Police officers in Gwinnett
County, Georgia, arrested
and imprisoned Bob
Roethlisberger, over the
Thanksgiving holiday
weekend, alleging “vulgar
and obscene” behavior as the
justification. What prompted
these charges? Roethlisberger, a driver of
one of Operation Rescue’s
Truth Trucks, refused to
take down graphic images of
aborted babies, which urged
onlookers to “stop abortion
NOW!” Gwinnett County police
proceeded to inflict severe
damage on the truck,
removing the signs by force;
Operation Rescue
estimates the value of the
destroyed property “to be in
the thousands of dollars.”
Major Thomas Bardugon of the
Gwinnett County Police
Department unambiguously
supports the officers who
perpetrated the act and even
threatened to arrest Troy
Newman, the President of
Operation Rescue, if
Newman drove the Truth Truck
through Gwinnett County.
Such a response
by police and by the local
government to civil
political and ethical
expression is
unconstitutional and
intolerable. Expressing
opposition to abortion and
its legality -- or to any
other political or social
trend -- is fully within an
individual’s First Amendment
right. Obscenity allegations
cannot possibly
apply to the case of
Roethlisberger and the Truth
Truck -- as upheld by the
Supreme Court itself, which
ruled in
Roth v. United States
(1957) that “All ideas
having even the slightest
redeeming social importance
-- unorthodox ideas,
controversial ideas, even
ideas hateful to the
prevailing climate of
opinion - have the full
protection of the
guaranties” of the First
Amendment. This means that
the First Amendment
explicitly protects graphic,
shocking forms of expression
-- even forms that most
people consider repulsive
and inappropriate -- if this
expression is used to make a
social statement -- even one
that greatly departs from
majority opinion.
The
Roth decision
goes on to state that
“implicit in the history of
the First Amendment is the
rejection of obscenity as
utterly without redeeming
social importance.” Surely,
calling attention to the
gruesome, grotesque, bloody
nature of abortion is of
tremendous social
importance. It is no
different from the manner in
which many abolitionists
approached the issue of
slavery in the 19th
century. Visual and graphic
descriptions of the abuse
and violence experienced by
slaves were used to inform
the public in Great Britain
and the United States
regarding the true extent of
slavery’s horrors; such
strategies galvanized public
opinion to support abolition
to an extent that might not
have been possible
otherwise. Should public
exhibitions of drawings and
photographs of beaten,
scarred, chained, or dead
slaves have been prohibited
as “vulgar and obscene”?
Some legislators in the
antebellum American South
would surely have liked this
idea.
Adding further significance
to Operation Rescue’s
activities in Gwinnett
County is the fact that
Georgia’s State Legislature
is due to consider a Human
Life Amendment to the
state’s constitution in
January. The presence of the
Truth Truck in Gwinnett
County was clearly an act of
political
expression, aimed at
gathering support for the
amendment by informing the
public that the unborn fetus
is indeed a human being and
that abortion amounts to the
horrific mangling and
mutilation of a human life.
Freedom of political
expression is one of the
most sacred human liberties
and one of the most
fundamental to the integrity
of the American Republic.
Accordingly, courts
throughout the United States
have repeatedly upheld the
use of images from abortions
to call attention to the
horrors of the practice.
Operation Rescue has sent
its Truth Trucks throughout
the country for the past
seven years; it is fully
protected by both principle
and precedent. I believe it
is the Gwinnett County
police officers who are out
of line here.
Let there be no doubt as to
the motivations for Gwinnett
County’s foul treatment of
Roethlisberger. Either the
officers themselves or many
of the county’s prominent
officials simply
dislike -- or, more
correctly,
violently despise -- the
anti-abortion position and
are using their position of
authority to suppress views
contrary to theirs.
Especially telling is the
proximity of the vote on the
Human Life Amendment; this
incident seems to be an
attempt by Gwinnett County
officials to weaken public
support for the amendment by
simply leaving the public in
the dark about what an
abortion truly is. They are
free to oppose the amendment
using their own arguments
and reasons, but they are
not free to use
coercion to suppress the
arguments of the amendment’s
supporters. It is time for
concerned friends of liberty
to tell Gwinnett County’s
policemen and policymakers
just how illegitimate the
county’s arrest of
Roethlisberger was. If this
heinous plan to suppress
free speech backfires on
those who perpetrated it, we
will have won a tremendous
victory for liberty.
Contact
Gwinnett County
Chief of Police Charles M.
Walters
770-513-5000
Charles.Walters@gwinnettcounty.com
Arrested
for the Truth