How do you feel about people who gather in front of reproductive health clinics and scream at young girls who are going into them? I'm assuming that you'd feel, as I do, that they are crossing a line between legal protest and harassment.
I decided a long time ago that although the idea of abortion for convenience is repugnant, I would not participate in the debate. This is principally because I don't consider it to be my business, and the gray areas are too vast.
I don't care for the protestors in your hypothetical scenario for the same reason I don't care for people in bunny suits trying to disrupt a hunting season.
Civil disobedience has its place, but most of the time in our republic there are alternative ways to achieve one's objective, at the ballot box. As long as we have the ballot box and politicians who are responsive first to the constitution and then to the will of the people, I think civil disobedience is disruptive and for the most part objectionable.
If all other avenues have been exhausted, or if constitutional rights have been trampled, civil disobedience might be in order.
To return to topic, Australia, not having the Second Amendment, implemented some very egregious laws in the mistaken belief that there was some benefit to be had from a helpless populace. They seized people's guns and chopped them up into pieces. Mountains of them. If something like that ever happened in America, you would see civil disobedience on a scale never thought of before. |
