I have seen and heard a lot of crazy things doing pro-life work. A male protestor holding a sign that read “My uterus is my private property.” A student who told me that there was no moral difference between the Holocaust and a chicken farm. A philosophy student who was successfully convinced that he didn’t exist. A young man who freely admitted that in his worldview, I had the right to shoot him in the head if he got in my way.

But by far the most bizarre form of “counter-protest” I and my fellow pro-lifers have faced are the abortion advocates dressed as genitalia.

Both in downtown Calgary and in Vancouver, we have encountered abortion advocates dressed up in penis and vagina costumes. This is one of the scenes I encountered at the Genocide Awareness Project Display at UBC last year: http://arccsynergy.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/groupshot.jpg

Now, considering the fact that the abortion movement as a whole has become increasingly strident and illogical—as is evidenced by their desertion of science for pure polemics (one of their newest preferred signs simply shows a picture of a scissors with the phrase “If you can cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?”)—I shouldn’t be surprised.

What did surprise me was a summary of their new “protest”, related on a website run by a group of self-proclaimed “unapologetic reproductive justice activists” called “The Abortion Gang”.

In an article entitled “Fear, Loathing and Dancing Genitalia”, one of the abortion gangsters referring to herself as “Just Jane” describes this new counter-protest as a way of combating the strategies espoused and practiced by the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. In her words, “The alleged dismembered foetuses plastered on trucks and held up by street protesters assault unsuspecting drivers and passersby like a perverted flasher in a school playground”, describing one woman who claimed that she “felt like she had been mugged.”

While I’m sure the images disturbed her, I can assure her that her shock and anger feel substantially less terrible than having your arms and legs sucked from your body and your skull crushed. But I get the point: the abortion gangsters feel that the exposure of the status quo is offensive and disturbing. Furthermore, it is equivalent to emotional terrorism if not physical violence.

Just Jane continued that due to the behaviour of us “contemptuous, loathsome morons” who should be prosecuted for “hate crimes”, she decided with one of her friends that they had to act out in a decisively drastic manner. “Don’t ask me how or why”, she relates gleefully, “but I happen to have access to giant genitalia costumes—a penis made of a wonderful foamy material with testicles that bounce on my feet as I walk topped off with faux sperm made of bent white pipe cleaners” in addition to a rather intricate vagina costume.

The final irony is her description of one woman’s reaction to their arrival at a pro-life street display of graphic images.

“One woman drove around the block several times to scream,” Just Jane stated, “and say, ‘Life isn’t just about a penis and vagina.’ On her fourth time around, I calmly told her, ‘No, but it does all start there, Ma’am.’” (Italics mine.)

I’m not sure if she even realized it, but Just Jane cut straight to the heart of the abortion debate in her reply to this woman. Even while she denies that the unborn have any value, she is forced to admit in an unguarded moment that life begins at conception—that, in her words, “it does all start there.”

No matter how irrational and deranged these abortion advocates seem, as they increasingly cling to ever tenuous justifications of a procedure that North Americans are realizing in increasing numbers is un-ethical, if not murder, they cannot deny the biological facts.

And aside from dressing up as genitalia and recycling increasingly trite bumper sticker slogans that ring ever hollow in a society that possesses the tools to look within the womb, it has become apparent that they really have no argument left to present.

The Abortion Gang article: http://abortiongang.org/2010/10/fear-loathing-and-dancing-genitalia/

Abortion lobby's desertion of science: http://vanmaren88.blog.ca/2011/01/19/the-pro-abortion-war-on-science-10391261/