This husband famously stood up to anti-choice protesters at a reproductive health clinic. It was the worst day in his life as he'd had to escort his pregnant wife to terminate what was a very badly wanted pregnancy due to the fact that their fetus had no kidneys, no bladder, and a zero chance of survival outside of the womb. Here's his story below:
"You’re killing your unborn baby!" That’s what they yelled at me and my wife on the worst day of our lives. As we entered the women’s health center on an otherwise perfect summer morning in Brookline, two women we had never met decided to pile onto the nightmare we had been living for three weeks. These "Christians" verbally accosted us—judged us—as we steeled ourselves for the horror of making the unimaginable, but necessary, decision to end our pregnancy at 16 weeks.
After extensive testing at a renowned Boston hospital three weeks earlier, we were told our baby had Sirenomelia. Otherwise known as Mermaid Syndrome, it’s a rare (one in every 100,000 pregnancies) congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together. Worse than that, our baby had no bladder or kidneys. Our doctors told us there was zero chance for survival.
This man, a journalist, a husband, and a father to a two-year old child, could've ignored the protesters, and walked past them like all the other people usually do. Instead, he decided to confront them, fueled by pure adrenaline and anger at the external pain these protesters were inflicting upon his wife.
I learned a few important things from this encounter. First, these people aren’t used to being confronted. They prey on the weak and they pounce on the wounded. It’s easy to berate people and shame them when they’re too beaten down to fight back. But I chose to do just that, and you can see what happened.
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The most telling thing about their cowardice is when the woman on the right gets upset that I’m recording the conversation (which is perfectly legal) and then threatens to call the police. The irony is rich. She wanted to call the police because I was peacefully expressing my opinion on a public sidewalk and exercising my First Amendment rights, which is exactly what she was doing. But I’m not on "God’s side," am I.
We need more people like him to confront these anti-choice protesters. As he said, these people really aren't used to being confronted and being challenged. They seem to think that everyone going into the clinic is going for an abortion, when in reality, most of these women are going in for preventative health services such as birth control, screenings, health care, and sex education.
As you can see, this man's story about the decision he and his wife had to make, is already being trolled by dense anti-choice activists who don't seem to get what "no chance of survival" means. You can leave a comment here to show your support if you'd like.
With that said--this story can be seen analogically as well in politics where Republican teabagger activists are concerned. A lot of times, these Republicans are full of bluster, and they think they won't be challenged on it. They're always surprised and outraged whenever someone actually does challenge them. They in short, are ideological bullies, who seek to poison our form of government into a bizarre ogligarchy to benefit their corporate donors.
Many of them are unwitting dupes, unable to reason any further than their anger that clouds their minds, and quite many are willing participants as long as it means their political enemies are taken down. They're ready to vote in a week. We need to stand up to them just like that brave man stood up to these crazed anti-abortion activists. We need to keep on phonebanking, volunteering, and donating to progressive candidates to keep our majority in the House.
Without our progressive candidates such as Grayson, Feingold, Grijalva, Boxer, and others fighting for us in Congress, it means that the ideology of the teabaggers have won with the help of corporations who want to outsource more of our jobs overseas. Help us prevent this dystopian nightmare from happening by committing to help one of these great progressive activists below:
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We have now seven days to do this. In a week, our lives could change, as could the future of the Democratic Party.