HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – One thing for sure: Jesus walks the sidewalk of the Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville -- especially on days when abortions could be happening inside.
Lubricated with an alleged assault by holy water, tensions are escalating between the Christians and others who walk on both sides of the moral high ground of the abortion question – whether it should be legal or not.
Local debates come just as the U.S. edges toward the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. That Jan. 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled that abortion was a decision best left to a woman and her physician, not lawmakers.
Huntsville’s 14th annual Stand for Life, protesting that decision and organized by local pro-life activists, will be held on Monday, Jan. 21, 2013, on the east steps of the Madison County Court House at noon. Keynote speaker will be Alabama's First Lady Dianne Bentley.
The anniversary marks the middle age of a decision that remains divisive, but that remains consistently supported by the American public, according to a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
A neighboring business owner summarized the moral situation Wednesday afternoon when he came over to firmly ask the two banks of protestors holding “pro-life” and “pro-choice” signs to move the cars they’d parked in front of his office.
“I don’t know whose cars they are,” he said. “There’s a Bible in the front seat of one, but that doesn’t mean I know which side of this debate they’re on.”
Pamela Watters, one of the leaders of pro-choice activists who volunteer Wednesdays and Saturdays outside Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville, wears buttons that help summarize her positions. The bloody coat hanger icon refers to activists' determination that the U.S. not return to the days of back-alley abortions that happened when abortions were outlawed in the country. "Pro-lifers hijacked Jesus" protests the simplification that all Christians are oppose keeping abortions, as Watters puts it, "safe, legal, and rare." (Kay Campbell / kcampbell@al.com)
Jesus on each side
Exactly, says Pamela Watters, a nationally known artist based in Huntsville.
Watters has helped organize local abortion rights activists, who refer to themselves as pro-choice, to provide escorts for women seeking care at the clinic.
Watters, on the icy wet Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, was wearing a button to that effect: “Prolifers hijacked Jesus.”
“There are many Christians volunteering as escorts,” Watters said, referring to the bold “Clinic Escort” jackets several pro-choice protestors wore.
The jacket signals to those seeking care at the clinic that the escort will help get them safely into the building and will not attempt to “counsel” them in the parking lot.
“But they say we’re Satan.”
“They” are the anti-abortion rights activists, who refer to themselves as pro-life. A small group gathered on the sidewalk Wednesday in front of the clinic, loudly praying the Rosary and other prayers. Brother Joseph Kreutzer carried a poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the un-born since when she appeared to St. Juan Diego on a hilltop in Mexico in 1531, she was pregnant with Jesus.
Sunlight has faded the poster over the 15 years or so that Brother Joseph has prayed in front of clinics where abortion is among the services offered to women.
Joyce Fecteau underscores her equation of abortion with eugenics practiced in Hitler's Germany with a Halloween concentration camp costume. Fecteau, 70, faces charges of assault after a pro-choice activist says she sprayed holy water deliberately in her face, a charge Fecteau denies. (Courtesy of Will Henley)
These people of faith and values – and polar opposite positions on abortion -- meet at the clinic on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays.
Those are two days each week when abortions could be scheduled at the clinic, one of five free-standing women’s clinics in the state that offer abortions.
Alleged holy water assault
This week, pro-life protestor Joyce Fecteau, 70, was arrested for assault based on an incident alleged to have happened the week of Christmas. A pro-choice protestor told police that Fecteau sprayed her in the face with what Fecteau says is holy water.
Fecteau told The Huntsville Times that she was spritzing holy water to cleanse the air of smoke from a pro-choicer’s sage smudge, and that the pro-choice protestor walked into the spray.
A video of the incident is posted in this story by Steve Doyle: "Woman sprays pro-choice supporters."
Fecteau, who walked the sidewalks dressed like a concentration camp prisoner on Halloween to underscore her belief that choosing abortion is tantamount to Nazi eugenic purges, will face trial on Feb. 21, 2013, at the Huntsville Municipal Building.
Reducing the issues at stake into “pro-life” and “pro-abortion” doesn’t cut it for Kathy Albers, who has designated herself a non-partisan observer at the protests.
“I’m anti-abortion myself – we are all against abortion; but I’m pro-choice,” Albers said, motioning to her friends on the pro-choice line. “Nobody is ‘pro-abortion.’ Nobody says, ‘Gee, I think I’ll get pregnant and go get an abortion.’”
“They say they’re here counseling,” said Josie Pollard, who carried one of the bright pink “pro-choice” signs. “But that isn’t counseling; that’s yelling.”
Conflicting certainties broadcast from the posters held by protestors outside Huntsville's Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives. This photo was taken during October 2012. (Courtesy of Will Henley)
Extending help
Not so, says Lee Trott, who regularly stands on the pro-life sidewalk.
Trott herself chose to have an abortion as a young adult, a decision she says she now deeply regrets. The soft-voiced Trott says that she and other pro-life protestors have, in fact, saved some children’s lives. Trott volunteers regionally with the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, through which women who chose abortion testify to the lifelong regret that decision brought them.
“We’ve seen quite a few girls coming in here on the heels of their fathers or boyfriends, crying and looking at us, like ‘Help me!’” Trott said. “It was not really a choice; it was a trap. Some women come in here and aren’t decided. They just haven’t had that one person say, ‘There’s hope. There’s help. You can do this.’”
While some pro-life protestors carry signs offering help and urging the choice of life, others graphically depict the category into which some class a decision to have an abortion. This is among signs regularly carried outside Huntsville's Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives. (Courtesy of Will Henley).
The pro-life protestors say they regularly refer women, through signs and brochures – if they can get close enough to hand them out – to Huntsville's Choose Life / Save-a-Life.
The Christian crisis pregnancy center at 220 Rands Ave., near Franklin Street in the hospital district, helps connect women in need with support for having the child, including adoption information. Choose Life helped 4,700 women in 2012.
Because, by Alabama law, the Alabama Women’s Clinic is required to list the days when an abortion might be performed, the hours when a woman might be seeking an abortion are public information, Watters said.
Women coming to the clinic must thread into the tiny back parking lot of the clinic between the ranks of the protestors, who are monitored by a Huntsville Police officer. Clinic escort volunteers will park patients’ car for them while they slip into the discrete back door from the walled parking lot. Watters said that before pro-choice people started their demonstrations in October, that the anti-choice people would create a kind of gauntlet in the parking lot itself for women to dash through to get to the door.
Pro-life protestors disagree with that characterization, but readily agree they no longer can talk to the women because of the pro-choice human barriers.
“We don’t let them do that anymore,” Watters said. “These women deserve privacy.”
Pro-choice marchers recalled a particularly painful event last month when a woman whose baby had died en utero was coming to the clinic to have it removed. In an awful coincidence, that was the day, Watters said, when the pro-life demonstrators collected a children’s choir on the sidewalk to sing “Happy Birthday, Dead Baby” to anyone driving in.
Cindy Phillips, who was with those singing said later that the children were singing, "Happy Birthday, Dear Baby."
"We wanted to remind people about the good things about having a baby," Phillips said Monday, Jan. 21, 2013, as she stood with others at Huntsville's Stand for Life rally.
In a situation so fraught with angst, even good intentions can be misunderstood.
“Will had to physically restrain the father,” Watters said, nodding to one of the men marching in a pro-choice jacket. "And by the time she walked through them, she was an emotional wreck."
Alabama's first lady Dianne Bentley gives the keynote address at the event at the 2012 Stand for Life in Huntsville, Ala., Alabama Alliance Against Abortion's annual pro-life demonstration on the steps of The Madison County Courthouse. Bentley returns as keynote speaker for the 2013 event, which will be Monday, Jan. 21, 2013, at noon on the courthouse steps. (The Huntsville Times/Glenn Baeske)
No abortion. Ever.
Having pro-choice escorts on the clinic property has helped insulate women who might be making painful decisions from the pain inflicted by the calls of the protestors, the pro-choice activists say.
Or it’s keeping them from getting help at a last, desperate moment, the pro-life activists say.
“They don’t let us talk to them anymore,” Trott said. “They’ll wave their arms and get in the way.”
Both pro-choice and pro-life picket lines have their own video cameras going. Both say the other side has been disruptive to the other. And both say Jesus walks with them – whether out of respect for women making agonizing decisions or out of concern for the unborn child.
Both pull out their list of statistics: Pro-choice activists point to studies showing that counties with the best access to contraceptives, sex education and abortion, like The Netherlands, also have the world’s lowest abortion rates.
Pro-life activists don’t have to count abortion rates: Even one abortion is too many, says Rick Chenault Sr., who is a regular on the pro-life sidewalk in Huntsville.
“How can they say they’re against abortion if they want to keep it legal?” Chenault asked.
“With the advances in care for women and babies, there is never a medical reason to terminate a pregnancy,” Trott said. “Never.”
Thought-provoking information:
- Huntsville Right to Life
- Choose Life / Save-a-Life:
- Catholics for Choice:
- Religious Institute: Faithful Voices on Sexuality and Religion
- Story updated 1/21/13 to correct anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Jan. 25 date in the first version of this story refers to the date of the national protest of that decision that will be held this week in Washington, D.C.