The usual contingent of anti-choice protesters lined up outside the Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville, AL today – fewer than 24 hours after three people were killed inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. The Huntsville group didn’t change their tactics or their methods one bit. If anything, they were even more offensive than usual.
They used a bullhorn and sound system to blast prayers and sermons. Then it got worse. They started singing – and all I can say is “don’t quit your day jobs” – or get a pitch pipe, or something. Clinic defenders were bombarded with rousing classics like “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (with much emphasis on the phrase “terrible swift sword” –seriously!), and “Amazing Grace.” Shockingly they had to have actual song sheets for that one because they didn’t know the words.
Their rhetoric was as off-kilter as their singing was off-key. “I hear there are some vacancies in Colorado Springs,” one of the regulars taunted clinic defenders. “Why don’t you go there?”
Um… one of those “vacancies” in Colorado Springs is with the police force. How is it possible to celebrate the death of a officer whose wife and two small children are now planning his funeral?
Go there and do what, exactly? Clean up the blood? Or become the next victim of an unhinged angry white guy with easy access to guns? The scene was surreal: people were standing in front of a public school and seamlessly cycling between gloating about a domestic terrorist attack, praying the Rosary, and singing Christmas carols.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise: they keep telling us that they’re too dangerous to be allowed near schoolchildren. Maybe now the Huntsville Police Department and City Council will believe them.
Note: although some local police departments increased patrols and security around clinics after yesterday’s events, Huntsville police were nowhere to be seen.
Cross-posted at LeftInAlabama.com