AIRDRIE, Alberta, July 8, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Calgary-area city is considering a new protest bylaw after a mother complained that her seven-year-old daughter was disturbed and brought to tears by a recent campaign featuring graphic images of aborted babies.
Carolynn Olsen of Airdrie says the large posters were “horrific,” as well as “insensitive, inappropriate and damaging in nature,” according to Airdrie City View. On Monday, she asked her City council to require protesters to give the City advance notice of such demonstrations.
“Seeing those posters brought (my daughter) to tears that night (and) through her tears she told me ‘I wish I never saw those signs,’” Olsen told the City council. “My child’s innocence and mental well being should not be collateral damage from someone’s tactless and disgusting demonstration tactics.”
Olsen said she is not necessarily against the campaign’s message, but disagrees with their method.
Mayor Peter Brown said he himself is “concerned” about the photos, and has heard from other residents who are as well. As a result of the complaints, the city’s staff will be looking into a bylaw and are expected to report back to the council.
The “Reproductive ‘Choice’ Campaign” was run by the Calgary-based Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, which took an 11-meter long box-bodied truck with the graphic images through Airdrie on June 27th on the way to Edmonton from Calgary.
Stephanie Gray, CCBR’s executive director, says the campaign is meant to showcase the fact that abortion is not merely a “choice,” but in fact “an act of violence that kills a baby.” “We want people to see what this ‘choice’ actually looks like,” she explained.
The group has cited numerous examples of people changing their mind on abortion after seeing the images, and they have even had women approach them to say that the images convinced them to carry through with their pregnancy.
Gray told LifeSiteNews that Olsen’s stand is “yet another outrageous example of people being more concerned about the feelings of born children than the lives of pre-born children.”
“Ms. Olsen said, ‘No child should be exposed to what my child saw.’ More importantly, no child should be exposed to what the pre-born children in our posters faced,” Gray continued. “That’s the issue: children are dying because their murders are hidden.”
“Has this woman made a similar complaint that she should be notified every time the province puts up its bloody billboard of a man through a windshield – thanks to no seatbelt?” she asked.
“Ms. Olsen’s daughter’s tears are a sign this young child has a functioning conscience,” she added. “The question is, do we? And does Ms. Olsen?”