Editor, the Gauntlet,
Pro-life pridefully takes her place behind the podium for her opening remarks: She points her fingers at judges, her esteemed opponent, administrators and the audience. In her hysterical screams she labels us child killers, complacent with genocide in our midst. She runs and then, from within the shadow of campus security, produces a foul odour and tries to cover both her ears with one arm and fingers us with her other hand. The audience is outraged as she begins throwing her own feces upon them. Then, when the chaos is over, pro-life goes home. Calgary Herald editorials call us wimpy and close-minded and our cash-strapped administrators unhappily pays to campus security an extra five.
This spectacle which the Herald’s editorials termed freedom of speech, isn’t. Nor does it have anything in common with the protests of the ’60s. By equating abortion to murder and pro-choice to genocide no debate is tolerated, no logic permitted and no rebuttal adequate.
Their graphic signs are displayed outdoors at a major thruway for everybody. Signs are not smart bombs; they target as well the abstinent and people too young or too handicapped to understand the issue. I’m uncertain what good comes from showing dead fetuses to these people.
But if you still think it’s appropriate for our diverse campus, consider endorsing a migration of the displays to the nearby university daycare, not more, by my reckoning, than 70 meters away. Here they cover absolutely the C-Train (no avoiding them through the biology building then) and they can also give their “free speech” and show their colorful displays to impressionable children. If such “eye opening” signs are constitutionally protected free speech, why not Clockwork-Orange a bunch of kids?
I say, take the signs down. I think that’s reasonable– signs are not speech.