Women's Expo Wrap Up

For all of you followers on the edge of your seats; yes, I did make it out of the hospital in time to staff our pro-choice booth at the local women's expo last Saturday.  And what an exciting day it was. . . .

One of my favorite booth visitors was a kind old gentleman who shuffled up to our booth with his wife (I'm assuming - she never said anything).  He took a look at the sign we have hanging under our banner that reads "Pro-Child, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice," and exclaimed, "Oh, good for you! This is great - what a great booth!  Are you a local organization then?"  I responded that yes, our group is local and fairly small as he looked over the materials on our table.  He looked at the sign again and suddenly looked at me and said, "Wait a minute - that says 'pro-choice.'  Do you advocate abortion?!"  I replied with "No, I don't, but I think that everyone should be able to make up their own mind on the issue," and before I could even get the whole sentence out he raised his cane up, waved it at me and shouted "Oh for crying out loud!!"  He backed away from the booth still waving his cane at me and shouted something about parenthood, but by then I couldn't really hear him anymore.  I was thinking too hard about the powerful and thoughtful argument he had presented me with and starting to change my mind on the issue.

Another man came up to the table (he was a vendor from another booth) and also looked at our sign with approval, then bought one of our buttons that read "pro-family, pro-choice."  He signed up on our email list, then told us that he had gotten into a heated argument with someone the other day over "this issue."  He said that his friend was talking to him about the Planned Parenthood funding hoopla.  As he was telling us this, he spit out the words "Planned Parenthood" as if he had vomited them into his mouth.  He asked his friend why, if they were in favor of funding PPH, they weren't in favor of giving just as much money to Birthright?  The two of us at the booth just stood there puzzled as he nodded at us and quietly walked away telling us "thank you" for the button.

Is it really that foreign to people that you can be pro-child, pro-family AND pro-choice?  I think people thought that we were doing some sort of false advertising, but we really feel that the pro-child, pro-family, pro-choice thing properly describes our group.  A large percentage of the people in our group are mothers, and isn't everybody "pro-family?"

Of course, what we got the most of during the day was a constant stream of young women taking a condom out of our basket, pondering it for a minute, then saying something like "it's too late for me."  We heard stories all day of young mothers who had no knowledge of (or access to) birth control.  One girl told me that she had worn a purity ring and then proceeded to get pregnant her first time (she had always heard that you couldn't get pregnant the first time).  When I told her that there have been studies done which have proven that purity rings serve no purpose at all in delaying sex, she seemed genuinely shocked.  I think that all this time she's been carrying around some kind of guilt, feeling like she's the ONLY one who ever broke the purity ring promise.  I felt bad for her.

We also had a mom who was outraged that her 15-year-old daughter had been able to get birth control pills at a PPH clinic.  She told us that she had "control" over whether or not her daughter got pregnant now.  I asked her how she had control over that and she said her daughter was grounded.

We did however get a few cool moms who picked up some condoms to put in their teenagers' Easter baskets.  One said that although she knew her precious babies wouldn't need them, maybe they had a friend they could give them to, then they all laughed.  It was a refreshing bit of realism in a day filled with people wearing blinders.