The "Truth Truck," covered with huge pictures of bloody aborted fetuses, first showed up at his home two weeks ago. It parked in front of his house and across the street from the middle school bus stop.
The truck returned last week with a sign that said his business "takes blood money from an abortion mill." "Auschwitz" is how the sign on the truck referred to Weitz Company, the general contractor for the Planned Parenthood headquarters in northeast Denver.
Holocaust and concentration camp references are popular with the crazies who have invaded this man's life.
Mainstream Americans, even those who oppose women's reproductive rights, find this kind of behavior so obnoxious that it actually hurts the cause of the people acting out.
"The more they show up, the more our neighbors support us," said the subcontractor.
His neighbors and friends have told him: "Don't let these guys get to you."
Still, he didn't want his name or his business' name in this column.
For now, he's hanging on, working a job he had every right to accept. Still, he worries for the safety of his wife and their four-year-old child.
"How fanatical are these people?" he asks. "What are they capable of?"
He mentions Eric Rudolph, the true-believing abortion opponent who bombed a family planning clinic in Alabama that offered abortions to women who chose to have them. Rudolph killed one person and critically injured another.
People so steeped in their belief that abortion is murder rationalize those kinds of attacks, even if they don't commit them. In these people's eyes, Rudolph's victims or doctors shot for working in family planning clinics invited their fate.
"My wife," the businessman says, "knows a doctor who works at one of these (family planning) facilities. His wife said she and her children were attacked in their car by protesters who banged on the vehicle."
That would be a criminal act, said Denver lawyer Mari Newman, an expert in free speech. But so far, everything happening to the businessman appears to be legal, including the publication of his personal phone number and the solicitation of harassing calls.
Restraining orders, which some targets of anti-abortion zealots have gotten, are issued only if there is "reasonable belief of imminent bodily injury," said Newman.
The businessman isn't there yet, although he has arrived home to find his house staked out by strangers who drive off when he arrives.
And, of course, there is the "Truth Truck."
It showed up a couple of days after the businessman explained to an abortion foe that he understood from the beginning that he was helping build a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Weitz never misled him about the project, as anti-abortion forces claim the general contractor has done.
"I talked it over with my partner and we made a business decision," the businessman said. "I'm not sorry we did it. We are not doing anything wrong. I would build a gay cultural center or a right-to-life headquarters."
Still, it has not been easy.
"I tell my wife to lock the doors and to only open the garage door at the last minute when she leaves," the businessman said.
Weitz has offered to pay for off-duty police to guard the businessman's house if protesters come or to pay for a hotel room if the businessman feels he and his family must escape for a night. The sheriff's department in the county where he lives has been sympathetic. So has the home owner's association in his subdivision. But everyone is legally constrained.
"I can't park my recreational vehicle in front of my house for three days (because of restrictive subdivision covenants)," the businessman noted. "But (the 'Truth Truck') can park there indefinitely."
Newman called that irony "the most challenging aspect of free speech and individual privacy."
"People," the lawyer explained, "have no expectation of privacy in their address or the nature of their business or their personal phone number."
She means they have no legal expectation. In terms of common decency, almost everyone would agree that the businessman's privacy has been invaded in a way that no one, including the protesters, would want to endure.
Planned Parenthood distributes a memo [PDF] that advises clients and contractors not to engage protesters. The memo says what protesters can and cannot legally do. Protesters can, for instance, "show inflammatory pictures and yell and chant inflammatory words." They can use public sidewalks and streets. But they cannot touch people or property, threaten, block public sidewalks or streets, or come on private property.
At family planning clinics, the law establishes a 100-foot buffer where protesters cannot get within nine feet of patients, said Jody Berger, the spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
But that, Berger admitted, does nothing to help subcontractors in their houses.
"It's amazing that these people say they are pro-family," Berger said of the anti-abortion protesters. "But they harass people in their homes."
"We're stuck where we live," the businessman agreed.
An email sent Monday morning by Will Duffy of the group Colorado Families Against Planned Parenthood calls the businessman "one of the first sub-contractors on the new Planned Parenthood project that really has no qualms about helping build the nation's largest child-killing center."
The email goes on to ask recipients to call the man's business to "let them know how they are helping to one day destroy lives, women, families, and a beautiful neighborhood. Beg them to leave the job site or forever be known as one who helped build America's largest deathcamp [sic]."
Finally, the email asks recipients to call the businessman "directly" and lists his home telephone number.
In an email exchange Duffy declined to say how the decision is made to call people at home and send the "Truth Truck" to their houses.
"Can't see the benefit to the project," Duffy wrote in refusing to answer.
There is no benefit. But then, few people can see how any of this fanatical behavior does much except win you a reputation for low-grade terrorism.
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So Scheidler's appearance at a December 1st protest against Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains' new regional headquarters was a mixed blessing for opponents of that facility.
The opponents, led by group called Colorado Families Against Planned Parenthood, are themselves pretty far over the edge. They refer to the facility that will be built on a city block at 7155 East Pontiac St. in northeast Denver as "America's new Auschwitz." The desire of these folks to dictate women's reproductive rights knows few boundaries. Scheidler himself promotes the display of pictures of bloodied, aborted fetuses on public streets. He pushes what he calls "sidewalk counseling," where anti-abortion zealots harass people as they try to enter family planning clinics. This grotesque invasion of privacy not only suits Scheidler, it is the centerpiece of his movement."We believe sidewalk counseling is the most important pro-life work God has given us to do," Scheidler says on the website for his Pro-Life Action League.
Scheidler remains in a protracted legal battle with the National Organization for Women over his aggressive tactics. Although the case is still open, at this point the ruling is that Scheidler has a First Amendment right to be a pain in the butt.
But in one sense, that is not the question he faces in Denver. The question is whether his methods attract supporters or drive them away.
"We confront the abortionists and abortion promoters wherever they are," Scheidler proudly proclaims on his website. "We picket and demonstrate outside abortion facilities, pro-abortion events, the offices of abortion organizations like NOW and Planned Parenthood and even abortionists' houses. We infiltrate their meetings and groups."
Whether the "we" to whom he refers will ever include more than a relative handful of people is doubtful.
Planned Parenthood has all the permits it needs to build a new headquarters on Pontiac Street. The project has the support of City Council President Michael Hancock, who represents the area. The neighbors are more upset with potential protesters following Scheidler's lead than they are with women's reproductive rights.
Statistics show that only a small minority of clients use Planned Parenthood for abortion services. Most use it to get information on family planning and birth control. The number of people in Colorado or the U.S. who consider Planned Parenthood "America's new Auschwitz" is infinitesimal.
What's left to extremists looks like a doomed war of attrition. You see that in the attempt by abortion opponents to grant fertilized eggs the same legal status as people. The same folks who liken a Planned Parenthood clinic to Auschwitz and who consider Joe Scheidler a role model are gathering signatures to place an egg-as-person constitutional amendment on Colorado's 2008 ballot.
The push back against an amendment that effectively makes intrauterine devices and other common forms of birth control illegal comes almost as hard from the right wing as it does from the left.
Boycotts of businesses that will build the new Planned Parenthood headquarters may eventually prove temporarily disruptive, but that hasn't happened yet.
"We've been very upfront with our general contractor," said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Jody Berger. "And they've been very upfront with subcontractors."
Contractors aren't bailing because boycotts organized by fringe groups always struggle to attract mainstream momentum.
Former Colorado Senate President John Andrews opposes abortion in almost all circumstances. Andrews would like to see the Supreme Court decision that gave women abortion rights overturned. Andrews is no friend of Planned Parenthood. But even Andrews understands that a by-any-means-necessary strategy can actually hurt.
"There are certain kinds of rhetoric and some styles of protest aimed at saving unborn children which fail because they're so shocking the undecided audience recoils," Andrews said. "Some of the most selfless and saintly people I know display those 10-foot photo boards of aborted babies bathed in blood. But I just don't think that advances the cause."
"You get to a point," Andrews explained, "that is counterproductive."
Guys like Joe Scheidler passed that point a long time ago. And Colorado Families Against Planned Parenthood is getting awfully close.
]]>The brochure is now being distributed in the neighborhood where Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains plans to build its corporate headquarters. It is also available on the Internet.
The brochure reaches a realm of ridiculousness so absurd that I believe it defeats itself. If not, well, shame on us, not the anti-abortion groups that are likely behind KeepPeaceInStapleton.com.
The peace in Stapleton doesn't depend on Planned Parenthood. It depends on the protesters who show up to harass women making use of counseling, family planning, birth control and - when they choose - legal abortion services. Abortions make up a small percentage of what Planned Parenthood does. Whether or not the people in the neighborhood support a woman's choice to end a pregnancy, the folks I talked to understand that. So don't misunderstand their out-of-context quotes in the brochure.
One of the two women mentioned had used Planned Parenthood's birth control services. The other knew people who had. Both knew the burden to kids and the community of bringing unwanted children into the world.
Free speech rights of anti-abortion protesters may disturb the lives of these two women once Planned Parenthood moves in across the street. But the women also know that it is the protesters who are responsible for any inconvenience and disruption, not the family planning facility.
Furthermore, outside of small minority of zealots, you will find that most people agree with Planned Parenthood's claim that it has "been a good neighbor for 90 years." That was the third quote from my column cited in the inflammatory brochure.
The vast majority of people who have had first-hand dealings with Planned Parenthood or know someone who has realize Planned Parenthood's mission is to let women control their own bodies, not to dictate any particular type of behavior.
One of the lies of omission that the new brochure tells involves a quote from a woman I talked to. She opposes abortion and said she "might move out" once Planned Parenthood moved in. But here's what else she told me:
"I've gone to Planned Parenthood. I've done birth control. When I hear Planned Parenthood, I don't think `death camp.' They offer a lot of services to low-income people. If money goes to keeping people from having babies they can't take care of, that's a good thing."
The easiest way for everyone to test the lies of the brochure is to examine their own lives. I'm betting they won't discover that Planned Parenthood has been "exposing your children to pornography and deviant sexual acts," as the brochure alleges. I'm also betting they won't find Planned Parenthood "passing out sex toys and condoms designed for children."
Among the harshest claims in the brochure are charges of racism. This includes a quote from someone identified as "Pastor Biff," who purportedly said, "I've read the research; Planned Parenthood has devastated our black community." Once again, it's time to test experience against allegation.
Claims of racism against Planned Parenthood stem from founder Margaret Sanger's attempt to bring down birth rates among poor blacks. The brochure includes a tasteless logotype that says "Neighbors Against Planned Parenthood." The words surround a photo of the head of an African-American baby sucking on a pacifier. Whatever Sanger said about the need to control African-American births during the 1930's, the test 70 years later are actions. The numbers simply don't show Planned Parenthood encouraging black women to have abortions, as critics suggest. In 2006, only 5.6 percent of women who chose to have abortions at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains were African-American, senior vice president Leslie Durgin told me Tuesday.
You don't see that number quoted and footnoted in the new brochure because it doesn't fit the story anti-abortion groups want to tell. Neither does the fact that abortions made up only six percent of Planned Parenthood's services in 2006.
Make no mistake: People who oppose abortion have the right to protest.
The rest of us have the responsibility to recognize their lies.
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She didn't like what she imagined.
"We don't need protesters here every day," Allan said fretfully.
Neighbors of a new headquarters for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains will have no choice. Planned Parenthood's secret purchase of a city block in Northeast Denver is now public knowledge. A large clinic and administrative offices are set to open in August 2008, according to a brochure Planned Parenthood officials have prepared for neighborhood distribution this week.
For Allan and her neighbors, this is not good news.
"I think I might move once they put it there," said Monique, a woman who would only give her first name because of the contentiousness of the abortion debate.
Monique opposes the abortion services Planned Parenthood offers. But like Allan, she's equally upset with the prospect of protesters harassing patients entering the clinic and turning her street into a spectacle.
And like most people - including those who oppose abortion - Monique doesn't consider the new Planned Parenthood clinic "a death camp" or a place that "kills babies for profit," as a spokesperson for Colorado Right to Life described it.
"I've gone to Planned Parenthood," Monique said, standing in the doorway of her apartment 200 feet from what will be the new headquarters building. "I've done birth control. When I hear Planned Parenthood, I don't think ‘death camp.' They offer a lot of services to low-income people. If money goes to keeping people from having babies they can't take care of, that's a good thing."
Monique was talking about birth control that reduces the need for abortions.
Family planning, counseling and distribution of birth control makes up 94 percent of services rendered in the five-state area administered by Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said Leslie Durgin, senior vice president for community development.
"Six percent of our service is abortion," Durgin said.
Those abortions are legal, and they are safer than the illegal abortions that would result if groups like Colorado Right to Life succeed in their ultimate goal - taking away women's individual reproductive rights.
Calling Planned Parenthood clinics death camps or for-profit baby killing factories is the kind of inflammatory talk that led Planned Parenthood of the Rockies to buy its new property without telling anyone.
Planned Parenthood branches in Austin, Texas and Alton, Illinois tried the stealth-purchase strategy for new clinics, Durgin said. In Portland, Oregon, Planned Parenthood bought city property for a new clinic. So the process was public from the beginning.
In Denver, said Durgin, Planned Parenthood made a quiet purchase, but then decided to go public with its plans when asked by a reporter.
"We've been a good neighbor for 90 years," Durgin said.
Allan, Monique and others living in the townhouse apartments facing the new clinic wonder how good Planned Parenthood will be for their neighborhood. At the same time, they blame protesters as much as anyone for the disruptions that are likely to occur.
Over-the-top rhetoric has led to threats and attempts to intimidate Planned Parenthood's local staff. In other parts of the country, such hate-speak has inspired killings of clinic workers. Think Eric Rudolph.
Allan has friends who lived near Planned Parenthood of the Rockies' current clinic near 20th Avenue and Vine Street. She's heard the stories of pictures of bloody fetuses hoisted by protesters. It's not something kids going to play at nearby Martin Luther King Park need to be confronted with constantly, she said.
But with proper zoning in place and with permits in the works, Planned Parenthood is coming. The former red brick United Airlines office between Poplar and Pontiac on 38th Street will be renovated and expanded. The Planned Parenthood brochure shows an artist's concept of a campus-like setting, beautifully landscaped and buffered by trees.
Conspicuously missing from the picture are the fence that will surround the property and, of course, anti-abortion activists who have the right to stand on publicly owned sidewalks.
"We have very few neighbors," Durgin said "We bought a whole city block to provide privacy and security."
The new clinic and administrative site is surrounded on three sides by railroad tracks, a parking lot and storage units and the back of a hotel. Planned Parenthood placed the clinic's main entrance on a side of the building that faces the rear of the Renaissance Hotel at 38th and Quebec.
Among the lies anti-abortion activists like to tell is that Planned Parenthood targets minority women for abortions. That has already happened in Denver, where the location of the new clinic in a predominantly black neighborhood led to suggestions of racism.
Durgin said only 7 percent of the women who receive abortions at Planned Parenthood are African-American.
Allan, who is black, isn't buying the racism charge.
She has seen the impact of unwanted and neglected children of any color on the entire community.
"We're paying for babies people can't afford," she said.
There are also circumstances where Allan would consider an abortion.
"I'm not going to have a baby if I get raped," she said.
Seated beside her, a friend who would identify himself only as Marshall E. told the story of his long-time girlfriend. "When she was young, she got pregnant by a friend who used drugs," he said. "She had an abortion because she knew she couldn't afford to have a baby."
That was, as it should always be, her choice to make. Thing is, if she'd gone to Planned Parenthood in the first place she might not have had to make the decision.
That's the point the folks talking about death camps and protesting outside Planned Parenthood seem to miss.
The organization's main mission has never been to give women abortions. It has always been to keep women from getting pregnant until they feel ready to give birth.
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