The Freedom to Speak and to Peaceably Assemble (event to Protest Abortion)

In the pro-life movement, there are some tactics less popular than others. For example, most everyone will support a pregnancy center. Adoption agencies are good pro-life outlets, too. Political involvement (like voting or signing a petition if it comes up) is an easy way to do a bit. You can blog about pro-life, or give money to pro-life agencies. Even sidewalk counseling, prayer vigils, and clinic protests aren’t that intimidating. When you discuss loud, convicting protests or stark, bloody posters, then you rub some people the wrong way. Finally something that really intimidates people is protesting in neighborhoods of abortionists and their accomplices. (Ok, the idea of doing anything that could get you sent to jail isn’t popular either, but I’m not really advocating those things.)

In fact a blogger who frequently supports Planned Parenthood was just complaining about the pro-life groups in Colorado who protested outside of a contractor’s house. Her definitely not endorsed article can be read at this link. I wrote the following as a comment, but I’m not sure whether she’ll post my refutation, so I’m tripling the effort by blogging it.

Obviously contractors (and their neighbors) want to avoid the public opinion that doesn't appreciate those who cooperate in the destruction of human life. A good way of avoiding that would be to not participate in the murder of the most innocent of human life. This is the point of the protests.

Political campaigning is like this. Members of the community have a right to communicate their position to their neighbors. And they have the right to try to persuade their neighbors. The fact that we have to persuade people to spare innocent children is a point in itself.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was peacefully and pointedly protesting the discrimination according to race, he was applauded (though resisted). If the people do not gather to speak, their voice will not be heard. Looking back we don't feel bad about the teachers, clerks, drivers, and city officials who were made to feel uncomfortable about the policies of racial discrimination. What they were doing was wrong. The people knew it. And the wrong was changed.

Our constitution precludes lines being drawn about free speech, but I wonder where Planned Parenthood’s supporters would draw it. The protesters are not on private property, but on public sidewalks and streets. They do not prevent normal neighborhood activity like driving down the road, receiving mail, eating dinner as a family. We are surrounded everyday by images and messages on benches, roadway signs, signs in yards, slogans on t-shirts. Some are even directed at certain companies, policies, groups, or people. Yet there is little outcry against these manifestations of First Amendment rights.

The pro-abortion blogger used the word bully. A schoolyard bully threatens the extortion of property or the physical health of his victim. Debate and truth-telling, with no promise of repercussion, is not bullying. There is no violence being done. No theft is involved. People are speaking their minds. This is the patriotism on which our country was founded, by which it literally came into being.

Pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-choice-to-take-another's-life protesters are not objecting to the shame Planned Parenthood and their contractors feel over their projects. We have serious concerns about the legality of deceiving the city officials and the public, of subverting zoning ordinances, and of potentially slandering the name of other companies (in the case of the Rocky Mountain facility, Planned Parenthood filed their permits under the name United Airlines, which unfairly correlates the murder of babies to them). No one is questioning why Planned Parenthood wanted to hide their plans. We simply object that they did. Cities have ordinances to prevent such things.

To God be all glory.