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Spotsylvania resident arrested in Alabama and Texas for anti-abortion protests Date published: 2/28/2009
By DAN TELVOCK
Robert Coppock was in the back of a Birmingham, Ala., police cruiser when an officer asked him why he and other anti-abortion protesters did not obey orders to leave an area near a high school. The 22-year-old Spotsylvania County resident was demonstrating with eight other people in front of Parker High School. He said he looked directly at the black officer and thought about the civil rights battles that took place in that very state. "I asked him why Rosa Parks didn't leave when she was asked to," Coppock said. "He said, 'I completely understand.'" Moments later, Coppock and members of the Survivors Campus Life Tour were arrested for criminal trespass. His girlfriend, Ashley Hartsell, 19, was among them. On President Lincoln's birthday, they were handing out anti-abortion literature to high school students. The group travels to high schools and college campuses across the country, as many as 200 a year. Some were holding graphic 5-foot-tall billboards showing aborted fetuses. In a YouTube video of the protest, passing students gasp at the photographs. Birmingham police officers show their frustration when protesters refuse to leave the area or cross the street. Coppock said the group wasn't on school property. Each person protested on a sidewalk and peacefully handed out literature, he said. The Birmingham Police Department did not respond to this newspaper's numerous requests for a copy of the police report. A short story in the Birmingham News quoted an officer as saying the protesters were on school property. "We're not linking arms in front of abortion clinics," Coppock said. "We're not bombing them. We are out there just simply informing the public." Jessica Honke, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, said the information most anti-abortion groups hands out is misleading. She said Planned Parenthood provides people with comprehensive information to help them make their own informed reproductive choices. "Some of those organizations don't provide that kind of comprehensive information. They come from an ideological basis," Honke said. "We don't have those horrific pictures to look at, that are not even accurate photos. Those photos are doctored. They are just a scare tactic. It is a way to shame women who are making personal and private decisions."
Read more stories about Spotsylvania Date published: 2/28/2009
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