why am I here?
Planned Parenthood needs a happy mouse logo with a "PP" on his shirt. Wouldn't that be cute?
It can be hard to feel like you’re accomplishing much in the Pro-Life movement sometimes, can’t it? The Planned Parenthood in my town is on a quiet street, surrounded by incongruent patches of field or squat, ugly medical supply buildings. Oddly, there’s a Chuck E. Cheese across the street. It’s a crazy juxtaposition: hey, everybody! If you have any children left after your visit to Planned Parenthood, stop by Chuck E. Cheese for fun and games!
Yesterday wasn’t an “abortion day;” they open the clinic randomly, with no official schedules, in the hopes of avoiding us. Which in this case was just me. Just one badly dressed guy, plodding up and down the sidewalk (we’re not allowed to step foot in the parking lot) with a gnarly old Rosary missing a bead on the 5th decade. Yeah, that guy’s rosary is missing a few beads—wink, wink—to be hanging out all by himself on the sidewalk in the middle of the day.
My mind kept wandering over the faint possibility that a local news crew might, just might, choose that hour to come racing up on the curb and unload a well-groomed man with a microphone, accompanied by a sloppily dressed cameraman, to fire off earnest questions about the purpose of my presence here today, and what I think the future of the abortion rights issue is in this country, and what about the rights of the woman, anyway? Don’t I care about women? What about rape? Do I advocate rape?
None of that happened. Lovely spring breezes blew across the Planned Parenthood Parking Lot Which Must Never Be Trod Upon. The sun shined. Nobody stopped. The place was closed.
Mr. Gervais
But, seriously, what would I say? Ricky Gervais, the brilliant co-creator and star of The Office (the original BBC one, not that stinky American copycat), was discussing the way his ideas for the show were, in part, born of the observation that people talk a big game about things—they have all of these strong opinions and complex theories about the world and the way they think it ought to work—but the second you put a camera on them and give them their big chance to expound, they blow it. Laughable nonsense comes out, most of the time. That’s me, don’tcha know. But I hope I would make a statement like this:
“We’re supposed to be a country that loves people—especially the defenseless ones. We have this vast self-image as a people who helps out the Little Guy, who protects the innocent, who fights off injustice. Our national icon is Superman, for God’s sake! Even our grisliest, most hard-hitting war films always show us as defender of the helpless, even when our own kind are against us, even when the government is opposed to our efforts (no, really. Watch Full Metal Jacket, When We Were Soldiers, Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, Born On the 4th of July…at the heart of all of these movies is at least one character who is the American As He Should Be—noble, merciful, concerned with the defenseless)…”
There, see? I’m already blowing it. A babbling digression that few people would be impressed by. The well-groomed interviewer starts to look restless. The sloppily dressed cameraman is clearing his throat as a signal that it’s time to move on. In a rush, maybe I could get in something like this:
“Everyone has a right to life—it’s in the Declaration of Independence! We have an entire body of laws designed to prevent people from killing each other. Why is this place here across from Chuck E. Cheese somehow exempt from all that? Why are babies safe everywhere else except here, where we allow ourselves to do whatever we want to them and then toss out the discarded body parts in a medical waste bag?”
Whoa, woah, woah…the interviewer gives his cameraman an uncomfortable glance. Got a live one here. Why can’t this guy discuss the issue without using inflammatory language like that? Why can’t we all just stay calm, be reasonable, wrap everything up with a smug joke and then meet over at Chuck E. Cheese for fun and games?
Well, I’m a terrible spokesman, I guess. I can’t even succeed in the scenario in my own mind—I shudder to think how I would bumble a real-life interview. It’s O.K.—I’m not discouraged. I keep plodding up and down the sidewalk, and my rosary tosses in the wind, and nobody sees anything. I’m not discouraged, because I know that prayer works like water, “flowing underground,” like the old Talking Heads song. Good always wins in the end. Yep, I really believe that.
