Monday, July 17, 2006

When the dust settles... Who hit who

Reports are that a prolifer hit an abortion advocate with his car outside a Unitarian "church" in Jackson, Mississippi. Photos (with commentary) of the event are posted here:

Jackson Mississippi - Prolife or Anti-Christ.

















The only thing the two sides probably agree upon is that the car ended up with a busted windshield. The prolife reports are that the prochoicers beat on the car until they broke the windshield.

Now, there are a whole range of possibilities of what happened here. Let's look at the extremes:

1. The abortion advocates were the sole victims, the right-to-lifers the sole culprits. The peaceful, if somewhat lively, activists were exercising their First-Amendment rights when a deranged right-to-lifer plowed into the group with his car, hitting one protester and breaking the windshield.

2. The prolifers were the sole victims, with the abortion advocates the sole culprits. The peaceful, if somewhat foolhardy, prolifer was innocently and unprovocatively driving past a bunch of abortion-advocacy hooligans who leaped on his car and began to batter it.

You can imagine any number of scenarios in the middle. My personal experience leads me to theorize the following, based on the reports and photos:

The abortion advocates knew the prolifers were coming. The prolifers knew they weren't welcome but came anyway. The abortion advocates were itching for a fight before the prolifers even got there. When the prolifers got there, things escalated, with the prolifers insisting that they had every right to be at an event being promoted as a "dialogue" even though they knew it was planned as a dialogue among prochoicers. The prolifer decided to park in the "church" parking lot since he intended to attend the event. The prochoicers blocked the car and screamed at the driver to go home and get back to oppressing his wife and molesting his children. The driver continued to try to inch forward. Whereupon the prochoicers started beating on the car.

Upon what do I base this anaylsis? Well, first of all the police said there were no injuries. Surely somebody would be injured if he'd been hit by a car. Plus, I have years of witnessing events, including encounters like these:
The march, 4-25-04, continued.
Things get ugly.

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