortion but they still remained in the facility.  One even shared a MacDonald’s lunch with the counselor.  I know I was missing something.

Then, at one point a young lady tells the counselor that she will not have the abortion.  Praise Jesus!   We’ve saved a baby!  The counselor was in tears.  Hurray, we’ve convinced another indigent, 17 year old to bear another baby to add to the welfare rolls!

Boring.

Then the cameras shifted to a pathetic group of anti-abortion protestors who were standing outside the clinic.  One female octogenarian would wave a little plastic fetus at the women as they walked into the facility.  Then, accompanied by dark, foreboding music, the cameras turned to a stocky, young lad in sunglasses and a too tight biker t-shirt.  They followed him as he tailed a yellow Mustang that was used by the clinic staff to escort the abortion doctor (who had a bed sheet over his head).  This protestor was your typical misogynistic, chauvinistic, supercalifragilistic white trash, probably divorced with three kids from three different mothers, recently lost his job at the auto body shop type of a protestor.  I swear to God that when he finally caught a glimpse of the abortion doctor, when he actually saw the vile abortionist’s face, Joe Six Pack had an orgasm.

Boring.

Then there was the abortion doctor.  I know docs have been killed over the last two decades.  I personally knew 3 of them quite well.  I know more might get killed.   On the other hand, I cringe when I see a doctor, like the one who worked at this clinic, putting a bed sheet over his head as he is driven into the garage of the clinic.  I know it’s for security reasons.  I get it, I get it.  But I also think that the doctor hiding in the shadows bit perpetuates the abortion stigma.  Fortunately, on the other hand, there are so many other abortion doctors who walk into their clinic, face held high and even talk to the protestors.  Yes, they may be carrying a gun and they’re on red alert, but I prefer that approach to the “I will not show my face” approach.

So, in the end I learned nothing new.  The activities of the anti-abortion counseling centers have been the subject of congressional hearings in the 1990’s, “exposes” by Prime Time and Nightline and numerous articles in the mainstream media.  We know they’re out there and I basically don’t like it but nothing will change.  The protestors, the phony counselor and the abortion clinic staff will continue to go about their business.

Boring…