Hundreds of crosses that were part of a Cemetery of the Innocents pro-life display at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point were torn out of the ground by a rampaging pro-abortion student May 1. Members of the campus pro-life group, Pointers for Life, caught the entire incident on video. The vandal, sophomore Roderick King, is a senator in the UWSP Student Government Association. A commentor on the YouTube video page, one Kristen Carlson who says that she is SGA senator, indicates that King is being suspended, but Jill Stanek reports that no such action has been taken. Like the recent abortion art project by Yale art student Aliza Shvarts, here is another attack on the pro-life message that people on both sides of the issue are condemning. In the video, King defends his desecration of the memorial crosses by saying that women have a constitutional right to abortion. Never mind that the students also have a constitutional right to freedom of expression—a right that was actually spelled out in the Constitution in 1789, rather than “discovered” by the Supreme Court in 1973. It’s disturbing to see the campus police letting King get away with trampling pro-life students’ freedom of speech. The officer in the video ought to be suspended from duty as well. It’s disturbing all around to see how the false account of sexual freedom that underlies support for abortion—and which one suspects King has a particular stake in protecting—undermines respect for our most basic freedoms. But I’m glad the incident was caught on tape. Kudos to Pointers for Life for capturing that footage. Their diligence is bearing fruit: local media have covered the story, popular conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote a post on it today, and it’s all over the pro-life blogosphere.
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