Protester Arrested in Britain

We as a group often complain that we have it rough in Canada. After all we are one of the only countries in the world without an abortion law. Our friends give us weird looks when we tell them we are pro life and while protesting we get glared at or shouted at sometimes. And we only have to look to our neighbours in Calgary to see as a club how close we are to the brink. Well there is another example, a little farther away to see how good we have it in Canada. No I am not talking about the courageous struggles in some hellish third world country or the trial of someone bravely fighting against the one child policy in China, but in the United Kingdom where this story went relatively unnoticed about a week ago.

Pro-life campaigners say their freedom of speech has been denied after being arrested for holding banner of aborted foetus.

Now at first I thought that this couldn’t be accurate. It is no secret pro life advocates sometimes get carried away and I thought we were dealing with an equivalent of the bubble situation, and although it is disgusting to arrest people for protesting abortion it is not entirely without precedent. As it turns out this was much worse. The two protesters were holding a banner featuring an aborted unborn child.

When officers ask Mr Stephenson and Miss Sloane to take down their banner, they did so – but immediately replaced it with a near-identical banner of a ten-week-old foetus. At that point the duo were arrested and taken to a police station until the early hours of the morning. In a month’s time they will be told if they face prosecution for causing ‘harassment, alarm or distress’.”

Harassment alarm and distress, well if we can be charged with these things merely for protesting abortion what is next. Is sidewalk counseling illegal because it is to harassment to tell her that her child is alive? What if during our protests we see an expectant mother and alarm her with the truth. We may as well pack up the whole movement. I am rarely a patriot but this case does make me glad to say I am a Canadian. Although we have to wonder how long it is before this disturbing European trend makes it over here.