Press Release: Anti-Choice Project Responds to Attempt by Olympic College to Restrict Free Speech Rights

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 29, 2010Anti-Choice Project responds to attempt by Olympic College to restrict free speech rights (Bremerton, WA) Following a decision made this summer by the Olympic College Board of Trustees, the state college plans to revise its free speech policies, relegating non-students who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights to an obscure location described by the school paper as the “least visible on campus” (“OC Adopts New Regulations,” The Olympian, 9/21/2010). The board’s decision comes after a member of the Anti-Choice Project (www.antichoiceproject.com) — a non-profit organization based in Bremerton, Washington, which uses pictures of abortion to reveal the humanity of the unborn child and the inhumanity of abortion — peacefully protested on campus with 3’x4’ hand-held signs during the 2009 and 2010 academic school years. The Anti-Choice Project rejects out of hand the decision made by the administration of Olympic College that free speech can be limited to an obscure and nearly-invisible area of campus. Under the new policy, students would still enjoy their First Amendment rights in all free speech areas, but non-students would be restricted to the administration’s carefully selected locations. Tom Herring, Co-Founder of the Anti-Choice Project said, “What this administration is attempting to do borders on the comical as a ‘free speech area’ denied to non-students is by definition a restricted-speech area. Not as comical are the fines which accompany such discriminatory policies infringing on citizens’ First Amendment rights.” As Olympic College receives funding from the taxpayers of Washington State, its campus is public property. Property in which, Herring explains, the rights of citizens — members of the Anti-Choice Project...

Video: Typical Chat With Pro-Aborts

On September 5, 2010, the Anti-Choice Project (ACP) stood at a busy intersection in Silverdale, Washington to protest the killing of babies by abortion. In a typical reaction to our 4’x3′ signs of first trimester aborted babies, two pro-abortion women, unrelated to each other, approached our volunteers at the same time asserting that men had no right to speak about babies being killed in the womb. In addition, both were upset about their children having to see our signs. Whether or not it is moral to perform an action that can have both a good effect (here, adults seeing pictures of dead babies) and a bad effect (small children seeing pictures of dead babies) is governed in ethics by the Principle of Double Effect. Although the conditions of this ethical principle may sound complicated, all of us apply them frequently. A little boy cuts his hand, and his mother puts an antiseptic on the cut. This action has two effects: it causes the boy pain and it wards off infection. Although the mother may not realize it, she actually used the principle of double effect. She performed an action that was good in itself, that had two effects, one of which was bad (pain). Though the Anti-Choice Project never intentionally shows small children pictures of abortion, it can be foreseen that our strategy will result in their viewing. Employing the criteria of the Principle of Double Effect, we have weighed the “bad effect” against the “good effect” and, since the graphic images change minds, have come to the conclusion that the lives saved from a torturous death matter more...