ANOTHER LESSON IN TOLERANCE FROM THE LEFT

Post lifted from Betsy Newmark

Pro-abortion supporters in San Francisco have demonstrated that they have little respect for the First Amendment. A pro-life group has bought advertising space on the public transportation system and the abortion groups are appalled and their acolytes are defacing the posters.

Bay Area abortion-rights activists say a Roman Catholic group's advertisements on hundreds of BART trains and in scores of stations -- attacking the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision and asking "Abortion: Have we gone too far?" -- have gone too far in a region known for its progressive politics.

Many of the ads have been torn down or defaced since the campaign began three weeks ago.

"I think every woman has noticed them,'' said Suzanne "Sam" Joi, a member of Code Pink, a social justice and anti-war group. "I couldn't believe BART would allow something like this. Why are they doing this?''

Well, perhaps it is because they have a First Amendment requirement to do so. Are the pro-abortion groups so unsure of the power of their beliefs that they fear some posters in the buses? And given that abortion is perfectly legal in San Francisco and wouldn't be outlawed even if the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade - the issue would return to the states and do you really think that California would vote to stop abortion - why are these pro-abortion supporters so upset about posters that have this message?

The campaign features two ads, each slickly produced and featuring a blurry photograph of a woman against a turquoise background. One ad, headlined "9 months" in large letters, features nine months of a calendar and reads: "Because of Roe vs. Wade, this is the amount of time the Supreme Court says it's legal to have an abortion."

The other contains the message: "The Supreme Court says you can choose: after the heart starts beating, after its arms and legs appear, after all organs are present, after the sex is apparent, after it sucks its thumb, after it responds to sounds, after it could survive outside the womb.''

Both ads conclude with the tagline "Abortion: Have we gone too far?'' and the name and Web site address (www.secondlookproject.org) for the Second Look Project, an effort sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which created the campaign and unveiled it on Washington's Metro subway system a year ago.

Is it because they despise the idea that a woman may choose NOT to have an abortion? Shows how fake the formula of making abortion safe, legal, and rare is. They are not truly interested in that last adjective.



'PC policing' row in Australia

A brawl has broken out over suggestions the NSW Government has been too politically correct to arrest the people responsible for revenge attacks in the wake of the Cronulla riot. NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam yesterday repeated his attack on the Iemma Government for being soft on ethnic crime and criticised police for failing to arrest people of Middle Eastern descent. Premier Morris Iemma denied telling police to go soft on people of Middle Eastern descent and responded angrily to the comments.

Inspecting the state's new anti-riot squad, Mr Iemma promised a crackdown on antisocial and riotous behaviour. "We're on the side of the police in this, he's (Mr Debnam) not. The hooligans and thugs have got no respect. No wonder, when the example is being set by the Leader of the Opposition," Mr Iemma said.

Mr Debnam's comments last week that the NSW Government had been soft on ethnic crime for the past 10 years prompted Mr Iemma's outburst and criticism from police Commissioner Ken Moroney.

"The statistics would suggest the Government is simply not putting the resources into rounding up these Middle Eastern criminals and thugs. The Labor Party seems to be indebted to certain ethnic groups," Mr Debnam said last week. Yesterday, he refused to back down. "Thugs on the streets of Sydney that should be in jail. That's the issue." Mr Debnam said the Government was too "politically correct" to act against ethnic gangs. "The community wants these people locked up and I'm going to keep raising this issue every day until those couple of hundred Middle Eastern thugs are behind bars."

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Police attack on civil liberties in Australia

Police directives about what could and could not be photographed were an abuse of power and should be ignored, Liberty Victoria said today. The civil liberties body made the statement after a report in a Melbourne newspaper today said a member of the Geelong Camera Club received a visit from police after he photographed gas storage cylinders at the city's Shell oil refinery. Club member Hans Kawitski was told not to photograph industrial installations and was ordered to inform members of the camera club to follow his lead.

Liberty Victoria said its advice to photographers would be to ignore the directive. "The police have got no place making such warnings," president Brian Walters SC said. "Merely to threaten is exceeding police powers and is an abuse of power. "If you were a serious terrorist you wouldn't be openly taking photographs. Taking photos of public objects is a normal and quite understandable part of a modern society." Mr Walters said police had been spooked by politicians and had acquired "an inflated fear of terrorism". "We currently have thousands of cameras set up to watch citizens, but if citizens themselves take photos, the authorities take that as some sort of risk," he said.

Geelong Camera Club vice-president Frank Sady said the club was having its first meeting tonight after a summer recess. He said he would be advising them against following the police orders. "Until such time as there's a law (we won't be doing anything differently)," he said. "We're not doing any harm and we're not hurting anybody." Mr Sady said the directive reminded him of visiting Poland when the secret police were stopping photography. "No terrorist is going to hang around the front gate (of Shell's refinery) taking photos," he said. "It's just the freedom to do what's reasonable in our pursuit of photography. We take photos for aesthetic purposes, not for ulterior motives."

The Australian Photographic Society said the incident was sad but not surprising. Senior vice-president Bert Hoveling said he had been taking a series of photos at Eastland Shopping Centre when he was "hauled off by security to management". "They said, this is company policy that you can't take photos inside Eastland shopping centre," he said. "We have to run this fine line now between getting the photos we want for enjoying our photography or entering competition and not transgressing local policies or laws."

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