Fran Johns Letter to the Editor: Strike the Banners

strike the banners

Re the banners on Market Street proclaiming “Abortion hurts women”: The proclamation is hate speech and untrue (“Ah, the holiday season along Market Street,” City Insider, Jan. 1).

That the city of San Francisco should allow this to be broadcast across our main thoroughfare or any thoroughfare at all is damaging and hurtful to women and men alike.

The March for Life banner-hangers have every right to their religious and political beliefs. They do not have the right to spread misinformation in utter disregard of girls and women everywhere. Women like me.

I had a back-alley abortion in 1956 after a workplace rape. The abortion did not hurt me; it gave me back my life. I was lucky. Millions of women like me, before Roe vs. Wade offered safety, were indeed hurt – or wound up dead.

If each marcher under those banners could find and know one actual fetus to protect, and simultaneously see and know the woman in whose body that fetus resides, I suggest the marcher might want to protect that woman too. She is likely to be poor, disempowered and desperate. Forcing those like her to bear unwanted children or endanger themselves – that hurts women. The banners should come down.

Fran Johns, San Francisco

San Francisco Chronicle, Letters to the Editor, Jan. 4, 2014

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/letterstoeditor/article/Letters-to-the-editor-Jan-4-5112353.php

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