Mocked

While driving to work the other day I saw Operation Save America (formerly Operation Rescue) crossing the street. There's a gaggle of them in town to protest outside the local abortion clinics. Apparently they had to march in the hot sun for a while first, waving signs with pictures of aborted fetuses and slogans like "God Will Not Be Mocked." Does burning the Koran count as God-mocking? Because Operation Save America has a track record for that. I dunno what the alleged connection between Islam and abortion is. Anyway, the march: there was a guy out front loudly blowing a big long phallic horn like you'd see in an old gladiator movie, presumably to give crossing the street a more epic feel.

A lot of the protesters were young women. I wonder how their sense of their own fertility and their erotic and maternal future shapes their motivations for this. Do they feel that by fighting against abortion and its attendant issues they are in some way protecting themselves from less than savory reproductive concerns in their own lives? By working against the abortion narrative do they feel they are denying things like unwed pregnancy or rape for themselves and clearing the way for happy married-with-healthy-baby futures? I suspect a lot of these folks don't want to join in on Koran-burning antics; when the leadership decides it's Koran-burning time, will the others walk away, argue, or just stand there in nervous silence?


When I was in college I was involved with an very anti-abortion worship group on my college campus. I never made it out to any of the protests; I was against abortion, but I just wanted to attend Bible studies and sing hymns. The group pretty much fell apart. We were a diverse group of Christians who all loved getting together and singing hymns, but soon the groups' two leaders started pushing a hardcore version of predestination which denied freewill and gleefully asserted that God creates many people with the intention of predestining them for Hell. Most of us were unenamoured of this notion of God, and we drifted away. I bet a lot of people who specifically want to combat abortion have left the OSA fold because of the other items on their agenda.