I visited another planet last week. But as soon as I stepped off the ship, I wished I had worn better clothes, ones that would protect me from this ice-cold vacuum. I wouldn’t have minded a helmet to muffle the ear-piercing sounds too. And unfortunately for me, my shoes were rung to a pulp, seeing as every woman who had walked before me had already worn them.
It had to have been another planet to look like this. The majority of its people were walking right through bloodied corpses that screamed crucifixion with hardly a passing glance. I’d never seen anything this blatantly vulgar in my life. And it wasn’t until about halfway through this maze of absolute atrocity that I realized I would never make it out.
Our school welcomes organized protest. “Welcome to the real world,” they say, and then hand us a microphone. It encourages free speech, as it should. But last week when that freedom was used to condemn and ostracize an entire group of “dirtied” people, I felt any previous concept of freedom had been compromised. With no shame, people shoved pictures of back-alley abortions in my face and excused it as religious expression.
I overheard a rape victim argue for a choice when circumstances had already been so cruel to her. The protester shrugged with little sympathy. They were literally preaching that it was the victim’s fault for being too scantily clad. I can’t help wondering where this woman is now. Surely not sleeping soundly — more likely than that, she’s drowning herself in regret for surviving something she had no control over, but is being blamed for.
It’s safe to say the rally hurt more people than it helped — but do the protesters know exactly to what length it has really damaged people? People say “Hell hath no fury like a mother.” How about “Hell hath no fury like an expectant mother after she aborts her own child?” So if there is need to crucify the “sinner,” keep in mind she has already “Hail-Mary-ed” more than you can ever count.
If you hear a man shout, do you listen? Well if it it’s the Lord Almighty and you’re a follower of a religion that praises Him, you better listen. And if you’ve committed the crimes he says, you better beg for forgiveness. But what do you do when it’s man shouting on God’s behalf? He’s got no right degrade you. But he’ll fight like hell to make you forget it.
It is hard to remember that religion was once a place to flock to when now all I want to do is run away from it. Only God can judge the living and the dead, they say. Then why are all these mortals telling me I’ve sinned?
Another sign depicted a scene from Auschwitz, and called abortion “just another form of genocide.” A woman raised her voice to the man holding the sign and said, “My family died in the Holocaust and this offends me.” The man apologized and shrugged. Apparently he didn’t see the offensive incongruence.
Rally members, you are destroying a sanctuary. When most religions had turned women who have had abortions away, all they had left was their own piece of mind. But you insist on taking that too. If you shout loud enough, sure you can make them cry, but no matter how much you prod, you can never get us to shout back. If a fight is what you wanted, thank God that it is still among the few things I can deny you.
Needless to say, I taped my tattered shoes and left — just as easily as I had entered. I removed my weighted suit too, and I still didn’t say a word. Unlike the protesters, my outfit was removable. I had other labels to wear besides “woman,” whereas they could never be anything else besides bigots.
There comes a day when you realize you’re better off alone. You’re lighter without the guilt they insist on saddling you with, and you can move much more freely than those sign-carriers ever could.
If the rally’s intent was to enrage the public, they succeeded, and if they intended to make us think, then bravo. But if the protest’s goal was to scare the world enough to promote change, I say they made one baby step for the pro-life movement, and one huge leap back for mankind. Promote anti-abortion changes all you want, but don’t go about doing so by being overly offensive.
Haley Pearson is a freshman industrial design major and assistant opinions editor for the Daily 49er.
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