Michele Urbain Herzog (above left) and Anne Marchetti, a pair of forced-birth activists that BU encountered during our recent coverage of the ‘Operation Save America’ (OSA) protests outside clinics in Alabama, have been creeping on women outside a Florida location recently.
Both women are deep believers in Jesus Christ, who they apparently think was the kind of freak who takes pictures of strangers so that he can shame them on social media.
In Montgomery, Marchetti trespassed on private property carrying a seven-foot cross and kept trying to engage me in an unwanted conversation (click here to see video of the confrontation) while Herzog stood in the driveway committing FACE Act violations (click here for video with commentary). Friends of Abolish Human Abortion (AHA), they make a practice of shouting to women and trying to talk them out of their abortions with false promises of assistance. AHA opposes even the most medically-necessary abortions.
In Huntsville, police ordered Herzog to leave the demonstration because she refused to obey the city noise ordinance. Another participant in that OSA protest was identified as a violent sex offender and chose to leave with his youth ministry(!) rather than register with the state of Alabama.
Last Wednesday, Marchetti and Herzog took their bizarre hobby to the All Women’s Health Center in Orlando, Florida, as she related to her weird friends in a Facebook post.
Today is later term abortion day at awhc and this is one of the abortion bound mommy’s with a baby at least five months along. She became very angry that I took this picture and called the police on me, to which, when they arrived they spoke with her first and then came down and spoke with me and Anne about taking pictures. I told him I knew that I/we have the legal right to take pictures and the public needs to see what is really going on at these places. … he actually agreed with me.! But later, came down and wanted my last name to which I very respectfully told him I did not need to do that because I know what my rights are, I could see that that wasn’t what he was expecting, but he said alright. He explained to the woman we have the right to take pictures in a public forum!
We encouraged this abortion bound mommy to be more concerned with what was going to happen to her child instead of a picture, to protect that little baby boy or girl and leave that place of death. So far she is still inside. … please pray she will be convicted and leave and this child wouldn’t die a brutal death!
Below is a screenshot of their unwilling sidewalk ‘counseling’ recipient’s picture in Herzog’s Facebook post. As BU understands the law, this patient is entitled to file suit under the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act against Herzog if she becomes aware that her image is being used in social media. Given the constant harassment experienced in social media by women who admit to having abortions, maybe it’s time one of their victims did sue in order to drive the point home that her abortion is none of their damn business.
Contrary to forced-birth propaganda, so-called ‘late-term’ abortions are often the most medically-necessary and personally-tragic. Lack of access to abortion services often causes women to delay them longer, especially in minority communities like Montgomery. Reflecting this problem, personal upheaval and lack of income often accompany later abortions.
A further dive through Herzog’s Facebook wall is instructive. Here is a post positing a conspiracy theory involving a spate of deaths among snake oil salesmen. In the post, Herzog links to a site known for touting quack cancer cures.
Nor was that post a one-off, because Herzog later posted this YouTube video discussing the apparent suicide of an anti-vaccine ‘activist’ — and begging for donations to “help to protect me” from the conspiracy against “holistic doctors.”
Herzog’s reference to “population control” is pure Glenn Beck/Alex Jones insanity that runs hot in the homophobia industry, so it probably won’t surprise you to learn that she disapproves of LGBTQs, or that she thinks President Obama should be impeached over right wing Benghazi conspiracy theories. These are people who live in an entire bubble-reality of lies.
Sources tell BU that Herzog was invited to present a class at the Pro-Life Action Ministries Symposium, an annual gathering of forced-birth activists who train in ‘sidewalk counseling,’ this past weekend. If true, then we should expect these tactics to spread across the country: weird, paranoid people will be everywhere, taking photos of women and passing judgment on them, because that’s what their Jesus would do.
I’m lucky. I live in a blue (-ish) area of a blue state, and the fetus fetishists have pretty much given up on shutting down the local Planned Parenthood clinic. Sure, a few of the more determined still occasionally sit out on the sidewalk with their gruesome photos and hug their altar-book–sized Bibles to their chests, but they’re pathetic creatures who seem to do so out of a misguided sense of duty rather than fervor.
Under different circumstances I might feel sorry for Michele Herzog, Anne Marchetti and their playmates. It must be terrible—even, dare I say, soul-killing—to have such an empty, meaningless life that being a scold and a busybody seems satisfying.
Since they have chosen to harass strangers based on bad theology and worse biology, however, my sympathy for these people is nil.
But it’s not really about abortion for the fetus fetishists or about influencing the decisions of the women they pester or about convincing others to change their opinions. For them, all of this is a gigantic morality play about how the pure and the moral are oppressed in a wicked world, and they get to be the stars! They know their lines cold, they’ve worked out their onstage business, they’re prepped and they’re ready, and they desperately want to give the performance of their joyless lives.
They’d probably get more satisfaction from a pint of ice cream, but The Show Must Go On.
Too bad they’ve written themselves such a crappy script.
–alopecia
Well said!
I think such zealots as Herzog and her ilk have a mental disorder.
I prefer not to pathologize stupidity.
–alopecia