40 days of protest: Anti-abortion campaign holds vigil during Lent

Blaring car horns, shouted expletives and demands to see parade permits filled the air as a group of about 40 protesters prayed outside Planned Parenthood Thursday morning.

The vigil, outside the clinic at 1765 Dobbins Drive, is the start of 40 Days for Life, a religious anti-abortion campaign, which this year will occur nationwide during the Christian season of Lent.

Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Raleigh Diocese spoke at the Thursday kickoff.

Joe Stavas, a spokesman for the Chapel Hill chapter of the group, said participants will pray outside the clinic from 8 a.m. to evening hours for the next 40 days.

“Our goal is to encourage discussion and debate on how we view life,” he said.

Stavas said it is very important that the protest remain peaceful and non-intrusive.

“Society has made up their minds in many ways of when life begins,” he said. “We think it should be discussed.”

But others objected to the protest.

UNC senior Abigail Riddick, co-chairwoman of Feminist Students United, said she found the protest insulting.

“It doesn’t seem like they’re meeting us where we are,” Riddick said. “It’s an attack on the idea that women can make their own choices.”

Paige Johnson, spokeswoman for the Planned Parenthood clinic in Chapel Hill, said the clinic’s mission would stay the same regardless of the protesters outside.

“We’re focused completely on providing health care for women in the area that need us,” she said.

Johnson said she worries the protest might stress Planned Parenthood patients.

“If I went to my doctor and there were protesters standing outside, I wouldn’t welcome that,” she said.

Though the campaign held a vigil last year, Johnson said the clinic didn’t see a decline in patients during it.

UNC senior Christina Geradts, president of Carolina Students for Life, said her organization doesn’t officially endorse the 40 Days for Life campaign because of its religious and political ties — but she and some other members will participate.

Geradts said she sympathized with women who the protest might distress, but it was still important to have a presence outside the clinic.

“People accuse pro-lifers of caring only about the baby and not about the woman, and it’s really not like that,” she said.

“We do support the woman and the child because if you don’t care about the woman, you’re not going to be able to do anything.”

Geradts said the goal of the nationwide campaign is to close facilities that perform abortions and increase awareness of alternative facilities for women’s health.

She said she believes a lot of the controversy around Planned Parenthood would disappear if they ceased to provide abortions, but that she doubted the clinics would ever do so nationwide.

“It’s not that if this place closes, then those services won’t be available anywhere, because they will be,” she said.

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