Protest Was More Screech Than Preach

They are the chosen people, these Rogers High School students - chosen as targets in an anti-abortion campaign Operation Rescue is waging at teenagers in some 120 U.S. cities.

When they arrived at school Monday, Rogers students were met by demonstrators bearing posters and placards and brochures and graphic photographs of aborted fetuses. Some students argued with the demonstrators, some smiled in agreement, some darted away and some stood around to watch.

Many pro-choice activists are alarmed by the idea of crowding up against a high school campus and using shock tactics on adolescents.

The Spokesman-Review is pro-choice, too. But we’re also pro-free speech, and pro-civic involvement.

So, we are not alarmed by what Dallas-based Operation Rescue is doing. In a way, we salute it.

To be valid, choice requires full and free access to information on all sides of an issue. Shallow arguments and cheap, inflammatory gimmicks will not convert many souls. The pro-choice cause needn’t fear them.

The foundation of participatory democracy collapses if we don’t embrace everybody’s right to argue their respective points of view. More than a right - a civic duty.

We ought to celebrate people’s willingness to put energy and conviction behind their public-policy beliefs, even if we disagree with them. The proper response is not to shut them up but to reply with more persuasion.

“When truth and error have fair play,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”

Ideally, the debate over abortion would be conducted with civility and decorum.

In the absence of the ideal, though, contentiousness is a better alternative than silence. More people, not fewer, should stand up and speak out, whatever their opinions may be on whatever issues.

Women’s suffrage, civil rights, anti-war issues in the ‘60s - all were causes that advanced only because believers had convictions, plus the courage to speak them relentlessly.

“We are not merely going to bring prayer back into the school room,” Operation Rescue declared in announcing the campaign, “We are looking to bring God himself back to school - Ten Commandments and all. We are looking to kick Planned Parenthood out and all of its malevolent sex ed curriculum. We will make no attempt to appear fair and open-minded to the lies of the enemy.”

Any parent with teenagers knows how effective that kind of attitude will be in shaping young people’s attitudes.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Doug Floyd/For the editorial board