Abortion Advocates Destroy Pro-Life Ads on San Francisco BART System 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 14, 2006
San Francisco, CA (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates are trashing and destroying pro-life ads that question Roe v. Wade that appear on hundreds of BART public transportation system trains in San Francisco. The news comes just days after pro-abortion groups threatened to shut down a Walk for Life planned later this month.
The ads, created by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and sponsored by Catholic Diocese of Oakland, criticize the Roe v. Wade decision and ask, "Abortion: Have we gone too far?"
The campaign began three weeks ago and many of the ads have been torn down or defaced since then. Abortion activists complain BART shouldn’t have allowed them.
Suzanne "Sam" Joi, a member of Code Pink, an extreme pro-abortion group, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "I couldn’t believe BART would allow something like this. Why are they doing this?”
"We felt that under the First Amendment free speech protections that we did not have the right to, based on content, refuse the ad," BART spokesman Jim Allison responded.
Allison told the Alemeda Times Star, "We certainly weren’t taking a particular view one way or another on what’s a very divisive issue. But we didn’t feel it was our place to say whether it should go up or not if someone was willing to pay to buy the ads."
The ads begin appearing on 280 BART trains and in 48 BART stations on the day after Christmas and the Respect Life Ministry of the Oakland Diocese paid just over $43,000 for the ads. They are scheduled to run through the end of January.
Monika Rodman told the Chronicle about how abortion advocates have torn down many signs, defaced them or put pro-abortion stickers across them.
"The defacement has taken to religious epithets, profanity, everything you can think of,” she said.
Rodman said so many of the signs have been destroyed that they have used all of the extras they had replacing them and have had to place another order with their printer. She indicated her group was asking BART for addition time past January to display the ads because so many no long appear.
Abortion advocates started a campaign to urge BART officials to pull the ads, but in a city known for its strong pro-abortion views, just 39 people have called to complain. Another 19 had called to support the ads.
One ad has the headline "9 months" and the message "Because of Roe vs. Wade, this is the amount of time the Supreme Court says it’s legal to have an abortion."
The other has the following message: "The Supreme Court says you can choose: after the heart starts beating, after its arms and legs appear, after all organs are present, after the sex is apparent, after it sucks its thumb, after it responds to sounds, after it could survive outside the womb.”
Both ads encourage readers to go to the Second Look Project web site, which is an outreach of the USCCB, for more information.
TAKE ACTION: Contact the BART system and tell them you support the ads. Politely encourage officials there to extend the ad campaign because of the vandalism. Contact BART at https://www.bart.gov/guide/overview/contactBART.asp
Related web sites:
Second Look Project – https://www.secondlookproject.org
