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Anti-Abortion Picket Targets Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and Planned Parenthood

Contact: Gregg Cunningham, Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), 714-240-6976

DANA POINT, Calif., Aug. 25, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) and it's project partner, Life Decisions International (LDI), announce an abortion-related boycott and picket of the St. Regis Monarch Beach Hotel, located at the intersection of One Monarch Beach Resort and Niguel Road in Dana Point, CA, 92629, beginning Friday, Saturday and Sunday, August 26-28, 2011, from 2:00PM until 7:00PM each day.

The picketing of this property will continue until Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc., the corporation responsible for the general management of this hotel, enforces its franchise agreements to bar Starwood licensees from providing philanthropic support to Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider.

This particular St. Regis property is owned by Washington Real Estate Holdings LLC, whose investors we urge to enforce their management contract with Starwood in terms which forbid Starwood's corporate sponsorship of Planned Parenthood.

This weekend's picketing will involve the display of handheld abortion photo signs at the entrances to the St. Regis property. Billboard trucks displaying larger versions of related abortion photo signs will circle the hotel each day. Aircraft will tow 50'X100' aerial billboards displaying still larger abortion photos in tight orbits directly above the St. Regis Hotel and golf course.

In the coming months, CBR will begin concentrated picketing of St. Regis special events, such as wedding receptions, using abortion photos which are progressively more graphic. Prior to each of these specially targeted pickets, CBR will issue notice sufficient to permit the St. Regis to provide its clients with adequate opportunities to book alternative arrangements elsewhere.

We believe that Starwood has at least an ethical duty to disclose our picketing intentions to current and prospective customers. Knowingly concealing this information could arguably obligate the St. Regis to refund fees and or expose the hotel to a broad range of civil liabilities.

CBR believes that the targeted hotel is similarly obligated to notify clients with whom it contracts to provide off-site catering, that their events could be picketed by CBR activists who lawfully follow St. Regis catering trucks to their destinations.

We will videotape all of our St. Regis picketing activities and post serialized video vignettes on popular social networking websites. We have also contracted with a private security firm to deploy armed, uniformed officers for all pickets.

In addition to the St. Regis, Starwood hotel trademarks include the Sheraton, Westin, Four Points, Meridian, W and other hotel brands. CBR picketing of additional St. Regis properties and Starwood brands is currently being planned and organized.

Starwood is only the first of 70 corporations, many of which are Fortune 500 companies, whose retail establishments CBR and LDI will picket with abortion photo signs. This group includes such brands as Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants, Levi Strauss clothing, Estee Lauder cosmetics, Microsoft computer products, Nike sports gear, Ralph Lauren clothing, Southwest Airline, Staples office products Walt Disney entertainment and Whole Foods Markets. A select sub-group of these 70 businesses will be targeted for intensified picketing between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in the Fall and Winter of 2011.

News organizations may request access to a CBR FTP website at which they can download picket-related still photos of publishable quality and picket-related video of broadcast quality. For more detailed information on this project, please visit abortionNO.org. For interviews, please email Gregg Cunningham at cbr@cbrinfo.org or Don Cooper at dcooper@cbrinfo.org. Gregg Cunningham can be reached by phone at 714-240-6976 and Don Cooper at 541-760-6620.