Anti-Choice Group Pickets Outside Middle School

Here’s more proof that anti-abortion activists don’t care so much about innocent children once they’re out of the womb. Last week protesters who’ve been campaigning to shut down a clinic in Germantown, Maryland picketed outside a middle school because the landlord’s daughter is a student there.

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of the few doctors who performs late-term abortions, has been one of pro-lifers’ main targets since the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Earlier this summer, anti-abortion groups held a week-long protest outside the clinic, but now they’ve shifted their focus to the man who owns the property where the clinic is located. That’s how a group of protesters wound up outside Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville last Thursday during back-to-school night. The Washington Post reports:

The student’s father, who did not want to be named to protect the safety of his daughter, a sixth-grader at the school, said he saw the five protesters when he went to the school event.

Some held a large banner that showed his photo, his full name, his phone number and the words “Please STOP the Child Killing.” Others held posters showing aborted fetuses.

There were also two protesters holding anti-abortion posters near the building’s entrance on August 29, the first day of school. The protesters weren’t actually on school propety and didn’t break any laws, so police couldn’t do much.

Jack Ames, director of the group Defend Life, says they organized the protest at the school because it was a “very good public venue.” The protests outside the clinic aren’t as noticable because it’s located inside an office park. As an added bonus, demonstrating outside the school sends a message to the landlord that anti-abortion nutjobs are watching him and his family. Though only the landlord’s personal information was on the signs, his daughter and son, who’s a freshman at the high school, use their father’s last name. He told the Post:

“It’s horribly outrageous that they’re going out in front of a middle school. It is way crossing the line. I very much respect the right of the protesters to do so in front of the clinic, or the steps of Capitol Hill, or the courthouse. But in front of a middle school is really not an appropriate place to do anything except protest for better teacher wages or the school budget … The idea that a group of protesters would target a school because the child of someone they are targeting attends the school . . . is fairly despicable.”

Ames claims that the landlord’s father operated an abortion clinic that was firebombed in the ’80s, which just makes it more impressive that he’s standing up tho the protesters and enlisting the help of volunteers to respond to everyone who’s called or emailed him. Now that he has the protesters’ contact info, he could dig up their home addresses and start pestering their kids. Yet oddly enough, the “monster” behind the clinic wouldn’t stoop to harassing and freighting children.

Anti-Abortion Protesters Target Clinic’s Landlord Outside Child’s Md. School [Washington Post]