Pro-life activists have filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department after being detained for driving a truck displaying pictures of aborted babies.
 This photo of an embryo aborted at seven weeks appears on the back of one of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s trucks. |
Citing a California law that prohibits “disruptive” activity on any street adjacent to a school, the officers pulled over two members of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, or CBR. One was driving the box-body styled truck with the pictures, while the other was escorting the truck in a sedan. The traffic stop took place near Dodson Middle School in Los Angeles County last March.
According to the lawsuit, the deputies detained the activists for more than 90 minutes, searched their vehicles, and then warned them their activity was disruptive and to not return to the school with their pictures.
Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., filed the federal lawsuit on April 17 on behalf of CBR alleging a violation of the Free Speech provision of the Constitution.
“Regardless of how one feels about these disturbing photos, CBR has a constitutional right to display them,” said Robert Muise, associate counsel with the center. “Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups have embedded themselves in public school systems throughout this country. So long as pro-abortion groups insist on targeting school-age children, it is appropriate that these same students receive at least a modicum of truthful education about abortion. CBR’s photographs do not lie and they show abortion for what it is: the killing of an innocent human life.”
CBR is a California-based, pro-life organization that spreads its messages through the controversial, graphic pictures.
 The face of a baby aborted at 10 weeks of gestation. |
In June of 2001, the center began a campaign to show the result of abortion by driving hundreds of miles of Los Angeles freeways in trucks with billboard-sized photos of aborted babies on every side.
“Every time people hear the word ‘abortion,’ a picture appears in their head that is horrifying, that is shocking,” CBR’s director Gregg Cunningham said of the program’s goal. He doesn’t want the public to hear “abortion” and “think of a euphemism like ‘reproductive choice.’ We want the word ‘abortion’ to be stigmatized. We want the word ‘choice’ to mean something.”
Last year, the organization expanded the campaign to include giant banners pulled by planes above heavily populated areas such as beaches. Aerial banners are a common form of advertising in the beach cities of Southern California. The organization also used the flying billboards in the Boston, Cape Cod and Miami areas.
 One of CBR’s aerial banners flies above a shoreline. |
As WorldNetDaily reported, the center has had to sue before to defend its public display of the images. Last fall, Thomas More filed a lawsuit against the town of Huntington Beach in the central district of California for passing an ordinance prohibiting the flying of large aerial banners within city limits. The city council subsequently repealed the ban.
CBR targets middle and high schools with its message because it believes there are students at these schools who have either had or are contemplating having an abortion without being fully informed, and in many cases, without informing their parents. In CBR’s view, students who are old enough to have an abortion are old enough to see images of one.
In addition to the Sheriff’s department, the lawsuit also names Sherriff Lee Baca, several deputies and a school administrator who assisted the deputies.
A spokesman for the sheriff’s department told WorldNetDaily he cannot comment on pending litigation.
The plaintiffs want a judge to declare the use of the “disruptive” law to restrict the operation of CBR’s trucks on public streets unconstitutional.
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