Operation Rescue Protests Carhart's Clinic in Nebraska

This past weekend, Operation Rescue put its efforts towards boycotting LeRoy Carhart's clinic in Nebraska. Check out the video below called "You can't handle the truth, " where Troy Newman continuously harasses NOW volunteers, as well as our FMF volunteers (not pictured in the video). As you will see, he tries to give NOW pro-choice supporters a sonogram from a mother who had planned on terminating her pregnancy, but instead decided to carry out the pregnancy. He actually says, "I guess there is only one kind of choice for these people, and that's to kill their baby. " REALLY. The film gave me chills; Troy Newman is horrifying.

While it seems almost counter-intuitive to show footage of Troy Newman on our blog, I wanted to show the footage to thank all of the supporters for their bravery. Getting between Troy Newman and his "truth vans" and Carhart's clinic was courageous, and I encourage their behavior.

I guess the message is: Keep fighting!!

Msg from Ellie Smeal: Dr. Carhart needs your help!

Operation Rescue of Wichita, Kansas, has a new target: Dr. Leroy Carhart and his clinic in Bellevue, Nebraska.

Dr. Carhart had traveled to Wichita each month to work with Dr. Tiller, who was murdered in May. Dr. Carhart needs our help now. The situation is urgent.

Troy Newman of Operation Rescue has announced a new multi-group campaign called "Keep it Closed," which aims to make sure Dr. Carhart does not open a late abortion clinic in Wichita, any other place in Kansas, or nearby Nebraska.

And Newman hoped "through the use of peaceful, legal means" that Dr. Carhart "will soon be out of the abortion business for good." Operation Rescue is initiating targeted demonstrations and so-called "street counseling" in Omaha and at Carhart's Bellevue clinic August 28-29.

We must do all we can to keep Dr. Carhart and his staff safe and his clinic safe and open.

You can help Dr. Carhart and his embattled clinic by making an emergency, tax-deductible contribution today. Half of your contribution will go directly to Dr. Carhart's clinic to defray the increased legal and skyrocketing security costs - a new metal detector to screen everyone entering the clinic, more security cameras, and other enhanced security measures.

And the other half of your emergency contribution will support our efforts to help keep this clinic and other targeted and embattled clinics nationwide safe and open. Since Dr. Tiller's murder, hostile activities towards clinics are increasing in more than 10 states against abortion providers.

We are working closely with Dr. Carhart, his clinic staff, federal and local law enforcement, and pro-choice community volunteers to prepare for the Operation Rescue-led demonstrations.

Escalating activities targeting Dr. Carhart and his staff eerily resemble the harassment of Dr. Tiller. Operation Rescue has posted photos of Dr. Carhart on their website and has submitted a formal request to Nebraska's Attorney General to investigate Dr. Carhart on many of the same allegations previously used to investigate Dr. Tiller.

Dr. Carhart needs our help. Without clinics, there can be no choice for women. Please make a special tax-deductible emergency contribution now.

Together, we can make a difference.

For Women's Lives,

Eleanor Smeal
President

P.S. Dr. Carhart needs our help now. Keep this doctor and his staff safe and his clinic open - and help clinics nationwide.

FemNews: the Operation Rescue Counter Protest

Hello, everyone! So, as you saw yesterday, some of the FMF interns were planning to go to an Operation Rescue protest at the Capitol, and have a peaceful counter-protest. Well, we did it! It wasn't exactly what we expected it to be, but I think we did a good job of getting our message out! Check out the video!

Anti-Choice's Next Generation

As a thirteen-year old who is avidly pro-choice, it was fascinating to go undercover to attend an anti-abortion rally, ostentatiously entitled "Building a Culture of Life in an Obama Presidency".

In order to blend into the crowd, I was forced to don an impenetrable good Christian, anti-choice facade. The irony is I am an atheistic Democrat (raised Jewish, no less) who has been fighting for women’s reproductive rights since second grade. Not only that, but I attended the rally with my extremely pro-choice godparents, who helped defend women’s health clinics from anti-abortion blockades in the 1990s. In trying to look relatively conservative, we ended up looking like the model Christian family.

I’ll never forget the things I saw last night. They left me as much with a sense of bewilderment as they did hope and fear.

Out of everything at that rally (the almost entirely male group of speakers, the prayers for the dead babies, and the creepy obsession with controlling women’s lives that seems to be the norm for anti-abortion groups), by far the most interesting was the ‘devotion’ of the teenagers present.

This rally was planned and attended by teens enrolled in Survivors LA. Survivors LA is made to empower anti-choice youth to activism. In the words of one camper, "The training goes beyond becoming a warrior, to becoming a fully equipped leader in the war on abortion." It sounds awfully scary, especially considering the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller.

These teens are fed pure propaganda and a cult-like mentality to this one cause. Last night, they were wearing the Survivors LA t-shirts emblazoned with biblical passages and the camp's grisly logo, which appears to be the skeleton of a fetus. They were sitting in the front rows of the church where the rally took place. They prayed when they were told to pray, clapped when they were told to clap, and joked around with Troy Newman and Jeff White. Probably, the reason they attended the rally was because they were told to.

Have you ever seen The Manchurian Candidate?

The fact is, these teens are only shown one side of the abortion topic. The only things they see are those gruesome pictures of dismembered fetuses, which are not even legitimate, and are pure propaganda. They've probably never seen the pregnant fourteen-year-old who died in a back-alley abortion because she lives in a mandatory parental notification state.

These teens probably hear many a glowing success story about adoptions and foster care before they hear even one about those foster children who don't live so happily ever after, the children who end up unwanted, unloved, and unadopted.

Maybe these kids would be pro-choice if they had only been given all the information. Maybe if they had been presented both sides of this hefty, multi-faceted issue, they would have chosen differently. After all, restrictions on abortion (and contraception) have a huge negative impact on teens.

In fact, the latest report on teen pregnancy stated that in 2006-2007, teen pregnancy rates increased while the number of teens using contraceptives decreased.

One would think that these teens would side with their peers, but mysteriously, they still side with the unborn, not the sixteen-year-old whose life could be destroyed by an illegal, unsafe abortion.

2004 Rolling Stone article details campaign against Tiller

Rolling Stone Magazine published an article in 2004, entitled The Anti-Abortion Campaign Against Dr. George Tiller which displayed the daily work of members of Operation Rescue in Wichita, Kansas. From activities such as stalking clinic employees to their homes, to digging through their trash to find information about past patients, the article describes head of Operation Rescue Troy Newman as stopping at nothing to get his anti-choice point across. Newman, who moved his entire family to Wichita (so that he could harass Tiller on a more personal note), spent his free time while not harassing clinic employees threatening local business owners to stop serving Dr. Tiller, or face the risk of losing business.

In a town where seven out of ten residents are anti-choice, such blackmail could truly damage a business. The article describes how Newman’s supposed “successful” boycott of cab companies prevented many women from being able to access the clinic. In response, Tiller’s clinic had to start a shuttle service to pick up women up. I believe that Operation Rescue does not realize that as much as they harass the clinic, women still need the services that the clinic provides, thus they will continue going.

I think that perhaps one of Operation Rescue’s lowest blows is the use of helpless children to scare clinic employees. The article explain how Rescue’s team told children that Dr. Tiller and his staff were “baby-killers,” and pleaded with children to knock on the doors of clinic employees and kindly ask them to consider changing occupations. Taking advantage of children who probably still think that babies come from storks is incomprehensible.

However, the most chilling message through the article was Newman’s statement that “‘Wichita isn't big enough for George Tiller and me,’ [he] declared in a full-page ad he took out in a Catholic paper called The Wanderer.” While this Rolling Stone article was written half a decade ago, it is horrifying that this article remains relevant, and that Operation Rescue continues to threaten the lives of clinic employees on a daily basis.

Dr. Tiller's Clinic the new Operation Rescue Headquarters?

According to the Huffington Post and the Associated Press, Operation Rescue is looking at purchasing Dr Tiller’s old clinic! I was in so much shock that I had to search several other papers to see if it was true. And it is! Newspaper after newspaper said that the anti-choice group has been making plans to purchase the recently closed clinic.

Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, says that the organization is having discussions about buying the recently closed clinic and converting it into “a center for life.” Dr. Tiller’s clinic should not be used as the headquarters for a group that so vehemently opposes women and tirelessly works to destroy women’s lives.

If the group succeeds in purchasing the building, which would be horrifying, the building would stand not as a “center for life” but rather as a constant reminder of the battle for reproductive rights in the United States, and how far our society still needs to go. There are still fake clinics . There are still women that do not have the options that are legally given to them. Abortion is legal, but until there is access for women, there is still work to be done.

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