A couple of weeks ago, I got my hands on the training manual for the courses that anti-choice group Justice For All uses in its courses. It’s 113 pages, so I only scanned in about a dozen, because there are only so many hours in the day, and most of the book is workbook stuff and scriptures. But it’s super-interesting stuff, and I wrote about what’s in it in the context of the assassination of Dr. Tiller. If you want a sample of the handbook to read yourself—-and I highly recommend this—-you can get the PDF of the pages I scanned in here.
Justice For All is clearly an organization that was created simply to go on campus and protest, with the knowledge that students will come up and argue with you. From watching them extensively (they set up their tables near where I live), I get the strong impression that they like targeting colleges because the women on college are who they believe their target audience to be—-young, nubile girls whose young nubility is of utmost importance to anti-choicers, as Jessica Valenti has chronicled in The Purity Myth. Only student organizations are allowed to have tables on campus, and the one thing that jumps out at you when witnessing a Justice For All protest is how unlikely it is that the protesters are students, unless every middle-aged student on campus is an anti-choice nut. I hate to say it, but I suspect what they do is get a single student to register them, and then they get the prime locations on campus for tabling by being the scary anti-choicers you really don’t want to piss off. They don’t threaten, of course. It’s just that at this point the pro-life movement has built up such a reputation that people just try to avoid conflict with them. One thing is for certain—-they have money. When they show up, they build a two story tall 3D display of fetus pictures next to pictures of Holocaust victims, and they have a small fence that the protesters stand behind.
This handbook is something else. It’s hard to really pick out the most shocking parts, so I dedicate time to a number in the Reality Check piece. But I think the part that was honestly most telling was the strong, repeated instructions to practice showing concern for women. Readers are told that the big mistake anti-choicers make is railroading over women as if they don’t matter, and you really lose credibility. You’re given sound bites to show concern (their words), because, and this is important—-if you show contempt for women who die from illegal abortions, you lose credibility. They don’t come right out and say to fake concern, but that’s the gist of it.
These manuals are given out in classes, so I imagine they role-play faking concern and other tactics, such as not coming right out and saying that you think the birth control pill is murder and condoms are wicked. Because of this, there’s some notes scribbled on it. Some of them make some sense, but others are a mystery. My favorite, written in all caps with a heavy hand, so the owner of the manual doesn’t forget it, is this:
JUST BE NORMAL AGAIN