The liberal professor who stepped right into an anti-abortion trap

[alp227]

by Robin Alcarian, LA Times

You want a recipe for confrontation?

Take a bunch of graphic photos of aborted fetuses onto a University of California campus -- or maybe any college campus -- and watch the fireworks.

Emotions can run high when liberal college students debate the morality of abortion with religious evangelical opponents. Especially when the parties are standing next to grotesque, bloody photographs of human remains.

Bringing those posters onto college campuses is a deliberate act of provocation on the part of youthful anti-abortion ministries such as Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. (Your mother got pregnant after the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion, so you are a “survivor” -- get it?)

But none of that can excuse the actions of a UC Santa Barbara associate professor who, along with some of her students, appears to have walked off with a big, poster-sized photo of an aborted fetus in early March because, as she later told campus police, she felt “'triggered’ in a negative way by the imagery.”

...

Presumably, the shock value is the whole point. After all, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust consider abortion to be "America's genocide" and consider themselves, by dint of their age, "the target" of those who believe women should be able to exercise the legal right to control their own reproductive fates.

Reactions like Miller-Young’s are what anti-abortion ministries pray for. A professor gone (slightly) wild helps generate attention and sympathy for folks who don’t really deserve it.

full: http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-the-liberal-professor-antiabortion-trap-20140331,0,5627786.story

Remember, crazy right wing protesters are intentionally provocative because they want to catch "liberals gone wild" on video. The Miller-Young story should be a lesson for progressive activists not to give reactionary cranks what they expect.

[elzenmahn]

1. This is a good point, alp227...

...Foxy News (especially Malkin and O'Reilly) feed on the entire "Liberals Gone Wild" meme.

The Right Wing is indeed crazy - Crazy Like A Fox. We need to remember that and not play into their game. Be passionate, don't waffle to those people - but be mindful of what they're trying to do...

[Doctor_J]

2. So liberals are supposed to never react to right-wing hate and terrorism?

that's how we got so far down the road to fascism.

[alp227]

3. Alcarian's point is that Miller-Young played into the hands of these crackpots

"Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust" by acting the way she did. I get that. On the other hand I sorta think Miller-Young gave these forced birthers a taste of their own medicine: if these forced birther types are gonna do all sorta shit like blocking entrances to Planned Parenthood and heckling women who want abortions, then they oughta realize what kinda shit they're advocating in the first place.

[blkmusclmachine]

4. Stand up to the rightwingers, or they'll walk all over you. Just look at DC. Oh, wait, DON'T...

You either do OR . And the rightwingers NEVER respect . In fact, just motivates them even more than before!!!