Community Corner

Abortion Clinic Landlord Launches 'Voice of Choice'

Abortion rights campaign formed after protestors targeted daughter's school.

The landlord of a Germantown abortion clinic responded to anti-abortion rallies outside his child's middle school by forming his own group, Voice of Choice.

Todd Stave told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Friday that he formed the group by emailing 20 people within his circle. The group has been contacting anti-abortion protestors who had contacted Stave by phone and email, Stave said.

Stave claimed that he’s reached out to 5,000 people over the span of two days and that the callers who were contacting protestors were now doing so “on their on own accord.”

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“They just picked on the wrong guy this time,” Stave said told Maddow. “I’m not doing anything except renting space to this clinic. To go in front of my daughter’s middle school and attempt to humiliate me, and attempt to humiliate my daughter, I needed to fight back.”

Stave was referring to incidents that occurred at the start of the school year. On Sept. 8, a small group of anti-abortion protestors gathered outside Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville, The Washington Post reported. Two protestors reportedly held anti-abortion protestors at the school’s entrance on Aug. 29.

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Defend Life organizer Jack Ames told The Washington Post that his group organized the protest.

The anti-abortion group Maryland Coalition for Life, which rents out a space across the street from the Germantown clinic, said it did not support protests targeting Stave’s child’s school and issued a statement on it’s website Monday:

“Some Pro-life groups have chosen to participate in certain school protest activities completely outside of the scope and intent of the Coalition, but I want to assure everyone that the Coalition remains steadfast and focused. These controversial activities, though legal, are NOT something that MDCFL has or would participate in.”

The statement also said that Maryland Coalition for Life had temporarily suspended its “Contact Todd Stave” campaign.

Germantown has been quietly nudged into a national abortion debate ever since the arrival of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of the few doctors in the U.S. to openly perform late-term abortions. Though he lives in Nebraska, maintains an office in Germantown.


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