The escorts and clients hear lies coming from the anti’s all the time. The breast cancer link that doesn’t exist, the “fact” that 20% of all women who have abortions attempt suicide, the curious item about how the equipment the clinic uses is 27 times more powerful than your home vacuum cleaner (although the anti recently upped that to 29 times, I guess people weren’t being properly scared at the lower number). The list goes on and on. These are all attempts to scare and unnerve the clients but are easily dispelled with a little Google-fu. Lately though there have been a couple of examples of the antis lying to their own flock.

In a recent article by Matt Damico in the Southern Seminary Magazine he said “There are a number of Catholics and other individuals who also do sidewalk counseling – although the number of escorts usually outnumbers the pro-life volunteers . . .” (emphasis mine). I admit I was shocked to learn this, because I’ve been doing this for a while now and I could only remember a handful of times that the escorts weren’t outnumbered. Were my eyes deceiving me? I’ve been able to count for a long time now and am usually pretty adept at it, but why would this christian, who is so adamant that we follow God’s laws, bear false witness about what’s happening on the sidewalk.

Another escort noticed a Facebook post on the Abolitionist Society of Louisville, KY on Feb 1 that said “S4U [Speak for the Unborn] sidewalk counselors outnumbered deathscorts this morning at the child sacrifice center (a very rare thing).” (emphasis mine). This person nicely loopholed their way to get the numbers the way he or she wanted by counting only a specific group of anti while counting all of the escorts. This, of course, is a meaningless distinction to the clients. I doubt they arrive and notice the specific differences between the protestor factions. Like “wow, thank goodness the catholics/abolitionists/whatever group wasn’t protesting today or that would have been tough. Luckily all these other people yelling at me are like fluffy bunnies.”

Maybe this was a case of observational bias on my part though. Maybe I see more antis than escorts because of how it feels personally. So I decided to check the claims of these righteous people. Luckily for me the escorts keep a count of the number of escorts and the number of protestors that show up each day, so the information was readily available. I jumped in and started inputting the numbers and was unsurprised to learn that the opposite of what is being promoted here is true. I have gone through each month in 2013 (charts provided*) and found that out of 261 days that the clinic was open the escorts outnumbered the antis a whopping 11 days. Even when you add in the days when there were even numbers or when I didn’t have data to input (N/A) the difference is 205 to 56 days. So the “usually” and “rare thing” is actually the exact opposite of what was being put forth to the people reading these posts.

 I think the reason for the lies still comes down to the same thing though – fear. Just like they try to get the clients to fear the procedure, fear the doctor, fear the “consequences” of the abortion, these people are lying to their own to get them to fear the scary evil deathscorts and give an impression of an oppressed, outnumbered, intimidated “sidewalk counselor”. To rally the troops and have a revival meeting on the sidewalk. After all, as I heard one protestor say, it’s not harassment if you’re doing it for Jesus. If you can harass with impunity it’s not a huge leap to justifying lying for Jesus.

*Monthly Charts