Where Are the Young Activists?

Editor:

I was one of the women who participated in the Support Planned Parenthood Day by demonstrating on Main Beach this past week.

I learned much, but at the event’s conclusion, I came away with more questions than answers.

This town is filled with tourists, boutiques and restaurants, which are serviced by many young women in their 20s and 30s. The event began at 11:30, and was to last until about noon. There we stood…”women of a certain age,” large pink signs in hand, proclaiming  “I Support Planned Parenthood.”

But where were the young women and men? Not a single young woman, on her lunch break, stopped by even for a few precious moments to stand with us, supporting her right to contact an agency which offers mammograms, birth control, pap tests. A few of us holding up our pink signs discussed this, concluding that these young women must be at work.

Really? At work? I was at work, too, as were the others, in years past when we picketed for the very rights that we stood for yet again, so that the next generation could have access to all the procedures to which we were denied.

We were all happy to hear those positive car and truck honks, and waves and shouts of support. The curses and thumbs down sign were perplexing to me, attached to the hands of young men like flaccid phallic symbols.

What does this signify when young men oppose Planned Parenthood? Do they enjoy wearing condoms instead of having their partners use accessible birth control pills? Do they feel that the only good birth control is no birth control at all? Is their anger directed towards all women, or just those who want to be in control of their own bodies, because these young men believe that women are second-class citizens still? Because of their religious ideology? Certainly a religious young man would not hurl the curses and derision that I heard.

I believe I did learn a lot from the demonstration to support Planned Parenthood. I enjoyed the camaraderie, the vigilance and positive attitudes of the other women and two men, one with a dog. I am hopeful Planned Parenthood will survive and flourish.

But now it is time for the younger generation of women to join with us and protect those rights for which we fought hard to obtain. “Pretty in Pink” doesn’t merely refer to a movie anymore.

Jahn M. Levitt, Laguna Beach