Defend Abortion Clinic Family Planning Specialists in Oakland

Oakland, CA: An anti-choice youth boot camp called “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust” will be staging an intimidating misinformation campaign in front of Oakland’s primary abortion provider clinic, Family Planning Specialists. This is part of a coordinated series of events to coincide with the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in 1973, Roe v. Wade. The Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights condemns their harassment of this landmark Oakland clinic.

“Survivors” will arrive in the Bay Area to practice tactics of intimidation, training the next generation of anti-abortion bigots, harassing women entering the Oakland clinic where Walter Hoye was arrested and jailed for violating the Bubble Ordinance, which provides a legal protective 8-foot barrier between anti-choice demonstrators and clinic patrons and workers. The “survivors” believe that since they were born after 1973’s Roe v. Wade ruling, they can consider themselves survivors of abortion.

We are calling on people to be visibly present in support of reproductive justice and to arrive with signs, banners and pickets across the street from the entrance of Family Planning Specialists. BACORR and community activists stand in solidarity with Family Planning Specialists and all abortion providers and healthcare workers that put their lives on the line to ensure safe, legal abortion access. We condemn the “Survivors” misuse of actual genocide and holocausts that plague all people of color internationally and women around the world – and that they ignore the very statistics regarding the necessity for safe, legal abortion access worldwide.

“The simple truth is that when abortion is illegal women die,” said Linci Comy of Women’s Choice Clinic, “The World Health Organization (WHO) says 5 million women around the world are hospitalized each year from complications due to unsafe illegal abortion and 70,000 of these women die. Abortion was legalized in 1973 because it saves women’s lives and benefits families – WHO research shows 220,000 children lose their mothers from abortion related deaths every year. What a travesty for these abortion opponents to call themselves feminists.”

After this demonstration, BACORR will convene in front of the Tulley’s (at 14th and Broadway) at Frank Ogawa Plaza near 12th Street BART to continue to stand in defense of reproductive justice as the “Survivors” will join another rightwing grouping called Standup4Life, which is meeting at Oakland’s City Hall to rally and march. We will counter-demonstrate and distribute information about the Day of Action for Reproductive Justice.

The next day, on Saturday, January 23, 2010 in San Francisco at the Embarcadero’s Justin Herman Plaza Music Concourse (where Stueart Street meets Market Street), pro-choice advocates – joined by representatives from the immigrant, labor, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender, disability, people of color and youth communities, and progressive religious members – will demonstrate in defense of reproductive justice and against the rightwing “Walk for Life” that will be SF that same day, to denounce escalating assaults on reproductive freedom, civil liberties, and women’s health by religious fundamentalists and governmental policies, including but not limited to the regressive, anti-abortion Stupak-Pitts and Nelson-Hatch amendments added the healthcare bills passed in the House of Representatives and the one currently in conference between the Senate and the House.