September 19, 2019 – The following commentary on a Planned Parenthood organizing e-mail was posted on our website this afternoon. For some background, we don’t know what “District 9” is, since Arenac County is not in a 9th district for Congress or the Michigan Legislative. The county is very small with fewer than 20,000 people, and this Life Chain will be held in Standish, a small town with fewer than 2,000 people. Their Life Chain is being held early, so perhaps this is a trial run for wider disruptions in October.

This week a somewhat disturbing e-mail from a Planned Parenthood e-mail group was forwarded to us. Planned Parenthood sent the following message from District9@plannedparenthood.org on Tuesday, September 17, at 4:33 p.m.:

Hello,

Wanted to give you a heads up that we are organizing a stomp the bans march on Sept 29, 2019

The goal is to directly disrupt The Arenac County Right to Life, “life” chain.

Bring a lunch!!

“Stop the Bans” is Planned Parenthood’s marketing slogan for opposing recent prolife legislative efforts on the state level.

So, what does “stomp the bans” mean, then? Was it a typo? Was it a Planned Parenthood staff member taking artistic license for humorous effect? Probably.

However, there has been a recent rise in violent or criminal acts perpetrated against prolife people. “Stomp” is certainly a violent metaphor in an already divisive issue that has sadly seen violence, including abortion facility workers and prolife individuals being victimized. This has happened in Michigan, with the murder of prolife activist James Pouillon in Owosso in 2009.

As we’ve seen too many times recently, it doesn’t take much to set off a mentally unstable person. Consider some incidents in the last year, none of which are funny:

• Right to Life of Michigan’s office vandalized
• Abortion supporter round-house kicks prolife protestor in Toronto
• Pennsylvania State Rep. puts bounty on doxxing prolife teens
• 85-year-old prolife volunteer assaulted outside Planned Parenthood in San Francisco
• Prolife protester sent to hospital after assault outside Florida Planned Parenthood

While people have a right to assemble and even peacefully counter-protest, directly disrupting events of others is totally beneath civilized discourse, and violent rhetoric has no place in the abortion debate.