‘Your mommy kills animals’

December 19, 2003

Animal-rights activists across the nation are planning to single out children who are unlucky enough to have mothers who wear fur by giving them fliers at performances of “The Nutcracker” ballet saying, “Your Mommy Kills Animals.”

The fliers feature a woman stabbing a terrified rabbit in the belly with a bloody knife, reports the Boston Herald. Text on the pamphlets urges kids to “ask your mommy how many dead animals she killed to make her fur clothes.”

“Children can’t look up to a mom in a battered-raccoon hat or a crushed coyote collar,” Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told the paper. “Maybe when they’re confronted by their own children’s hurt looks, fur-wearers’ cold hearts will melt.”

According to the report, the fliers even urge children to protect their pets from mom: “The sooner she stops wearing fur, the sooner the animals will be safe. Until then, keep your doggie or kitty friends away from mommy – she’s an animal killer.”

Child psychologist Dr. Carolyn Newberger decried the tactic.

“It’s using children in the worst possible way,” she told the Herald. “If (the activists) want to legitimately work to protect animals from destruction for fashion, they have every right to. But to do so by targeting children and making them feel their mothers are murderers is absolutely unconscionable.”

According to PETA national coordinator Lisa Franzetta, activists will descend on Christmas performances of “The Nutcracker” in as many as 20 cities across the U.S.

The paper says Franzetta acknowledged the anti-fur campaign might spark a backlash.

“It’s definitely provocative; I will give you that,” she said.