
News reports and our own counts indicated the pro-choice gathering of support for the new "target number 1" for the anti-abortion movement, Dr. LeRoy Carhart, outnumbered the "protesters" by 2:1. This was an overwhelmingly positive day of disciplined, fearless resistance against the reactionary and violent Operation Rescue mobilization, and exactly what needed to happen. Check out CNN's coverage, and these quotes from our side:
Michelle Fadeley drove from the Chicago area to support Carhart. "Someone who is willing to put his own life on the line to save thousands of other women's lives is truly a hero," said Fadeley, who works for a local Illinois chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Anthony Hardwick of Omaha clutched a sign that read "Women are not an incubator."
"What it means to me is that women are not solely for the purpose of procreation. They're not little vessels for men to plant their seeds in," he said.
Starting at 5am we stood in public support and protection of the clinic, staff, patients, and most of all the heroic doctor who will not compromise with the organized forces of dark-ages patriarchy, who chanted in response to our, "Welcome Welcome! This clinic stays open!" and "A baby's not a baby till it comes out! That's what birthdays are all about!" with "Trust GOD, not women!" and sent their spokespeople to tell the media, "We're not a violent movement. We've only killed 5 doctors." More to come...

Revcom.us: Abortion On Demand & Without Apology

Lining the street in support of Dr. Carhart

The antis begin to arrive, starting with the Fetusmobile

Forming a line to protect patients

No, it's not a public beheading of a man guilty of sex outside of wedlock. That's the Operation Rescue spokesman who told the Norwegian press that they've "only killed 5 doctors."


Our ad-hoc response to the fetusmobile

This woman does not only have an enormous amount of children, she also is representing the most violent faction of the "pro-life" movement. Her t-shirt reads "Visualize Abortionists on Trial." She had more kids than are shown here, also dressed in violence-inciting t-shirts.

Every time the antis started yelling at patients, or mumbling prayers at us, or singing (Silent Night, for some odd reason, given this is still August), we chanted again. Or, we sang our own song:
A woman has a right to live/a woman has a right to choose/a woman has a right to have a child/and she has the right to refuse!

Debra Sweet, Director of the World Can't Wait

Guarding the entrance and welcoming patients

Abortion is not a four-letter word.

Keep Abortion Legal (and don't let our doctors get picked off, intimidated, or injured; stop shaming women, and while we're at it, end the oppression of women!)
This is not over. Operation Rescue may have been greatly outnumbered and upstaged this weekend, but they are not going away, and the anti-abortion movement overall will not stop until there is no abortion access, no birth control, and the submission of women is hammered into place.
Debra Sweet spoke in front of the clinic:


Salon.com
Comments
Rated because you were there. Bravo!
http://www.trust-women.org/
This is the fund that supports Dr. Carhart's work in providing low income women with abortions when they need them.
I also agree with you that we need to protect this good doctor. He has bodyguards, but as a friend from the National Lawyers Guild who was with us in Omaha said, these forces are not only training and encouraging people to carry out assassinations, but are building the political climate to support such acts. This is why it is so important to build our *own political movement to support abortion rights broadly and defeat this dark-ages morality that utterly devalues women's lives. This is why I support World Can't Wait (and you can too, at: http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=4&Itemid=4 )
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39024657@N07/sets/72157622188586772/