Today on my way to the YMCA, I passed a couple of angry men shouting on a street corner. They were standing next to Mount Zion, a prominent Baptist church in Seattle, and a focal point of the the black community. One of the men was holding a big poster that read “THIS CHURCH ALLOWS BLACK BABIES TO BE MURDERED NEXT DOOR.” The other man was holding a poster that featured a dead late-term fetus in medical clamps. They were shouting about life.

And yes, there was a Planned Parenthood two blocks away.

The situation pissed me off in so many ways. Ok, first the irony of two AGING WHITE MEN protesting a WOMEN’S issue in front of a predominantly BLACK CHURCH just made me seethe. Dudes, why don’t you get involved in a cause about YOUR body, like lobbying for prostate cancer research or something?

Secondly, the irony of them protesting outside Mount Zion, which just yesterday hosted a huge memorial for a black man shot and killed by a white off duty police officer was blinding. Um, guys? If you want to talk about the value of life, maybe you should have arrived yesterday. Black women may be choosing to terminate their pregnancies, but white men kill full grown black men every day in this country. Even in nice liberal (white) Seattle.

Naturally, the disturbing graphic image on the poster that man was holding was totally inaccurate: I don’t think that that Planned Parenthood clinic does ANY late-term abortions. Most late-term abortions involve wanted pregnancies that go wrong when the woman’s life or health is endangered or the fetus develops abnormalities incompatible with life, and usually happen in hospitals. Late term abortions just aren’t really the sort of thing that women, at 5 months pregnant, decide to saunter into a women’s health clinic and do.

I am not rabidly pro-choice. I respect friends like Judy, who, as a woman, has her reasons to be pro-life. Judy, when she got pregnant, made a choice that I respect and admire. Those angry white men on the street corner would never ever be faced with that decision, and so they should shut their big white holes.