Defacement of Anti-Choice BART Ads Tied to Indybay in Corporate Press

BAY AREA

Anti-abortion ad on BART angers activists
Many placards have been defaced or destroyed

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, January 13, 2006

Bay Area abortion-rights activists say a Roman Catholic group's advertisements on hundreds of BART trains and in scores of stations -- attacking the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision and asking "Abortion: Have we gone too far?" -- have gone too far in a region known for its progressive politics.

Many of the ads have been torn down or defaced since the campaign began three weeks ago.

"I think every woman has noticed them,'' said Suzanne "Sam" Joi, a member of Code Pink, a social justice and anti-war group. "I couldn't believe BART would allow something like this. Why are they doing this?''

The ads began appearing in BART trains and stations the day after Christmas. According to BART spokesman Linton Johnson, 280 of them appear in BART's rail cars and 48 larger versions are displayed in stations. The Respect Life Ministry of the Oakland Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church paid $43,200 for the ads, scheduled for display through the end of the month.

BART officials say they had little choice but to post the ads, given the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment. The transit district also has a policy of accepting point-of-view advertising and has displayed other political material -- including advertising from its employee unions during last year's contract talks.

"We're not in the business of censorship and don't believe a government agency should be in the business of censorship,'' Johnson said. "It shouldn't be up to a government official to determine whose opinion is right and whose is wrong.''

Many public transportation agencies allow political or point-of-view advertising on their systems, including Muni, which is displaying anti-war ads.

Some supporters of abortion rights have called BART to complain about the ads and demand their removal. The political Web site http://www.indybay.org urged activists to call BART and members of its Board of Directors to register their discontent. As of Thursday, the transit agency had received 29 complaints, Johnson said.

Critics of the ads also seem to be taking matters into their own hands. Hundreds of the ads have been defaced with markers, had stickers placed over them or have been torn down and ripped up, according to Monika Rodman, coordinator of the group that placed the ads.

"The defacement has taken to religious epithets, profanity, everything you can think of,'' she said. A billboard at the MacArthur station in Oakland was torn to shreds, she said, and mini essays were written on others.

So many of the ads have been destroyed, she said, that a supply of a couple of dozen extras has been exhausted, and the ministry has ordered reinforcements from its printer. The group, which funded the campaign through donations, according to Rodman, is also asking BART's ad agency, CBS Outdoor (formerly Viacom Outdoor), for extra display time to compensate for the vandalism.

The campaign features two ads, each slickly produced and featuring a blurry photograph of a woman against a turquoise background. One ad, headlined "9 months" in large letters, features nine months of a calendar and reads: "Because of Roe vs. Wade, this is the amount of time the Supreme Court says it's legal to have an abortion."

The other contains the 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 conclude with the tagline "Abortion: Have we gone too far?'' and the name and Web site address (http://www.secondlookproject.org) for the Second Look Project, an effort sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which created the campaign and unveiled it on Washington's Metro subway system a year ago.

"It was clear that these eye-catching graphics and thought-provoking messages could serve as an effective pro-life educational tool in our area, too," Rodman said. She said she had tested the ads on female employees of local cafes and was emboldened by their positive responses.

Abortion-rights activists are responding differently, calling the ads misleading, manipulative and part of an effort to undermine the pro-choice movement in the Bay Area.

"They're calling for the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, which will lead to the slaughter of women,'' said Elizabeth Creely of the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights, referring to fears of unsafe, back-alley abortions if the procedure were illegal. "The Catholic Church is very strong here and is working hard to erode reproductive rights.''

Some backers of abortion rights think BART should have rejected the ads, while others say BART should have warned pro-choice groups that the ads were about to appear and offered them a chance to run their own ad campaign.

"At the very least they should have made sure both sides were represented,'' Joi said.

In mid-December, anticipating controversy, BART put out a passenger bulletin explaining its advertising policy. BART may consider revising the policy this year to prohibit point-of-view advertising, Johnson said.

"But that could have a lot of implications -- like no political ads (for candidates or ballot measures),'' he said.

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