DA tackles abortion stickers

THEY appear overnight like a noxious fungus. Any flat surface is vulnerable – brick, cement, metal or painted. For reasons unknown, electrical electrical transformer housing is particularly prone. They are the stickers that advertise cheap, safe and/or pain free abortions, and recently they seem to have appeared again in the Central Business District (CBD) in huge numbers.

Which is why the Democratic Alliance has been seen in the CBD tackling the problem. Utrecht, Church and Mark streets were gone through last week, and hundreds of these posters were removed from all manner of different surfaces.

The “clinics” are illegal, and the word “clinic” is used advisedly because it is known that the one “doctor” operated in a dingy room in Mark Street. “Pain free” is a commonly used USP, which in advertising jargon is an Unique Selling Point. Real clinics will tell anyone that an abortion is a procedure with risks, pain is a risk, safety is a risk.

The stickers only give a cellphone number, and with the requirements of RICA, every cellphone should have a registered and traceable owner. And yet these “clinics” seem to brazenly advertise and, presumably, brazenly operate, apparently unafraid of the police.

The DA removed removed the latest crop of these stickers, but no doubt they’ll be back again and again until one day someone is prosecuted.

Don’t hold your breath.