I went for a bike ride this afternoon to get a little exercise before my mother-in-law arrives for the weekend (she's visiting for a few days). Pedaling south on 16th Street past the Planned Parenthood, I noticed a woman standing on the sidewalk in front, with what I thought was a sign. She appeared to be praying or something. I doubled back to see what was going on, and it was a middle-aged woman, holding a rosary, praying on bent knee, presumably for what she believes are the souls of the unborn. She was positioned on the public sidewalk right in front of the Planned Parenthood entrance.

This irked me, because I imagined being a woman who just had an abortion, upset and obviously going through a rough time, emerging from the clinic, to be harassed by this woman praying for the aborted fetus. Not to mention the fact that they do other things at Planned Parenthood, low-cost pap smears, birth control, etc. I support free speech rights and that includes political views I don't agree with, but I didn't want her one-person protest to go completely unchallenged either. So, I exercised my own free speech rights and rode my bike over. I stopped right in front of her, and said "Look, praying is fine, but don't harass anybody going in there, OK?" She didn't reply, and continued to pray, and I continued on my bike ride. 

What I wanted to say was something like "why don't you pray for all the souls the Bush administration has gotten killed in Iraq" or "you could just as easily pray for the unborn at home, and not freak out the Planned Parenthood people." However, I didn't want to seem too obnoxious and didn't want to be lured into a lengthy debate, I just wanted to show the flag for the pro-choice side of things.