Clowns to greet Boston anti-abortion march
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An anti-abortion march Saturday through Boston has prompted a peculiar response: a noisy herd of clowns.
What's happening: The Men's March, a group of mostly Catholic demonstrators against legal abortion access, will gather outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on Commonwealth Ave. at 11am Saturday and march toward the Parkman Bandstand on the Common for a rally at 12:45pm.
- The group is looking for a peaceful march and advising participants to abide by the encouraged dress code: "men in suits, priests in clerics," according to a flyer for the event.
There to greet the marchers on the Common and provide a soundtrack for the suit-clad men will be a counterprotest made up of pro-abortion-access locals dressed as clowns, playing live circus music and carrying on with horns and cowbells.
- It's becoming something of an annual tradition. The clown group met the same anti-abortion marchers last year and in 2022 at similar events.
What they're saying: "The Men's March is not welcome here, and we will not allow their narrative to go uncontested," the counterprotesters said in their own flyer.
- The clowns' goal is to upstage the anti-abortion crowd "with a parade of clown costumes and circus music."
The anti-abortion group is open to anyone, but the Men's March organizers especially want males of all ages to participate.
- There's a "special emphasis on men getting off the sidelines and rising up as the defenders and protectors of the most vulnerable that they are made to be," according to the group.
Catch up quick: The National Men's March to Abolish Abortion and Rally for Personhood usually outnumbers its clownish counterprotesters by a considerable margin, but the clowns make a lot more noise.
- Last year's march included at least two men wearing white supremacist paraphernalia.
- The year before, insults were hurled between both camps, but no violence was reported and no arrests were made.