Abortion Protesters Won’t Be Punished For Chalking ‘Your Neighbor Is A Monster’ Outside Doctor’s Home
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 7th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
The doctor’s neighbors say police aren’t doing enough to deter persistent anti-choice activists from vandalizing their sidewalks.
The post Abortion Protesters Won’t Be Punished For Chalking ‘Your Neighbor Is A Monster’ Outside Doctor’s Home appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Protesters affiliated with the group “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust”
CREDIT: Facebook/WeAreSurvivors
The group of abortion opponents who used sidewalk chalk to scrawl “Your neighbor is a monster,” “Stop killing American children,” and “Abortion is murder” outside of a Newport Beach doctor’s private home won’t face any charges from the police, despite the fact that several neighbors believe the protest should be considered vandalism.
At the beginning of July, dozens of anti-choice protesters affiliated with the group “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust” targeted the home of Dr. Richard Agnew, an OB-GYN who used to provide abortion care at Hoag Hospital. They carried signs with images of aborted fetuses and covered the sidewalk of Agnew’s neighborhood with chalk messages, a tactic they refer to as “chalk and awe.”
The protesters said they wanted to test the bounds of a city ordinance that bans picketing within 300 feet of private residences. Since the Orange County District Attorney’s Office doesn’t have enough evidence to pursue vandalism charges, the case is being dropped.
Last June, about 50 to 100 anti-choice protesters did the same thing to the street outside Agnew’s home, writing messages like “Neighborhood serial killer” and “This house was built from blood.” Back then, his wife called the protest “very disturbing” and neighbors complained that it was way out of line. Those protests are what prompted city officials to pass the 300 foot ordinance.
But neighbors say it’s obviously been too easy for abortion protesters to circumvent that new requirement. The subsequent demonstrations have sparked complaints that the local police aren’t doing enough to protect the neighborhood from anti-abortion protesters. “On a scale of 1 to 10, we’re all at 20, that’s how frustrated we are,” Paula Durnian, who lives down the street from Agnew, told the Los Angeles Times when the “chalk and awe” demonstration returned this summer.
The doctor has drawn the ire of Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust because he publicly opposed his employer’s decision to stop providing elective abortion services after merging with a Catholic health care provider last year. He was one of several health professionals who signed a petition urging Hoag Hospital to preserve women’s access to that medical procedure. Before the merger, Agnew typically performed abortions for women who make the difficult choice to end wanted pregnancies because their fetuses have fatal defects. He doesn’t believe those patients should have to be shuttled to an outside clinic to receive the care they need.
“It’s not like they’re doing anything illegal,” Agnew told the Associated Press last year. “It’s bad enough for them to have to make a decision.”
Nonetheless, Agnew has been caught up in the increasing trend of protesters exerting pressure on hospitals to stop offering abortions. As part of that effort, it’s not uncommon for anti-choice activists to picket the homes of individual doctors who work at hospitals that still provide the service. In fact, home pickets are one of the explicit strategies detailed in Closed: 99 Ways To Stop Abortion, the unofficial handbook instructing activists on how to end legal abortion in the U.S.
This type of harassment is just one of the reasons why it can actually be quite dangerous to be an abortion doctor. The individuals who choose to provide abortions are well aware that their line of work could subject their family members to anti-choice protesters — and perhaps even physical violence. Some medical professionals are forced to alter their routine after receiving death threats, like taking different routes home from work each day to disguise where their family lives. And some doctors actually end up leaving the field because the challenges are too great, something that’s contributed to a shortage of available abortion providers across the country.
“For a lot of people, they don’t want to deal with the hassles, they don’t want to become a target, they don’t want their clinic to be picketed. For most doctors, it’s not an ideological issue; it’s a practical issue. This work is hard,” one abortion provider who works in Texas, speaking anonymously, explained to ThinkProgress earlier this year.
But Agnew’s community has remained standing behind him. They spilled into the streets last month to try to deter the activists from continuing to chalk up the sidewalk. “We love Dr. Agnew. We support Dr. Agnew,” Paula Durnian, a longtime neighbor, said after the first chalk messages appeared. “If he allows patients to make their own choices, he should be able to do that.”
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Jay Z Throws His Celebrity Power Behind Prison Reform
The rapper’s recent comments are some of the most direct statements he’s made about political issues that affect the black community.
The post Jay Z Throws His Celebrity Power Behind Prison Reform appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Jay Z performs during the Beyonce and Jay Z – On the Run tour at AT&T Park on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014, in San Francisco.
CREDIT: Mason Poole/Invision for Parkwood Entertainment/AP Images
Moments before performing his 1998 hit, “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” in front of over 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl last weekend, Jay Z expressed support for a California ballot measure that would shift state funding away from prisons and toward schools and enrichment.
“Prop 47, California: Build more schools, less prisons,” Jay Z said. “More schools, less prisons, California. They’ll never be able to stop us.” If approved by state voters in November, Proposition 47 would reduce most nonviolent crimes — including petty theft and drug possession — from felonies to misdemeanors. Nearly 10,000 prisoners could also see reductions in their sentences. The savings accrued by the state, projected to reach at least $150 million, would go into a Create a Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund.
The fact that Jay Z would use as prominent as stage as the much-buzzed-about “On The Run” tour to comment on prison policy is surprising, as many have criticized the rapper in recent years for failing to take a stand on social and political issues of great prominence to people of color,
Jay’s remarks come nearly a year after millions lashed out against the rapper on social media when he entered a partnership with Barney’s in spite of an ongoing racial discrimination lawsuit the national luxury department store faced. In 2012, professor and author Cornel West publicly challenged Jay Z to disclose his stake of ownership in the Brooklyn Nets, which at the time stood at 1/15th of a percent before he sold his shares to Jason Kidd. And in 2012, veteran actor and social activist Harry Belafonte gave a diatribe about how he thought Jay Z and Beyoncé didn’t use their celebrity status to lead social and political movements. During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Belafonte said:
“[Today’s entertainers] have not told the history of our people, nothing of who we are. I think one of the great abuses of this modern time is that we should have had such high-profile artists, powerful celebrities. But they have turned their back on social responsibility. That goes for Jay-Z and Beyoncé, for example. Give me Bruce Springsteen, and now you’re talking. I really think he is black.”
Jay Z shot back at Belefonte days later in an interview with Eliott Wilson, CEO of online hip-hop magazine RapRadar. “I’m offended by that because first of all, and this is going to sound arrogant, but my presence is charity,” said Jay Z. “Just who I am. Just like Obama’s is. Obama provides hope. Whether he does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation, and outside of America is enough. Just being who he is.”
Jay Z has lent that presence to some political causes. Last year, he and Beyoncé gave a show of support to the mother of Trayvon Martin during a candle light vigil in Manhattan. He also stood behind then-presidential candidate Barack Obama during the 2008 election, sparking a friendship between the artist and political figure. Whatever the reason for his more direct comments on the prison system, they might help satisfy some of his critics.
The United States still has the highest prisoner population in the world with a total of more than 2 million people behind bars, many of whom committed nonviolent offenses. Our federal and state governments spend more than $74 billion each year to maintain the prisons. While many tough-on-crime philosophers may consider that a worthy investment in compelling criminals to change their ways, studies show that stints in the criminal justice system deepen illegal involvement and make society less safe for all. Michelle Alexander likened the prison system to the “new Jim Crow” in her 2010 book of the same name. In an interview with NPR, Alexander drew a parallel between mass incarceration and the constant marginalization of people of color in American society.
“People are swept into the criminal justice system — particularly in poor communities of color — at very early ages… typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes,” said Alexander. “[The young black males are] shuttled into prisons, branded as criminals and felons, and then when they’re released, they’re relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement — like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to be free of legal discrimination and employment, and access to education and public benefits. Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you’ve been branded a felon.”
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