Focus on Family protest says ‘New York is a pro-choice town!’

Times Square rang with chants for reproductive rights on May 4: “Not the church, not the state, women will decide their fate” and “Get up, get down, New York is a pro-choice town!”

NYC for Abortion Rights, a coalition of groups with various political beliefs, and strong participation by the People’s Power Assembly and Workers World Party, came out to tell the hate group, Focus on the Family, that its bigotry does not belong in New York City.

For the last thirty years, Focus on the Family has been an anti- abortion, anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ2s group. FOF organizes to make abortion illegal even in the cases of rape and incest. It has spent millions of dollars on political candidates who are against same-sex marriage and against anti-discrimination legislation. FOF promotes gay conversion therapy, proved to be completely without scientific basis.

Focus on the Family showed up May 4 in New York to create an outcry about the Reproductive Health Act recently passed by the New York State Legislature. RHA updated an earlier, more restrictive state law that predated U.S. Supreme Court decisions setting current limits on when women can legally get an abortion. The updating was to defend women’s reproductive rights in anticipation of more right-wing rulings on abortion coming down from SCOTUS.

In Times Square, Focus on Family blasted their propaganda through live music, big speakers and an ultrasound of third-trimester fetal movements.

As NYC for Abortion Rights disrupted this anti-woman production, Focus on the Family made the conspiracy theory claim that protesters were being paid by George Soros, and then contradictorily accused the coalition of being fascists!

The coalition protesters stood their ground. They showed Focus on the Family they were not welcome in NYC, chanting that women alone have the right to decide what to do with their bodies.