Mother of Seven Arrested For Displaying Abortion Image

(www.RemnantNewspaper.com)  Life Site News reports (Sept. 27, 2006) that Suzie Ryan, a mother of seven, was arrested outside the Morgentaler abortion facility in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada for the crime of holding an image of an aborted infant.

Ryan, who silently held the image as abortions were being performed inside the facility, was charged with violating Section 163 of the Criminal Code of Canada by displaying obscene material. Prior to her arrest, Mrs. Ryan was not warned in any way that she was committing an illegal act.  Six to eight police officers arrived and forcibly put her in a paddy wagon, while confiscating her sign and umbrella.

Police Staff Sergeant Kelly later explained to Mrs. Ryan's husband, Campaign Life Coalition New Brunswick (CLCNB) president Peter Ryan, that the police had acted on instructions from the Crown Prosecutor’s office and some 35 complaints about the display of abortion images. Although the Morgentaler facility has no legal restrictions against protests in the surrounding public area, Mr. Ryan believes that the facility’s staff must have put in one or more complaints that morning.

The CLCNB is not aware of any other case in Canada where a pro-life citizen was arrested without prior warning for simply displaying an abortion image in a public place. Such images have been repeatedly displayed by such groups as Show the Truth, which has won precedent-setting cases in which it also was charged for showing graphic abortion pictures. That group visited Fredericton twice this past summer. At the time, Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside expressed displeasure with the group's tactics, but said there was nothing the city could do legally to prevent such displays.

Mrs. Ryan, who admitted to being quite shaken by the incident, was released after being held in a jail cell for several hours, and must face the charges in court in November.

Comment: Suzie Ryan was arrested for violating Section 163 of the Criminal Code of Canada. Are you ready for this? Section 163 comes under the heading, “Offences Tending to Corrupt Morals!” This catch-all law provides for, among other things, “obscene matter,” “disgusting objects,” “child pornography” and “indecent shows.” The law also targets anyone who sells or advertises “any means, instructions, medicine, drug or article intended or represented as a method of causing abortion or miscarriage.” Obviously, infanticide must be left to the professionals.

It would be difficult to find any practice which has done more to “corrupt morals” than abortion. At whim, the Anti-Credo of Abortion creates dogma out of a perceived necessity. There is no need to reiterate what every sane person reading these words is already aware of. The moment a living, growing human being, made in the image of God and possessed of an immortal soul, becomes trash, it is already too late to worry about “corrupting morals.” The deed has been done, and God has been, not mocked, but openly despised and challenged.

And, once again, Mrs. Ryan’s case reminds us that cowardly politicos and the purveyors of a bloody industry which gorges itself on the suffering of both infants and women have no qualms about using law-enforcement agencies as the strongmen and thugs needed to bully the innocent.

You would think that the death peddlers and their goons would have learned from similar court cases over the years. In November of 2004, Mr. Bill Whatcott and members of a pro-life group called Christian Truth Activists were doing a “Show the Truth” display which featured photos of aborted children. Whatcott was arrested for allegedly “obstructing a police officer” when, after the officer had confiscated his sign, Whatcott moved to get another one.

The officer testified that the photos were "too horrific, thus very distracting to the people at that intersection during rush hour traffic."  Hopefully, this overly-sensitive guardian of the law has exchanged his police uniform for a tutu by now.

In the end, the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench ruled that displays of graphic photos of aborted children constitute "legitimate participation in an important political and social debate in Canada.” The ruling also claimed that the police action taken against Mr. Whatcott was “arbitrary, discriminatory and not clearly authorized by law such as can be demonstrated in a free and democratic society." In effect, the Court recognized the political bias behind the harassment.

Just this past June, Canadian authorities discovered a plot by 17 Islamic terrorists to bomb sites across Ontario. Can’t the politicos and police in Canada – in all of Canada – find better things to do with their time than play Gestapo with a mother holding a photograph?

Free Speech Takes its Lumps in New York City

According to Michael Powell of The Washington Post (Oct. 9, 2006), “two major American Jewish organizations helped block a prominent New York University historian from speaking at the Polish consulate here last week, saying the academic was too critical of Israel and American Jewry.”

Tony Judt, who is Jewish and directs New York University's Remarque Institute, which promotes the study of Europe, was scheduled to speak on October 4^th to a nonprofit organization that rents space from the consulate. Judt's subject was the Israel lobby in the United States, and he had planned to argue that this lobby has often stifled honest debate.

An hour before Judt was to arrive, the Polish Consul General Krzysztof Kasprzyk canceled the talk. He said that the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee had called and he quickly concluded Judt was too controversial. "The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure," Kasprzyk said. "That's obvious – we are adults and our IQs are high enough to understand that."

The pattern, says Tony Judt, is unmistakable and chilling. "This is serious and frightening, and only in America – not in Israel – is this a problem," he said. "These are Jewish organizations that believe they should keep people who disagree with them on the Middle East away from anyone who might listen."

The leaders of the Jewish organizations denied asking the consulate to block Judt's speech and accused the professor of retailing "wild conspiracy theories" about their roles. But they applauded the consulate for rescinding Judt's invitation.

"I think they made the right decision," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "He's taken the position that Israel shouldn't exist. That puts him on our radar."

David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, took a similar view. "I never asked for a particular action; I was calling as a friend of Poland," Harris said. "The message of that evening was going to be entirely contrary to the entire spirit of Polish foreign policy."

Judt, who was born and raised in England and lost much of his family in the Holocaust, noted that he was forced to cancel another speech at Manhattan College after a different Jewish group had complained. Other prominent academics have described encountering such problems, in some cases more severe, stretching over the past three decades.

Comment: First things first. Tony Judt does not hold the position that “Israel shouldn't exist,” as the ADL’s Abe Foxman states. In his article, “Israel: The Alternative” (The New York Times Review of Books, Oct. 23, 2003), Judt stated the following:

Israel's behavior has been a disaster for American foreign policy. With American support, Jerusalem has consistently and blatantly flouted UN resolutions requiring it to withdraw from land seized and occupied in war. Israel is the only Middle Eastern state known to possess genuine and lethal weapons of mass destruction. By turning a blind eye, the US has effectively scuttled its own increasingly frantic efforts to prevent such weapons from falling into the hands of other small and potentially belligerent states. Washington's unconditional support for Israel even in spite of (silent) misgivings is the main reason why most of the rest of the world no longer credits our good faith.

Believing that “the true alternative facing the Middle East in coming years will be between an ethnically cleansed Greater Israel and a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians,” Judt merely supposes a “binational state.” He believes that such an entity would cause less disruption to the lives of Jews and Arabs than “The Fence” – an armored zone of ditches, fences, sensors, dirt roads (for tracking footprints), and a wall up to twenty-eight feet tall in places which divides and appropriates Arab farmland, while destroying villages, livelihoods and whatever remains of Arab-Jewish community.

View the entire idea as impossibly utopian. Disagree with it for any number of reasons. Or agree with it. Whatever. In the end, it is a topic with political considerations, and Americans have always discussed politics. Loudly and everywhere.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) lost no time in defending itself. In an October 5, 2006 press release, the ADL claims that it did not “urge or demand that the Polish consulate cancel the October 3 event.” Yes, the devil is in the details. Nowhere in the statement does the ADL deny having contacted the Polish Consulate. They merely say that they did not “demand” that Judt be banned. Now, simply recall the words of Polish Consul General Krzysztof Kasprzyk: “The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure – we are adults and our IQs are high enough to understand that." Yes, any adult knows full well that there are demands .... and then there are “demands.”

And, just for that extra zing, the ADL statement remarks that Judt’s complaints regarding the cancellation of his talk are “part and parcel of Judt's conspiratorial ideas about pro-Israel groups and ‘Jewish control’ of U.S. foreign policy.” You’ve got to admire the chutzpah! The victim winds up being the bad guy.

While you’re at it, sit back and enjoy the spin by David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Congress. "I never asked for a particular action; I was calling as a friend of Poland," Harris said. "The message of that evening was going to be entirely contrary to the entire spirit of Polish foreign policy."

Harris called the Consulate as a “friend of Poland,” eh? Remember the classic opening scene of The Godfather? The undertaker Amerigo Bonasera, after pouring his heart out to Don Corleone about his daughter’s molestation, is chastised by the Don for having never reached out to him before, as a friend. Who can forget the cowed and desperate Bonasera pleading, “Godfather, be my friend?”

Hey, with friends like these what need have people of good will and lovers of true freedom of enemies?

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