Harsh? Nope.
“We gave them back what they gave us,” he said. Do unto others, and so forth.
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The supporters came so fast and in such big numbers, Stave founded a group, Voice of Choice . And now there are about 3,000 volunteers ready to make calm, reasoned calls to the homes of people who bombard doctors, landlords and their families with protests at homes or schools across the country.
Stave clearly enjoys turning the tables after decades of not fighting back.
“What? They don’t want unsolicited calls to their homes?” he asked.
Still, there are calls Voice for Choice won’t make.
“Someone might call and say: ‘They’re protesting in front of my clinic. They’re praying, chanting, with their signs.’ And I say: ‘Are they harassing you? Harassing the patients?’ ” Stave said.
“And if they say no, then I say: ‘I can’t help you. There is no more appropriate place for them to do this than here. They are protected by the First Amendment.’ ”
He is being called a hero. He even received an award from NARAL at a big gala in California last week. And that’s when the trouble began again.
While he was in California, his neighborhood was canvassed with fliers depicting Stave in a Nazi uniform, with graphic photos of Holocaust victims and bloody fetuses. And it had all of his contact information as well as phone numbers and addresses for other family members.
“It wasn’t random,” he said. “They knew I’d be gone, and they wanted my daughter and neighbors to find them.”
On Monday, a protester showed up outside of his brother-in-law’s Rockville dental office to protest abortion where molars were being extracted.
“How was your trip to San Francisco?” the protester asked Stave, when he arrived at the dental office to confront him.
Seriously? Confronting a dentist’s patients with horrifying posters of ripped-up fetuses is a reasonable protest tactic?
And these folks don’t seem to care if children are around for the show. One year, the March for Life protesters leaving the Mall poured into the playground of my child’s preschool, putting stickers on the jackets and fliers into the hands of 4-year-olds. The police were called to get them out.
All of this is ridiculous.
People who want to stop abortion can make a difference with education, counseling and genuine efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies and support child-rearing.
They need to work toward safe and affordable day care and health care for children and toward generous workplace policies, including adequate family leave, so that parenthood is not an onerous and difficult prospect in America.
In last year’s report “Failing its Families,” Human Rights Watch wrote that at least 178 countries have national laws guaranteeing paid maternity leave. The exceptions include Swaziland, Papua New Guinea and the good ole United States of America.
Working on real issues that actually support the family values these protesters say they hold so dear is one way to stop abortions.
Harassing schoolchildren — or dentists — is not.
To read previous columns by Petula Dvorak, go to washingtonpost.com/
dvorak.
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