Meet Mary Numair, a 29-year-old copywriter from Portland, Oregon. She describes herself as a “generally kind person” and likes cats.
Over the last few weeks, Mary had seen a woman holding a sign that read “abortion kills children” outside the Planned Parenthood building near her office.
Mary said she is a supporter of Planned Parenthood – the non-profit organisation that provides reproductive health and family-planning support in the U.S. and internationally – because it had helped her personally in the past. When she was 20years old, the clinic treated her for UTIs and yeast infections. They also provided her with her first birth-control pills.
“Planned Parenthood is vital resource for so many people,” she told BuzzFeed News.“We have to look beyond the pro-life/pro-choice debate and recognize this organization is out there providing some of the most important care to our sensitive medical needs.”
After several failed attempts at approaching the protesters outside her local clinic to discuss their complaints and reason with them, she decided to try a different approach.
Yesterday, Mary approached the anti-Planned Parenthood protesters while chanting “yeast infection” and holding [a sign].
“The protesters kept moving their children away from my yeasty cries, so I kept moving closer,” she joked.
“Initially they had spread down the sidewalks on both sides of the street, but after some yelling and high kicks on my part, they huddled together,” she said.
“They glared at my princess wave and cheerleader enthusiasm, and they began a prayer circle. This is when I really shined. I have never made my voice louder.”
After a short while, Mary’s chant ended up driving the protesters away. She said they grew tired of her shouts and eventually left, shaking their heads.
“One woman turned around during their prayer to shake her head at me, to which I responded: ‘OMG do you have a yeast infection? I know who can help you!’ She covered her kid’s ears,” she said.
Mary said although one man drove past and called her a “whore” from his car, many others were “really supportive”.
Does Mary have any plans for other similar protests? “Fuck. Yes. I. Do,” she replied. (source)
I can’t even tell you how happy this makes me. Thank you @buzzfeed lol. We definitely need to do this EVERYWHERE bc it’s time to make those shithead anti-choicers uncomfortable hahah
I think this is pretty brilliant. Anti-abortion protesters don’t seem to care about all the necessary services that Planned Parenthood provides. I think it’s amazing that this woman had the courage and spirit to shut down a whole group of protesters.
It’s also rather telling that the mention of medical care for vaginas made these people so uncomfortable. They want to get all up in there when it comes to pregnancy, but the moment someone mentions that these are actual people’s body parts that can get infected and require medical help, that’s an occasion for shushing and dirty looks? Figures. I say confront these tightasses over and over again with the reality that their precious baby incubators are attached to real people, and that medical care does not begin or end with pregnancy.
My friends and I have had good success getting anti-choice protestors to leave by approaching them with print-outs of adoptable children from local adoption agencies and asking them “which of these lives will you care for?”
