As of Thursday, volunteers will escort abortion patients at heavily protested New York City clinics, as part of a new City Council-backed program dubbed the “Clinic Protection Project.”
Plans for the new program were announced on October 19, when Speaker Christine Quinn said the move was in response to increased protests by anti-abortion activists.
“Dangerous rhetoric and disturbing protests outside reproductive health clinics have become increasingly divisive and disruptive to families who are trying to get health care,” Quinn said.
“If you can’t get in the building where the health care is being offered, you do not actually have access to that health care.”
Merle Hoffman, the CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center, told WNYC that the scene outside the clinic in Jamaica, Queens can be intimidating.
“Going to the doctor has become a military maneuver,” Hoffman said. “The protestors — I call them bullies — yell and scream at women, as they come into the facility.”
As part of the new program, volunteers will escort patients past pro-life protestors at abortion facilities from November 1.
Chris Slattery, the head of Expectant Mother Care (EMC), a group of pro pregnancy centers, accused Quinn of using the issue as a political ploy.
"Police, when they know that the government leaders are organizing these things, they're then intimidated to favor the government project over us because they don't want to get in trouble with the mayor's office and City Hall," Slattery told OneNewsNow.
Quinn said the effort will not be funded by the City Council.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.jetsnoone | Nov 01, 2012, 08:10 PM EDT
eiraimach... jews like many, many differant groups of people were put in concentration camps. Senator John McCain was in a North Vietnamese jail. Never heard John complain either. Hey, genius, did you know we did it to the Japanese in California? What Williamson said was that gas was not used and scientists agree with him. The original plan was to ship them out to other countries-- not to murder them. Countries like the USA and Ireland declined. Did you know that 12 million Russians were killed as soldiers and civilians? during the war? No one told you that, did they? Guess they were just Christians, you know how that works, right?
eiriamach | Nov 01, 2012, 11:56 AM EDT
I did not think it was necessary to say this, jetsnoone, but what Sigaud and Williamson have said about the Holocaust is clearly and definitively FALSE. There are records, including films of the concentration camps; there is irrefutable evidence of the murders of six million, the majority of whom were European Jews. Between genocide and driving Jews from their homes, the Nazi Holocaust reduced the Jewish population of Europe by 70 percent, if I recall the figures correctly. The interviewer's question about anti-Semitism was apt. If you cannot recognize bigotry when it's staring you in the face and howling, you are a lost cause.
jetsnoone | Nov 01, 2012, 08:11 AM EDT
eiriamach: if what Sigaud nd Williamson says is true then you as a Catholic must defend them. I firmly believe you are no historical authority but you can become one by searching for the truth on your own rather than swallowing what the mass media tells you to swallow. Get busy.
olovely | Oct 31, 2012, 09:19 PM EDT
God hates Republicans. Why else would he have sent Hurricane Sandy to ruin Romney's chances?
eiriamach | Oct 31, 2012, 08:25 PM EDT
For that matter, how can anyone defend the anti-Semitic SSPX? SPLC web site has a news article on SSPX's much-belated expulsion of Bsp Williamson. It mentions other racist activities of SSPX, for example, "SSPX’s website also once hosted a reproduced 1959 letter to the late SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel-François Lefebvre from Bishop Gerald Sigaud, who also rejected the Vatican II reforms. 'Money, the media, and international politics are for a large part in the hands of Jews,' Bishop Sigaud wrote. 'Those who have revealed the atomic secrets of the USA were ... all Jews. The founders of communism were Jews.'" And it mentions a 1997 article by two SSPX writers who "called for locking Jews into ghettos because 'Jews are known to kill Christians.' They blamed Jews for the French Revolution, communism and capitalism; suggested that a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy had destroyed the Catholic Church; and described Judaism as 'inimical to all nations.'" AB Lefebvre, the SSPX founder, was an open supporter of Nazism. They say Pope Ben XVI is intelligent, but mairint tries to persuade us he was stupid enough to think the world would overlook or excuse his whitewashing of Williamson and his overtures toward SSPX.
eiriamach | Oct 31, 2012, 07:53 PM EDT
Well, defending a bishop who denies the Holocaust gives us a change of pace from the defenses of sexually predatory priests protected by bishops! Anyone can view on You Tube Bsp Williamson himself denying the worst part of the Nazi genocide of Jews. See "Bishop Williamson Exposes Holocaust Myths." He answered an interviewer's question about whether he had said, "There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all just lies, lies, lies." The Bishop replied, "You're quoting from Canada, I believe, yes, many years ago. I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy by Adolf Hitler.... I believe there were no gas chambers.... People who are against what is very widely believed today about quote, unquote Holocaust, I think that those people conclude, the revisionists as they're called ... conclude ... that between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gas chamber." The interviewer asks, "What is Anti-Semitism?" He replies, "If anti-Semitism is bad, it's against truth. If something is true, it's not bad.... This is a question of historical truth.... There's certainly been a huge exploitation." He DENIES the Holocaust; he doesn't even seem to think that genocide of hundreds of thousands of Jews would matter much!
mairint | Oct 31, 2012, 04:34 PM EDT
For those like KatieMurphy who do not follow the faith, obviously you are unaware that Bishop Williamson has been excommunicated. When the Holy Father was dealing with the FSSPX, Williamson was then just one of the members. The Holy Father had not been apprised of Williamson's personal situation. It is good to keep informed before condemning an innocent person and it is hard to remain informed when one stays on the outside. By the way, Pope Benedict XVI does NOT babble. It seems more likely in 'her' rush to defend abortion of the innocent child, KM 'herself' was babbling.
jetsnoone | Oct 31, 2012, 04:33 PM EDT
What Bishop Williamson did was deny that Jews died in gas chambers. That, Katie, is what the experts now all agree on-- the Germans did not use gas chambers on people. Sad that if you speak the truth you could get fired from your job and that is what happened to Williamson. He gave his opinion, a correct opinion, and the Jews wanted him fired from his job....Benedict had the guts to right a wrong.... Again, get it right now...no Jews or any other people gypsies etc died via gas...In all wars many, many people die in concentration camps due to bad living conditions but the good German people did not execute those prisoners...Stop swallowing hook, line and sinker what the mass media tries to teach you.
KatieMurphy | Oct 31, 2012, 12:54 AM EDT
HO2w can anyone support the church whose leader did the unthinkable - Benedict UNexcommunicated holocaust denier Bishop Williamson in 2009............the good pope JPII saved thousands of Jews, and John 23rd saved tens of thousands in SE Europe Now we have a church babbling about protecting life while the leader joins mentally with the maniacs who gave us the Holocaust Of Jesus own people, and the long term hatred that led to a maniac gaining control of Germany in 1933..........Just google "Pope Benedict UNexcommunicates bishop williamson"............
jetsnoone | Oct 31, 2012, 12:01 AM EDT
Christine, go ahead and fight for women, but on this matter, please remember that Irish Catholics do not help people kill their babies.
Strongbow | Oct 30, 2012, 09:16 PM EDT
An elected official and prospective NYC mayor is spear-heading an effort to stifle the 1st ammendment right to free speech and lawful assembly of fellow citizens.
Seanmor | Oct 30, 2012, 07:43 PM EDT
What Christine Quinn calls "reproductive clinics" are actually abortion mills in which tiny human creatures are killed. Then the City Council Speaker goes on to refer to the place as "a building where health care is provided". Unborn babies do not receive health care in such places; they are simply put to death.
mairint | Oct 30, 2012, 05:53 PM EDT
Portia 777 would be happy if no one ever spoke out to defend the preborn child from extermination. Unbelievable how woman has become the most dangerous person in the world where her own child is concerned. Evil reigns in many hearts, tragically. Quinn would be a queen for such...
Gearoid4 | Oct 30, 2012, 05:30 PM EDT
The terrible irony here that no such protection is afforded the life in the womb,as abortion mills receive the financial back of the state in relation to the their protection and the ideology behind them. All life is deserving of protection, which include pregnant mothers and the life that is growing inside them.
Nicomax | Oct 30, 2012, 12:58 PM EDT
Quinn is an elected official in a secular government which has no role in protecting religious rules from any of the vast number of religious organizations in that huge city. Is this such a hard concept for some to understand? If not, would they be willing to have Sharia or Hasadic law advanced in some sections of the city?
PhlutiePhan | Oct 30, 2012, 11:55 AM EDT
If Obama is reelected, Quinn will be the next mayor of New York. She will then be able to instigate her "reign of evil" on an entire city. She too is one of those "Catholic" pro abortion women out to reform the nature of the Catholic Church and society.
jimgordo1 | Oct 30, 2012, 11:07 AM EDT
Who? The protestors or Speaker Quinn?
Portia777 | Oct 30, 2012, 09:33 AM EDT
why do people not mind their own business?