Boycott makes it sound so genteel

The good news is despite attempts to shut it down, the new Planned Parenthood in Austin is opening. The bad news is that the gruesome tactics of anti-choice activists here to stop it are being soft-pedaled by the national media. The New York Times has a story today about how anti-choicers "boycotted" construction companies that were building the Planned Parenthood.

Wait a minute, says the voice of common sense, why would a few construction companies be so afraid of a boycott from people who mostly wouldn't use their services anyway? Because it wasn't a "boycott"--it was an intimidation campaign. The Daily Texan gets closer to the story.

Danze, the owner of Austin concrete contractor Maldonado and Danze Inc., targeted businesses working or scheduled to work on the clinic with hundreds, sometimes thousands of phone calls, The Daily Texan reported last November. Planned Parenthood announced later that month that it would serve as its own general contractor.

Thousands of phone calls were placed to any contractors who tried to work with Planned Parenthood. If you are going to boycott someone, why not just sign a letter saying that you won't be hiring them if they keep doing X? Why would you need to call over and over and over again?

Here is some more information on what was really going on. Chris Danze, who organized the intimidation campaign is a hardcore misogynist who believes that giving women sexual health information is evil. Contrary to what the national media believes, this is not just about abortion, but about women's overall rights to sexual health care, as is evidenced by his intimidation campaign against a holistic woman's health care center in North Austin. Here is another great article about the entire struggle. And another one from the same writer, who sums it up perfectly.

When quoted, Danze doesn't even pretend to care much about the unborn. Again and again, he cites the family and social standards. He is happy to threaten the livelihoods of those he disagrees with in service of the goal of dictating to all of us his concept of the acceptable boundaries of social behavior. How those who rant against liberal social engineering can advocate this boycott argues for the characterization of its motivations as more arrogant bullying than moral concern.

Well at least you can't fault these assholes organizing the boycott for hypocritically hiding behind concern for babies as they work on their rabid anti-woman campaign. From The Daily Texan again:

Danze's son Fred, University graduate, protested with a group of anti-abortionists outside the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

"It's unfortunate that everyone here is celebrating when in fact what goes on in this building is ugly," he said.

What goes on in the building, of course, is abortions. And cancer screening and curing diseases and helping women take care of themselves. Ugly, evil, woman-helping doctors, huh?

Well, I guess it's true that if you're going to fight ignorance like Planned Parenthood is doing, ignorance will try to defend itself.