The Star has shown its anti-choice bias once again by misrepresenting a Feminist Front protest last week. Star reported (1/22/90) that 25 members of the Feminist Front disrupted the so-called “religious service” sponsored by the Students for the Right to Life. This is not true.

Though many Feminist Front members see Christianity as a form of patriarchy designed to maintain women’s subservience to men, we remained quiet holding our signs throughout the “service.”

It was our intent to protest the political part of the meeting to show we will not sit idly by and watch anti-choice activists plot to take our rights away. They cannot hide their political intents by holding a “religious service” before their meeting. The “service” part of the event was short and was followed by a very long, strongly anti-woman political meeting. In fact, if we accept The Star’s definition of “rally” which is “to bring or gather together for action,” one could call the rest of that meeting a “rally” as the featured speaker called for political action and “revolution.”

The speaker was a doctor, not a preacher, who spoke in broad generalizations about the feelings “all women who have abortions” have. His assumption that all women who have abortions are the same and experience the same thing is both sexist and untrue. He called upon those in attendance to use their strongest political weapon, “voting,” to force an end to safe, legal and funded abortions. This is clearly political.

The Feminist Front activists were never given a chance to voice their views or to counter the speaker’s outright lies. When members were threatened with arrest for speaking at the meeting, the political lines were drawn even more clearly. In fact, the featured speaker threatened a Feminist Front member with arrest for passing out fliers outside of the meeting room before the event had even begun.

The anti-choice students we spoke with after the meeting were far from the saintly monk types depicted in The Star cartoon (1/23/90). In fact, one anti-choice woman admitted her political argument when taken to its logical conclusion, is fascism. Her male friend concluded his argument by making mock sexual advances toward a Feminist Front member and by grabbing his crotch repeatedly and purposefully.

All of the anti-choice activists who spoke with us believe that humans are “inherently evil” and that humanist pursuits are futile. We believe that this anti-human ideology is dangerous to all people and we continue to oppose it while fighting for the rights to self determination of living, breathing human beings here on Earth today, and tomorrow.

Members of the Feminist Front