How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Hate JFA

This is the third article in our October series about Justice for All, the traveling anti-abortion display.

When JFA occupied my campus for four gloomy days a year ago, I was a first year student, a feminist in a red state and I was extremely nervous about being visible as a reproductive justice advocate on a well-traveled part of campus. When it came down to it, though, I knew I had no choice. These atrocious, fallacious and hate-filled images and JFA “student” volunteers were going to be on my campus, spreading more misinformation to a student population whose schooling already mislead and lied to them about the realities of reproductive health. Maybe in a city where reproductive justice education was more readily available I could sit a day or two out. Here, however, the scary truth was that myself and a couple dozen fellow counter protesters would be the only people telling students on this campus the truth for the next few days. With that knowledge, I figured out how many classes I could skip and committed myself to hanging out at the fetus carnival for as much of my days as I could, academically and emotionally.

The first day was kind of scary. I remember being worried, feeling that the whole student populations’ eyes were on us (probably ’cause they were). When I first got there, I took some extra time making the sign I would stick to and making sure I was familiar with the factual counter-information I would repeat like a broken record for the next four days. It was cold and cloudy and JFA was still very much trying to figure out what in the world was happening next to their exhibit. Our classes here change on regular schedules, and during those switches things really started to pick up. I saw their volunteers accosting people, speaking to vulnerable-looking students who obviously wanted none of their attention, and frankly, I got pissed. This behavior, this inappropriate assault of my campus community was what inspired me to start my kazoo-blowing and chant-shouting in earnest. I could give people valid information and a compassionate ear, but what I really wanted then was to stop the unbelievable nonsense that JFA was forcing down my campus’ throat.

After the novelty and the charade started to wear off, I watched these interactions more carefully. I saw people I didn’t know and will probably never see again stop by, grab a kazoo and blow it in the JFA volunteers’ warped rhetoric. I watched students speed up and go drastically out of their way to avoid being accosted by their absurd idea of “dialogue”. I saw people of every kind of religious, political and moral viewpoint tell JFA they were full of crap. I watched the students of OU do and say, mostly indirectly, what I was saying to this organizations’ faces, that they were wrong, this was wrong, and that we would not listen to anyone who doesn’t respect us enough to tell us the truth. My campus’ reaction to the JFA exhibit was the first time I had been proud to be an OU student.

That wasn’t enough to fuel four demanding days of protest, though. Over the next few days, I spent more time with JFA than I had some of my hall mates that semester, and it slowly dawned on me that their act, their victimization and moral high ground charade just didn’t add up. Either JFA hasn’t done their reading, or they really don’t like what the book is saying. They say that they care about “innocent lives” more than anything, but their information doesn’t talk much about resources underprivileged women might need to carry a child to birth and beyond. They don’t discuss adoption beyond telling everyone it’s the “right” option or some other oversimplified moral framing, and they definitely didn’t recognize the very real issues in adoption procedures today, so I doubt they’re doing much to help those babies either.

Their interns’ $30,000 a year salaries could probably pay for quite a few womens’ monthly checkups, but they don’t seem concerned with the health of the mother, which has a direct correlation to the health of the child. They had no seminars on how to deal with postpartum depression or mental health resources for new parents. They weren’t giving out free emergency contraception or condoms and they most certainly were not giving anyone on campus consultations about what kinds of birth control could be most effective for their lives. There was no prevention, no discussion of what pregnancy, families and children are or need beyond demonization of a safe, legal medical procedure that, in the grand picture of reproductive justice, actually has very little to do with babies, children and families.

Listen, JFA can throw around the words “pro-life” all they want. They can chat their circular, meaningless rhetoric and talk about how awful myself and my community are for caring about women and families for weeks, years, if they want to. They can do this because I know that the organizations I am a part of and the ideological standpoints I inhabit are so much more compatible with life and living than theirs are.

Reproductive justice is about all the things JFA left out and so much more, and I know, at the end of the day, that I am the one that is pro-family, that is pro-woman, that is pro-child. I know that their exhibit is only a mockery of everything I stand for and everything I believe in, and a terribly weak one at that. So yeah, those four days taught me how to hate JFA, but even more, they taught me how to laugh at their nonsensical organization. They taught me that I am right, and that their faulty, delicate, horrible rhetoric is really just a few kazoo blows away from toppling.

Elly studies Anthropology, French and Women’s and Gender Studies and loves the South and the Midwest. In her free time she listens to more Saddle Creek music than any well-adjusted person should and tracks whale shark migration patterns. You can follow her on twitter, as long as you’re not her mom.