Rabid Anti-Abortionist Tries to Use Sotomayor Hearings for Comeback

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet. Posted July 14, 2009.

Terry's Supreme Court demo, held on a sleepy Washington Sunday, drew about 20 of his devoted followers (including McCorvey), one pro-choice counterprotester (who put a sandwich sign on her dog that read "Huskies for Choice"), and about five television cameras. Hence, a great success.

The staging was theatrical: the woman in the judicial robe shouted through a mike, "I'll do your bidding, president. Those babies have no rights. Let's kill them early; let's kill them often." A man presented her with a tiny white coffin, and she smiled and thanked him.

In addition to their homemade signs, some protesters carried printed posters of Our Lady of Guadalupe, with a photograph of an aborted late-term fetus printed in the right corner. Two held a large, professionally printed banner that bore Sotomayor's photo on one side, and one of an aborted fetus on the other, flanking the words: "Senators, Stop the Slaughter! Filibuster Sotomayor!" (You can order a copy of the banner here.)

Terry handed me a glossy flyer, saying, "We paid a lot of money for a photo of the judge before the makeup artist got to her." The photo on the flyer features Sotomayor's face morphing into that of a skull.

As he faced the cameras, Terry spelled his name and gave his title, lest any reporter get that wrong. "We're here because Sonia Sotomayor will kill the slaughter of innocent babies; that is why we're here." He turned to his followers. "Could one of you please give out the literature?" he asked. He then turned to Gerri Santoro of Norwich, Conn., who held a sign that read, "Randall Terry doesn't speak for God."

"I'm just really close to him," Terry said of God. "I only speak for him when I quote him."

"He's been telling me some things about you, sir," she retorted.

Terry made the camera operators move forward and adjust their mikes. "Pro-life senators have a moral obligation to filibuster Sotomayor," he began. "Pro-life Republicans, pro-life Democrats seduce us with their words. They use our money, they take our man-hours, they take our votes, and then throw us away like a used-up mistress after an election. It's disgusting! If Sen. [Sam] Brownback and Sen. [John] McCain and Sen. [Knute] Nelson and Sen. [Bob] Casey believe that Roe v. Wade must be overturned, then they must filibuster Sotomayor. You can't say you want to overturn Roe on the one hand, and then vote for somebody who will uphold Roe on the other. It is treachery, hypocrisy, laziness and betrayal…" 

Terry introduced McCorvey, who explained that after renouncing abortion in 1995, she became a Catholic in 1998. She had just come back from Ireland, she said, where she participated in protests against the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, which opponents say would legalize abortion in Ireland, despite side agreements negotiated last month that protect Ireland's current family law.

"We had 7,000 people marching in the streets of Dublin," she said, with Insurrecta Nex's 20 Washington protesters standing behind her. 

After she spoke, Terry called for questions. None came. He closed with a rundown of Insurrecta Nex's planned activities outside the hearings. On Tuesday, he said, he and McCorvey would burn a copy of Roe v. Wade. And there would be street theater today, he said, "including bloody baby dolls."

See more stories tagged with: abortion, senate, supreme court, sonia sotomayor, randall terry

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Acting Washington Bureau Chief, and the author of the weblog, AddieStan.com, and the book, Debating Sexual Correctness.

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