I don't know if Mark Hare wrote the headline for his April 11 column - "Civility is fine; telling anti-abortion demonstrators to disappear is not." I signed the "Saving Our Civility" ad not to silence anti-abortion protestors but to appeal for a kind of civility most often absent in their protests.
Mark objects to our asking the protestors not to come to town. That is a far cry from trying to prohibit them from protesting. One is a moral request based on a feeling that their methods not only undermine any attempt at peaceful dialogue, but make it nearly impossible. The other is a legal barrier which would violate freedom of speech.
I fully respect the right of anti-abortion protestors to speak, their sincerity and their perspective. Abortion is a morally ambiguous issue, and few who take it seriously find that it lends itself to simplistic slogans. I find the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" hopelessly inadequate to describe the nuances of differing opinions. But how we engage in dialogue about these differences is crucial.
Mark questions the Rev. Michael Warren, a protest organizer, about the possibilities of "rescues," people storming the clinics. "I honestly don't know," says Warren, "will they still kill babies inside?" Hare does not challenge this assumption, which is the defense used for such tactics - which are civil disobedience to the protestors, but terrifying to pregnant women who seek a variety of health services.
These anti-abortion protests are often compared with civil rights and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. There are important differences. As I experienced the latter, they were aimed at what we deemed to be to be unjust policies, not individuals. Now we have protestors staking out not only offices, but homes of abortion providers, keeping families in constant anxiety for their safety. Whatever happened to the biblical injunction to love one's adversary?
One vehement protestor told me my soul is going to hell. While this does not disturb me theologically, it does bother me ethically. Where is Christian, or any kind of religious, love in all this? We don't ask anti-abortion protestors to be silent; only to live up to the love ethic they presumably proclaim as they read their bibles.
In the anti-war and civil rights protests I don't remember any people on the other side worrying about safety in their homes, for their families and for themselves. Though I was embarrassed by the tastelessness of some of the chants at Friday's pro-choice rally at the Liberty Pole, those of us who support a woman's right to choose do so with civility and attempt to understand those arrayed against us.
If the protestors are angry with a federal judge's decision to increase buffer zones around clinics, they have only themselves to blame. Their behavior literally threatens the health and safety of women - often pregnant - who should not have to run a gauntlet of hate to seek services, which often have to do with getting pregnant and having a healthy baby.
We do not call for silence, no matter what Mark Hare says. We do not challenge the legal right of anti-abortion protestors to make their case publicly. We do challenge their moral right to turn a controversial issue into a "battlefield" in which hate and hostility transcend reasonable attempts at peaceful dialogue and human freedom. Mark Hare is right to defend tactics that are merely bullying; but creating an atmosphere of hate which encourages marginal people to do violence goes beyond bullying. It is akin to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, which is not a responsible exercise in free speech.
Operation Save America, is openly ad hominum and hostile. As Helena put it in her newsletter column this week, "At Planned Parenthood a few weeks ago, a young child going to the clinic with her mother, jumped back from me in terror as a pro-life person shouted at me that I was a baby murderer. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked. Mark suggests that protest is an alternative to violence, but when protestor rhetoric suggests murder, it gives the green light to fanatic individuals who have weapons. That is much more serious than creating tension, as we know from scores of clinic bombings and several outright assassinations.
The anti-abortion protestors will come; they will shout epithets and insults at people trying to exercise their rights; they will wave their grotesque pictures in our faces; they will call us baby-killers. In so doing they will undermine the moral authority of their case.
We who recognize the inevitability of sharply different opinions will have to resist this exercise in moral coercion and political intimidation with peaceful dignity. They persist. So must we.
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