"WHO ARE THEY?"

"Are they serious?"

"Is that a pink triangle on their banner?"

"They," the members of Gays Against Abortion (GAA), were the other participants in Sunday's 500-strong anti-abortion counter protest sponsored by the Feminists For Life (FFL). They were serious. And of course, it was a pink triangle. But on a purple banner, with a baby in fetal position superimposed on it.

IN THE coverage of Sunday's large proabortion (-rights) rally, we read a lot about the diversity of those who advocate legal abortion. The existence of groups such as GAA demonstrates, however, that the pro-life movement is just as diverse as the pro-choice movement.

Like a sister organization in the fight against abortion, Feminists for Life, GAA stands more for traditional liberal principles than for conservative ones. And like the feminist pro-life organization, GAA emphasizes the exploitation of women by men inherent in abortion.

The feminist adherence to pro-abortion ideology is relatively recent. FFL notes that all of the founders of the feminist movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and the first woman to run for president, Victoria Woodhull (who ran in 1872), vehemently opposed abortion.

Woodhull, for example, said that "Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth."

The implication of this and other statements by pro-life feminists is that the circumstances which cause women to have abortions are precipitated by women's oppression by men. Because men often wish to avoid the responsibility which fatherhood requires, they leave women in the lurch. Mothers are thus persuaded by their desperate situations to abort children they would much rather bring to term.

Pro-life feminists, and many members of GAA, deplore the perversity of a society which causes women to choose to abort their children. Pro-choice feminists, they say, take the easy way out. Instead of working to change a society which makes abortion seem a reasonable option, the members of the National Organization of Women allow the perpetuation of a society in which, far from being emancipated and given the integrity which belongs to their sex, women are more and more tools of the male establishment.

ASIDE FROM their agreement on some terms with pro-life feminists, gay pro-lifers link the predicaments of homosexuals in our society to the ideological reasons that make them pro-life. The gay pro-life position actually uses the fight against the marginalization of gays in American society to give viability to the fetus.

Tom Sena, president of GAA, notes the similarity between the denial of the individual worth of those who are homosexual and the denial of the personhood of the unborn child. Although the denial of individual worth usually comes from people on opposite ends of the political spectrum, gay pro-lifers maintain that there is a logical similarity between the two denials.

Gays, that is, are often ostracized and violently opposed by some of those who hold that their sexual activity is immoral. They are made second-class citizens when people hold that, because of their immoral actions, any violence against them can be excused.

ANALOGOUSLY, unborn children are violently denied their right to life by those who abort them. They are made second-class citizens when people argue that, because of their dependence upon their mothers, their death by abortion can be excused.

Some pro-life gays also oppose abortion because of the possibility that sexual-orientation-selection abortions may become as widespread as sex-selection abortions. If a gene which inclines or predilects people towards homosexuality is discovered, they note, parents could decide whether they want to abort children who might end up homosexual.