Halloween Grinch Gives Fetus-y Anti-Abortion Crap to Trick-or-Treaters

As trick-or-treaters in Albuquerque, New Mexico returned to their adobe-style ranch houses on Halloween night, some discovered an unwelcome interloper lurking among the “fun” size candy bars: anti abortion literature. Now, I’m no propaganda expert, but if you were trying to teach children that [THING]= bad, then wouldn’t it be ill-advised to build an association in children between whimsy/childhood glee/fun and [THING]?

Much like the logic behind calling oneself “pro life” and then advocating against aid for low-income mothers, origin of the pamphlets remains mysterious. Right-to-life groups in the city of Albuquerque aren’t claiming responsibility, although they’re lauding the presence of the pamphlets in kids Halloween hauls. According to local news channel KOB4, the cards contain messages like “I am not a clump of cells, I am a human being” alongside a picture of a fetus. Another fetus pic features the quote “Am I not human?” Another says “53 million killed.”

You know— real accessible, kid-friendly stuff. The sort of thing that would make a kid’s parents go, “You know what? This holiday asshole has a point! I was kind of on the fence about abortion but now I’m totally on team fetus.”

Some Albuquerque residents traced the cards back to the house of a woman whose house is decorated with anti-abortion signs rather than Halloween decorations. When a local news station interviewed her about the cards, this happened:

The decorations are visible from the street, and she told KRQE News 13 they’ve been up for months.

She didn’t want to go on camera for an interview but said if people still choose to ring her doorbell and ask her for candy on Halloween, she has a right to share her beliefs.

Everyone has a right to share their beliefs, but it doesn’t mean that passing out abortion cards to kids in Katniss Everdeen costumes isn’t creepy and annoying. Sure, lady. You have the right to act like the least fun, cool person in the world. Kids love aligning themselves ideologically with tightly wound wet blankets.

As Think Progress’s Tara Culp-Ressler points out, Albuquerque is currently in the midst of a big abortion fight of its own. On November 19th, citizens will vote in a special election that includes a referendum that would ban abortions after 20 weeks in the city on the make believe grounds that at 20 weeks, a fetus can feel pain. This is extra bad in conjunction with the shit that just went down in Texas (and in New Orleans’ Fifth Circuit), since Texas’s new law bans abortions after 20 weeks, thus making Albuquerque the closest city where post-20-week abortions are available for many woman in the western half of the Lone Star State.

How about next Halloween, we not throw rolls and rolls of toilet paper all over women’s rights. Deal, America?