Just My Personal Opinion

I had the day off today, and in spite of having a nice day, I was disturbed by something I saw this morning. As I was driving to get coffee, I noticed a parade of people walking down a main street where I live. I wondered what those people were doing. As I got closer, I wanted to avert my eyes. They were protesting abortion, and I assumed that they were more than likely making their way to the Planned Parenthood near where I live. There must have been over 100 of them.

Everyone has a right to believe in what they want, and I'm not saying that abortion is right, nor is it wrong. I am definitely for one side more than the other, and I won't say what side I lie on, but it might be obvious. As I said, everyone has a right to picket for anything they believe strongly about. This is why we live where we live. However, when I see parents - quite a few of them - carrying children along in strollers or in wagons in this protest walk, I get angry. Adults are informed and they can make decisions based on facts and from an opinion based on that. Children are not well informed. And it made me so incredibly angry seeing this. Then I started rationalizing, like maybe they couldn't find a sitter to watch their children and wanted to be involved so they brought them along. Then I thought, well maybe they are using them as part of their protest, which I see as completely wrong. Let's just say seeing this really upset me.

Were those kids questioning their parents as to what an abortion is? How would they answer? And how in the world do they react to those photographs that they use in those signs, and those words they use in their signs? How do they explain it? It makes me want to scream. You want to know why? Because every Saturday on my way to Target with the girls I pass that Planned Parenthood, the one that always has protestors on that day because it is one of the days they do abortions there. And you know what I hear from my two year old daughter? I hear the question of "what's that?" when we are stopped at the light right in front of it. How do you tell a two year old that that picture she is looking at is a fetus who's picture was distorted and made to look so sick that maybe, JUST MAYBE, a person who is pregnant and considering abortion might change their mind just by seeing it? I'm sorry, but I just can't explain that to her. It's impossible. And those pictures and what they say? They turn my stomach.

I think from now on we will be taking a different route on our Saturday Target trips.