I totally agree that pro-life is a misnomer, but so is pro-choice. They are both ways of attempting, inaccurately, to encapsulate an apparently homogeneous position. Anyone who has looked at this issue at all knows it is by no means black and white; thus, terms like pro-life or pro-choice are ultimately irrelevant unless you pertain to an ideological polarity.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by raggedyanne
Oh come off it you all! The man standing "right in front of the clinic" with gruesome, probably inaccurate photos who, along with others who share his views, harasses girls going into to a public building is not only being offensive, but there is no way you can describe his form of protesting as peaceful! You've already agreed that he and others are breaking local laws by where their standing and by being a public nuisance! It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with him, the man is quite rude in the way he's attempting to get his message across.
I am pro-choice. It is my belief that a woman should be able to choose what she wants to do with her body and what's in it. It is also my personal belief that no one should force their opinions onto others.
|
I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, but in either case I always support the right to protest, even with gory photos and ignorant, god-based diatribes. I wouldn't deny an Iraq veteran the right to show gory pictures of what the war has done to him or his friends, so why would I deny it to another group? I'm not drawing a parallel between the two situations, only pointing out that if explicit material is allowed for one form of protest, it must be allowed for another. As for my reasoning behind letting fundamentalists yammer endlessly about hell for people who abort and other such garbage, my belief in freedom of speech is that even the idiots must be allowed to speak freely, because there is not justification for censoring one person's freedom of speech over another's. You just have to hope that after you've both shouted your message until you are hoarse, that the public has the good sense to be persuaded by the more truthful of the two messages.
raggedyanne, the only thing I found ridiculous with your opining was the belief that no-one should force their opinions onto others. In actuality, you are spinning words to make it seem like they are invading your personal space, but your opinion presupposes that it is POSSIBLE to force your opinions onto others. I've looked into CIA brainwashing and torture techniques and even in those cases, it was impossible to get people to change their mind, especially in the long-term; once the effects wore off, they reverted to their original mindset. In a much less extreme environment, one of protest, no-one is going to be able to force their opinion onto you. You have the amazing capacity to make your own decisions as well as form your own opinions on a conscious level, so until the pro-life campaign starts bombarding you with subliminal messages, their protesting is fair game.
What ISN'T fair game, however, are these protesters' proximity to the clinic. If they are huddled in the doorway to the clinic so you have to go right through them to go into the clinic, that's not only unreasonable, but possibly dangerous, given the history of violence this group has had, as outlied in previous posts. I'm unsure what criteria should be used to determine where it is OK for them to protest, but it seems self-evident that where they are protesting now is unjust.