Think Pink
Each year, the Houston Coalition for Life (HCfL) sponsors ’40 Days for Life’ during which they maintain a 24 hour presence outside of various Planned Parenthood clinics. Though the event is designed to be disruptive to Planned Parenthood, it tends to accomplish the exact opposite. At any given time, one or two people end up standing outside of the clinic quietly praying (my favorite type of protest) and most clients don’t even notice they are there. However, the press that HCfL puts out for the event ends up inadvertently recruiting dozens of new Planned Parenthood volunteers who stay on afterwards. In addition, monetary donations always increase as a result of the event, helping us to better provide for our clients.
...then came this morning’s volunteer e-mail from the Houston Coalition for Life:
Today Planned Parenthood covered their front windows with pink bows. These are not the breast cancer awareness bows, they are a little darker. While we don’t really understand the significance, we think that they must represent the baby girls who are aborted every week in their abortion facility. We are wondering when they will add the little blue bows to the front of their building, maybe tomorrow.
That’s good stuff – I am SO tempted to tie ribbons of all different colors to the windows just to see what HCfL comes up with as an explanation :-)
posted by Nicholas at 10:20 AM
4 Comments:
Hmmm...interesting. Doesn't look like you're being completely, though, a quick search on Planned Parenthood and 40 days of life shows that it might be at least a little effective, if not in Houston, at least in other places. The fact that the "abortion fortress" in Aurora, Illinois is still closed seems to imply that it was at least moderately successful at disrupting business there. It also looks like the clinic in Bryan, Texas took it a little bit serious, if they chose to put up a black mesh screen; usually businesses don't spend money on things like that for no reason, right? Now granted, you probably have a better grasp on things in Houston, than I do, but it seems as though your experience doesn't necessarily match up with the results seen in other places.
Hi BJ,
Good comment, though it's helpful if you provide links to your sources (especially with a contentious issue like this one where misinformation abounds). You are right - my observations deal with the clinic at which I volunteer. As for the others, the two questions which come to mind are:
1) Did shutting down the clinic in Aurora reduce the number of abortions in that area or just the number that PP performed?
2) Considering that many poor people use PP as a key health service, is shutting down a clinic a good thing? (clients who want abortions will likely go elsewhere to get them - what about those who come for other reasons?)
BJ - the Planned Parenthood clinic that provides an array of family planning services in Aurora is now successfully opened because the community was so outraged that a few outlyers tried to shut down the only access in the area to affordable and accessible birth control (for the record, they expect less than 10% of the services they will provide to the community will be in the form of abortion).
The Aurora clinic successfully opened because the local community wanted it and though the protesters tried to block it through taking it to court for zoning violations they shot down by the legal system. For the record, the only about 10% of that clinic's services will be abortion. The rest will be inexpensive family planning, counseling, well women exams, breast exams, etc.
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