NOW LOOK HOW THEY SPEND THEIR SUMMER VACATION!
Despite its members’ overwhelming caucasity, OSA thrives in the heat. Each summer the organization hosts a jam-packed propaganda-palooza, choosing one unlucky American city to focus on. They descend upon it and host a week’s worth of anti-abortion workshops, protests and public marches, at not only the abortion clinics, but in public parks, government buildings, LGBTQ centers and events and houses of worship that don’t ascribe to their worldview, including mosques and churches. It’s a bigot block party that moves from block to block.
This annual event started in 1991 with OSA’s infamous “Summer of Mercy” protest, a six-week-long siege on three abortion clinics in Wichita, Kansas. Thousands of overzealous and overheated anti-abortion advocates descended upon these clinics to harass and scream at patients, and staged sit-ins to completely block off access to the clinics. One of the targets was Dr. George Tiller’s clinic. Tiller, who was subjected to a years-long smear campaign from anti-abortion forces, was assassinated in his own church by an anti-abortion extremist in 2009.
By the end of the event, 1,718 protesters had been arrested. It ended with a rally attended by 25,000.