Abort Obama Sign Returned
5 August, 2011
Anti-abortion Sign Confiscated from Protestor
In Oklahoma City
The story of citizen Chip Harrison’s arrest is here: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=12&articleid=20090219_298_0_ENIDAn35798. It was published in the McClatchy-Tribune, February 19, 2009, under the title, “Oklahoma City officer pulls man over for anti-Obama sign” (February 19, 2009). One can click the link above or enjoy our very own summary of the story below in an abridged and more lively form.
Upon first glance, one might suppose that any police officer with a lick of sense would have known that this sign was no threat. Anti-abortionists number millions who have carried signs and only a handful of the millions have terminated those few men (and drastically fewer women) who murder children in the womb. On what grounds would the officer react with such alarm and interfere with free speech?
The sign seemed to call for assassination of the president. The meaning of “abort,” when one is talking about aborting children unto death, is, in fact, “to kill.” Obama is known to be a strong advocate of such killing and the word is associated with him regularly in political rhetoric over national policy. The anonymous officer’s actions suggest that he was not ignorant of national issues and current events. He knew that abortion is acknowledge to be killing
When Chip Harrison of Oklahoma City carried a sign which said “Abort Obama, not the unborn,” he was acting just as millions of us do. In reaction to what we call murder, we act as if the killing of innocents was not so, but rather a menacing tax increase or unfair voter re-districting.
He was just carrying an innocuous sign of protest against the new president and referenced Obama’s regrettable support for “abortion rights” – indeed, the right to kill children while in the womb of their mothers.
̶ Which form of political protest and rhetoric and expressed opposition to abortion is, of course, several steps above the majority of Americans.
To be sure, there are those few who have decided that they will abide the blood of innocent babies in their neighborhoods no more. And this fellow, Chip Harrison, just might be one of them, the Oklahoma City police officer may well have mused.
Nevertheless, abused citizen Chip Harrison had this to say, according to the McClatchy-Tribune: “I pulled over, knowing I hadn’t done anything wrong.” (Hmm. Now there is an ambiguous statement. What would be wrong if he were to have been engaged in some serious opposition to abortion?)
When he learned from the officer why he was pulled over – namely that his poster appeared to be a threat against the President – he explained to the officer: “It’s not meant to be a threat, it’s a statement about abortion.”
Indeed, reports the Tribune regarding Harrison’s views: “he disagrees with the president’s position on abortion.” The report continues:
“I asked the officer, ‘Do you know what abort means?’” Harrison said.
“He said, ‘Yeah, it means to kill.’
“I said, ‘No, it means to remove or terminate.’”
Harrison tried to explain to the officer that “his sign was to be interpreted as saying something like: Remove Obama from office, not unborn babies from the womb,” reports the Tribune.
Well now, such affirmations of a pacific response to child butchery just weren’t enough. What if this fellow were to act upon his beliefs in a way that would accomplish an earnestly intent to treat the children as genuinely in danger of slaughter? These police needed to do their job and maintain a peaceful environment in which good citizens could go to and from their places of work and butcher children without fear of disruption of their livelihoods!
So, “The officers confiscated Harrison’s sign and gave him a slip of paper that stated he was part of an investigation,” says the Tribune.
Time passed and by and by the Internal Investigations Department and wanted to know his location so they could return his sign to him. Harrison said he later received a call from a person who said he was a Secret Service supervisor of some sort and that he was curious as to whether or nor Harrison might like to file a complaint.
Well, Harrison didn’t know about all that. But before he could get around to making up his mind the SS visited his house and told him that they had no ransacking plans but just wanted to walk through it – if he didn’t mind. They wanted to be sure he wasn’t part of any serious anti-abortion (uh, “hate group”) associations. Would he mind if they took a little walk through the house?
Why, no. Harrison authorized the authorities to come in and walk around the house for 30 minutes, according to Harrison’s own recount of the visitation.
They were quite “cordial,” he reports.
And why not? 1) The government agents knew that Harrison was no serious threat to any of those “baby removers.” 2) He could politely let the officers into his home and give them the run of the place for at least a half hour. It appears that he wanted no more trouble than necessary after carrying around that “Abort Obama” sign and making himself an assassination suspect.
Nevertheless, Harrison feels abused – that “his First Amendment rights were violated” because the police, SS, President, judge or whoever authorized this invasion took his sign away.
Capt. Steve McCool, of the Oklahoma City Police Department, was interviewed by the Tribune for their report. He makes some curious comments regarding the officer who confiscated the “Abort Obama” sign. McCool says that the arresting officer erred because the meaning of “abort” is not “kill” as the arresting officer supposed. He reports on Capt. McCool as follows:
McCool said the officer who pulled over Harrison misinterpreted the sign.
“We had an officer that his interpretation of the sign was different than what was meant,” McCool said. “You’ve got an officer who had a different thought on what the word ‘abort’ meant.”
McCool said the sign basically meant Obama should be impeached and it was not a threat.
Well, what about all this?
McCool may well be been tuned into the true moral condition of the country – a population, now entering the second generation, which has resigned itself to the mass slaughter of its human offspring. On this assumption, Harrison’s sign could be ignored as just another innocuous sign carried by a harmless bystander voicing his disapproval of state-authorized genocide.
But the anonymous officer ̶̶ giving him the moral benefit of the doubt ̶ might well have believed that the aborting of children means exactly the killing of the same and that Obama, therefore, might be viewed as the chief minister of a holocaust and that someone was calling for a rapid end to it all.
Comments are currently closed.