On Saturday, Trinity Chapel, along with other churches and one hearse held a Fake Funeral to mourn aborted fetuses in Knox County, TN. But, even the local news can’t call the Fake funeral what it is, equating women as terrorists, they called it a Mock Funeral for “unborn babies.”
About 350 cars donning crosses passed down Gay Street Saturday in what is being called the largest funeral procession in Knoxville.
Organized by Trinity Chapel Church, the funeral procession is for unborn.
“It was a symbolic gesture of mourning and grief which was real for us for the 3,100 children that were aborted in Knox County,” explained Steve Fatow, Senior Pastor at Trinity Chapel Church.
Well, I was there, not in the procession, but set up along Church Street to get a few pictures of the fetus people — the folks that feel that fetuses are more important than the already living women and children.
As you might be able to tell, I missed the beginning of the procession but caught up around the middle or so. Cars, trucks, SUV’s, some with a single person in the vehicle, or loaded with their kids. I saw a lot of older couples and a lot of men. Some drove their business vehicles
Some cars were spewing clouds of pollution (camera phone didn’t capture the gray clouds). 
I honestly couldn’t tell you if there were actually 350 vehicles, but it took about 30 minutes to get the “procession” out of the Coliseum parking lot. And even if there were 300-350 vehicles, that is far less than the 500 vehicles that was anticipated. And, where I was situated I did not see any opposing protesters (I am still hoping some were present).
Unlike other abortion demonstrations, this one did not have signs or shouting. Only cars could be seen and heard.
That is because, the pastor says, the purpose was not to spark a debate.
Rather, I believe it was to shut out debate. A vehicular equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing, “la, la, la, la, la…I can’t hear you.” And according to the local paper, there weren’t any opposing protesters, other than myself, that is.
What is missing from the news reports is the rhetoric contained on the processions website.
When anyone loses someone it is very natural to grieve and to mourn. This is important to the healing process. Knoxville, TN loses approximately 3,100 babies a year through abortion. On May 10th 2008, we will have a funeral procession for those we have lost as a result of abortion and to extend mercy and healing to mothers, fathers and relatives of the unborn.
On September 11, 2001 the United States of America lost 2,792 lives in the terrorists’ attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and Flight 93. Ever since that horrifying day, our Nation has taken different moments in time to mourn, grieve,and remember. Knoxville loses approximately the same number of lives each year through abortion. It’s time to mourn…it’s time to grieve…it’s time to heal.
Did you catch that linkage to 9/11? Some folks may think that it’s just making a point in numbers, but I am here to tell you the equating of the two is much more heinous, if we look back at our legislative fetus people’s most recent stunt over the misogynist SJR127. It is equating abortion as a terrorist act. It is a perfect example of how these extremist pastors tell the news one thing, and their followers another. And that is not so far-fetched an idea as you may think, when people are having discussions on how women should be treated criminally if they have an abortion.
As Katha Pollit notes,
The suspicion that women are dim would explain why Oklahoma has just passed a law requiring not only that women seeking abortions be forced to view sonograms of their fetuses but that the picture be taken in the way most likely to reveal the clearest picture–often up their vaginas. In other antichoice news, an abortion ban will be on the ballot again in South Dakota, this time with narrow exceptions for rape and incest. And mark June 7 on your calendar–it’s Protest the Pill day, brought to you by the American Life League and other antichoice groups, which claim, despite the evidence, that “the Pill kills babies” by preventing implantation of fertilized eggs. Maybe it’s good that the antichoice movement is outing itself as opposed to contraception, as prochoicers have long maintained and not many pundits have noted–but it also shows that they believe they can come out of the closet and not be dismissed as lunatics. Look for more struggles over government birth-control funding–already way down, thanks to budget cuts and inflation–as the antichoicers move the goal posts of how “life” is defined.
You know, I hate to say it this way, but at least South Dakota has exceptions for rape, incest and health of the mother. The proposed TN amendment doesn’t even have that. Expect it to be back next legislative session, as it has been every session the past few years. Seriously, imagine being thankful for such narrow exceptions as rape, incest and health of the mother. Why TN’s proposed amendment doesn’t often hit the feminist radar is because the state Supreme Court had ruled in 2000 that a woman has the right to an abortion, the fetus people and misogynists in this state have decided that ruling gives women more rights than they should have, and are taking a longer, more permenant route to make abortion illegal than other states.
But the assault on women’s reproductive rights in TN is much more pervasive than a fake funeral procession. Viewing an ultrasound; informed consent, otherwise dressed up as scare tactics; parental consent, adding restrictions on abortion providers; allowing parents of minors who had an abortion sue the provider; and redefining life, to name a few of the legislative attempts to control women in this state.
None of this addresses how this assault is killing women, even the women that aren’t interested in abortion. I find that TN does not track, specifically, pregnancy-related complications that kill the mother. Yet, according to the CDC, tracking maternal mortality should be given more attention.
What I was able to find, is that there is a huge racial disparity in births and availability of care in the state of TN, and that low birth weights are rising. This is of particular concern as adolescents and women over 40 are at greater risk of having low-weight births.
There is no mention of the rising number of children having children from the fetus people. Can you wrap your head around 15 pregnancies in children aged 10-14 in this county alone during 2006? No, I didn’t think so. That’s just one year for a small number of young girls, in a relatively small county. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but compare it to Shelby County which had 77 pregnancies in girls aged 10-14 in the same year, or Davidson County. In fact, the top three counties that had the largest number of adolescent pregnancies, overall and in the 10-14 yo range, are, in this order, Shelby, Davidson and Knox. This is not something we should be proud of.
Now, like all other states, TN does closely track infant mortality, which is another important public health measure, as is maternal mortality. Within the infant mortality report, we find that TN’s infant mortality rate is well above the national average — another distinction we do not need.
In 2004, Tennessee’s infant mortality rate was 8.6 per 1,000 live born infants which was substantially higher than the national rate of 6.6 per 1,000 live births1.
[...]The death of an infant not only reflects the current health status of a population but also gives an indication of maternal health, quality of care and access to care, socioeconomic conditions and public health interventions.
In other words maternal and infant health are inextricably linked. This should be particularly disturbing, because some 19 counties in TN don’t even have an ob/gyn. Furthermore, 30 counties do not have adequate health care for women. Contrary to Sen Corker, putting a cap on med-mal damages is not going to change anything (but that is for another post).
There are some very disturbing trends in Knox County and the state of Tennessee, regarding women’s reproductive health. It appears that as the fetus people took hold in our state legislature, pushing their agenda, more women (and children) are dying, after a long period of maternal and infant mortality going down. This is more than just an unfortunate outcome. It is an outcome that can be avoided.
Blogs participating in the Blaogswarm (to be updated as posts are posted)
Yes, there is a huge racial disparity about births; but black women already get about double the rate of abortions as white women — what more can you want?
Low birth weights are rising for a lot of factors, including fertility treatments (many infertile women have other health problems that cause prematurity and/or low birthweight; they’re also more likely to have multiples which are predisposed to low birthweight; and they’re much less likely to have an abortion for any reason, after trying so hard to get pregnant), obesity, poor maternal health (unrelated to but exacerbated by pregnancy), etc. LBW actually decreased among teenage mothers — the increase is among the over-40 crowd, who are also going to be the ones typically having fertility treatments.
I would also point out that the number of children having children DECREASED — as the front page of the TN data you linked to said — by 32%. Yes, it’s still too high; but the rate went down, not up. While teen pregnancy, especially in the 10-14 y/o bracket is bad, it’s not surprising that the most populous counties in TN (Shelby, which includes Memphis; Davidson, which includes the Capital, and Knox) would also have the most pregnancies in any bracket — whether by race, age, sex, etc.
Y’know, it really gets me that you’re so worried about infant mortality when you don’t give a crap about the life of a preborn infant. Why should you care if a baby dies after it’s born, if you’re advocating for its death before it’s born? But aside from that, if infant mortality is increasing because abortions are decreasing, it may be because fewer women are refusing to have abortions when they find out that their babies have lethal birth defects. Also, premature infants (also likely to be low-birthweight, multiples [twins, triplets, etc.], or to have other health problems) are much more likely to die than full-term infants. They’re also more likely to be born alive and live for a time than they used to. Babies born even as early as 27 weeks of gestation have a survival rate of 90% or more; babies born at 24 weeks now have about a 50/50 chance. One baby has survived that was born at 21 weeks. These babies wouldn’t have even been counted years ago — they would have been counted among miscarriages (although that term is now used for fetal losses prior to 20 weeks of gestation).
The best prenatal care that a woman can receive is the care she gives herself. No doctor in the world can make up for poor maternal health — obesity, smoking, being sedentary, etc. The best medicines and procedures in the world can only do so much to counteract poor health practices.
Oh, and maternal mortality is going up for a lot of the same reasons — poor underlying maternal health and “advanced maternal age” — as well as birth interventions that lead to the mother’s death (the C-section rate is 30%, as opposed to 5% in the 70s, and women who have C-sections have a much higher risk of death than those who give birth vaginally).
[...] freedom issues today but I got busy doing other things. I do, however, want to point you to her post and to Rachel’s post. Reading them together gives you a pretty scary picture of where we [...]
Just reading your post makes me angry – did these people think about the effect on he evironment the useless driving around will have? And how many unborn babies that will kill due to hunger and diseases?
Kathy, you can’t judge a report by it’s cover, Yes, LBW has decreased tremendously, but if you look at the actual year to year data, you will find that for the last three years it’s been rising — due to lack of education and lack of adequate health care. Did you see that TN is ranked 48th in the nation for LBW, just above Louisiana and Mississippi?
If people really gave a crap about fetuses, they wouldn’t keep women from access to education, health care, and from making their own choices.
[...] The Archcrone is talking about a Mother’s Day “funeral for unborn babies” organized by a church in Knoxville, TN and their comparison of women seeking abortion to 9/11 [...]
You do not actually know that LBW has increased due to lack of education or adequate health care — that is an assumption on your part. No amount of health care can offset the damage done by maternal smoking, drinking, or other risky behaviors. As long as the mother chooses these activities, her baby will suffer and be at greater risk for prematurity and low birth weight. If you truly cared about babies dying after they were born, you would focus on factors related to infant mortality more than on promoting the killing of babies before they are born. What are you doing to promote marriage before sex? (Unmarried women have almost twice the infant mortality of married women.) What are you doing to keep children from having sex? (Teenage mothers have a higher rate of infant mortality, and the younger they are, the higher it goes.) What are you doing to lower smoking? (Smokers have almost double the rate of infant mortality than nonsmokers.)
About the only thing you are promoting that may lower infant mortality is the prenatal murder of babies with birth defects.
Actually, Kathy, there is no assumption on my part, as much as one might like it to be. My information is directly from the TN Department of Health which noted that changing the lack of education and increasing access to health care are some of the interventions needed to lower the LBW rate. (Page 17 and this report you can read the Executive Summary to get the gist)