Posted on 02/10/2003 7:50:17 PM PST by Coleus
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Paul Kuehnel - YDR |
Evan Murch, 9, of Red House, Va., one of nine children of the Rev. Bruce Evan Murch, preaches against abortion in front of District Justice Linda Williams office in York on Tuesday. |
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Grove, 56, the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Springfield Township, faces charges of disorderly conduct and harassment. York Police also cited him with violating two city ordinances: failing to obtain a permit for the parade and joining the parade without permission.
Police allege the signs, which depicted chopped-up fetuses, alarmed some spectators along the parade route and that a disturbance nearly broke out. Police said Grove and his supporters failed to disperse when ordered by officers.
District Justice Linda Williams ordered Tuesday that Groves case be sent to court.
Groves supporters ended up on the sidewalk during the hearing Tuesday because the courtroom was full. A fire official determined the lobby was too crowded for people to wait inside and a sheriffs deputy asked the group to move outside, which angered some of Groves supporters.
So the roughly two dozen supporters stood on the sidewalk with the same type of anti-abortion signs showing bloody, dismembered fetuses that resulted in charges being filed against Grove. Some yelled at cars as they passed.
We have no fear here this morning, Grove friend Bruce Evan Murch of Red House, Va., said.
The reason: Grove and his supporters received a temporary restraining order from a federal judge against York Police and the city.
Federal judge rules signs permitted
U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo ruled Monday that Grove and his supporters are allowed to carry their signs depicting aborted fetuses during demonstrations on the citys sidewalks.
Rambo said her order does not prohibit the group from being arrested or cited if they violate city ordinances or state code.
Donald Hoyt, the citys solicitor, said Rambos ruling was much ado about nothing. The city thought at first that Grove wanted to have a parade, but Grove planned to have fewer than a dozen people protesting abortions on the city streets.
The restraining order came the same day as Grove and his supporters filed a federal lawsuit against the City of York, York Police and five of its officers over the Halloween parade.
The lawsuit alleges the following:
Protesters said they complied with police when ordered to get off the street. While at the intersection of Pine and Market streets, several people in the crowd began arguing and shouting at the protesters.
While police watched, several people in the crowd tried to wrap large sheets around the protesters, to trap them within a circle and cover their signs. Protesters said police stood by and watched.
York Police Sgt. Russell Tschopp allegedly told the protesters that they could continue on the parade route without the abortion signs. The protesters did walk the parade route later after police confiscated the signs.
The court agrees with Plaintiffs that this sort of conduct smacks of ... content motive(ated) behavior which is prohibited by the First Amendment, Rambo wrote in the temporary injunction order. If the Plaintiffs allegations are proven true, then Plaintiffs certainly have a high likelihood of success on the merits.
Police allege what happened
Police give a different account of what happened that day in an affidavit of probable cause. Tschopp wrote that he became aware of the protesters after they had walked about 10 blocks. He told other officers to get them off of the street because the group did not have a permit to be in the parade.
After officers moved the group onto a sidewalk, Tschopp told Grove that he was violating city parade ordinances and asked him to stop his parade.
Tschopp also told Grove that the photos of the nearly full-term, aborted fetuses were alarming people. The behavior of the protesters had incited several people, which resulted in a shouting match.
It was fixing to be a fight, Tschopp said outside of the courtroom on Tuesday.
One woman in the crowd, Sherry Bosserman of Red Lion, complained that her daughter was struck in the head by one of the protesters signs.
Tschopp said he offered to let Grove continue his walk if he surrendered his signs. Tschopp said he would return the signs at the end of the parade. That was not acceptable to Grove, according to the affidavit.
Police later confiscated the signs and ordered the group not to walk down the parade route and to disperse. Police said the group did not follow orders and continued down the parade route.
It should be noted that the Reverend Groves attitude and demeanor during my encounter was extremely disorderly, confrontational and belligerent, Tschopp wrote in the affidavit. He even descended to name calling and referred to this officer as a damn communist at least once.
Complaint filed against deputy sheriff
Grove said he wasnt too surprised by Williams ruling. He didnt present any evidence on his behalf.
Grove pulled out a letter from the state Department of Transportation, saying that the city did not obtain a permit for its Halloween parade. Hoyt, however, says that the city doesnt need a permit because Market Street is under local control.
After the hearing, Grove and his followers marched over to the York County District Attorneys Office to file a complaint against a sheriffs deputy. The deputy asked Groves supporters to leave because the district justices office was too crowded.
Daniel Ustinovich of Jackson Township alleged that he was threatened by the deputy.
Formal private complaints are filed in the district attorneys office if the alleged offense is a misdemeanor or a felony. Summary complaints are lodged before a district justice in the area where the purported infraction occurred.
First Deputy District Attorney Timothy Barker said his office will review the allegations and the complaint will be approved, rejected or referred to an investigative authority for more information.
State law requires the district attorneys office to act on the complaint without unreasonable delay but sets no specific timeline.
Barker, who had not seen Tuesdays complaints, said the release of his offices decision depends on the path it takes.
If it requires further investigation, reports or verification, it is going to take longer, he said.
Daily Record staff writer Rick Lee contributed to this report.
Reach Teresa Ann Boeckel at 771-2031 or teresa@ydr.com.
COLUMN: First Amendment torn down with posters By Dan Nguyen Iowa State Daily February 07, 2003 I can't say for sure what caused Blair Polhamus, freshman in political science and women's studies, to go and tear down "Feminists for Life" flyers and then to proudly announce her actions in the Daily last week. Was it just another example of typical freshman stupidity? Is the political science department so strapped for funds that it skipped teaching the First Amendment? Or is there a massive case of amnesia in the women's studies department?
My own experience with Women's Studies 201 leads me to pick the last choice because of an incident when a student, for her class project on activism, made a shirt celebrating pro-life feminists. The class gawked at her the same way Bush gawks when Colin Powell defends affirmative action. Of course we were startled, because though we had spent plenty of class time learning about the feminist struggle for abortion rights, we had never once learned that the women, the ones who founded the American feminist movement and gave WS201 a reason for existing, were in fact, passionately pro-life. It isn't hard, though, to realize why early feminists wanted to ban abortions. For one, the primitive medical technology made the procedure hazardous for women. Also, abortion was seen as a way for men to have power over a woman's body -- ironic from today's standpoint -- because he could force her to abort when he did not want to support the child. But the overriding reason why pioneering feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed abortion was that they saw it as an indignity for women. Stanton wrote in a letter, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." If Stanton were alive today, she would be horrified to learn the extent that the unborn have become dehumanized, especially as demonstrated in the controversy surrounding the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act," which President Bush signed this past summer. Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., authored the bill in order to "prevent the killing of infants who are born alive accidentally or during an attempted abortion." Nurses were brought into to testify how these unwanted babies, whose heartbeats and breathing continued for up to eight hours, were left to die -- in one case, in a "soiled utility room." The bill's purpose is so basic that it is redundant -- the Supreme Court implied in Roe vs. Wade that a baby which has left the womb is protected by the Constitution. Yet the National Abortion Rights and Reproductive Action League (NARAL) protested angrily, labeling the bill an "anti-choice assault" on "Roe's basic tenets." In other words, NARAL was fighting for a woman's right to be guaranteed a dead baby after an abortion. The "right to choose" has become so important to NARAL that the group is willing to justify what is infanticide by every medical and legal definition. That is only one example of how twisted their side of the debate has become. This radicalism has made them turn a deaf ear on any suggestion that abortion is not always necessary or justified. This is not to say that the pro-life movement is any less narrow-minded. I am pro-life, but I don't trust the limited end goals of the conservative pro-life movement any more than I do the pro-choice goals. I believe that instead of thinking on how to take care of unwanted babies, we have focused on attacking the women who want abortions to the point of turning their babies into scarlet letters. If tomorrow abortions were banned, I think we would actually be worse off, because we would be wholly unprepared to pay the price in money and love needed to support the influx of unwanted babies and their mothers. It is sad enough that a million babies are aborted every year, but it will be the greatest tragedy when a million unwanted babies are born and the people who fought so long to bring them to life can't or won't do what is needed for them to live. This is why Susan B. Anthony, the legendary leader of women's suffrage, said, "Much as I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder, earnestly as I desire its suppression, I cannot believe that such a law would have the desired effect." She compared a ban on abortion to "mowing the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains," and pointed out that "we must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it." I haven't spent any time arguing when human life begins or if abortion is murder; there is no space for it and I'm not qualified anyway. However, I think that any time we can bring ourselves to label the unborn as "unwanted" and then do away with it -- no matter how much of a burden it was -- we don't come any closer to our hope of being a more humane society. I think the majority of people believe this, and more importantly, so do our lawmakers, and it will be a matter of time before they take action to limit abortion. The pro-choice movement, of course, should not let this pass by quietly. But there is no reason why feminists can't heed the wisdom of Stanton and Anthony and petition for the social programs and reform that would reduce and eventually eliminate the need for abortions. This is the kind of noble, compassionate and longsuffering goal that has made the women's movement so well-respected in our history. And it can start with Ms. Polhamus heading to the nearest computer lab and printing out a "Feminists for Life" flyer for every one she tore down last week, carefully placing them on every wall that once had a flyer, and then staying put in the library for a day or however long it takes for her to learn the 200 years of feminist history that she apparently missed out on. Dan Nguyen is a senior in computer engineering and journalism and mass communication from Iowa City.
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