This column is going to get real serious really quick, so an anecdote, if you please. This is from a comic strip I saw a few years ago.

The first panel shows two small elementary school kids—a boy and a girl—talking. It seems the boy is running for class president and is trying to solicit his friend’s vote.

“First, tell me your stand on abortion,” the little girl says in the second frame. Well, maybe you had to be there, but it raises a good point. Abortion has become such an issue in this here United States that people have begun judging others for their opinions on it.

Whoaaaa.

I bring this up, of course, because of Sunday night’s ecumenical service for the 1.5 million fetuses aborted in 1989. The people who organized this service, dubbed “The Cry of the Voiceless,” did so following their religious and moral beliefs.

I would assume it was planned to be a solemn, moving time for those involved, but it didn’t work. Why? A quote from Monday’s Star: “About 25 members of the Feminist Front burped, danced, chanted, sang, laughed and booed.”

Before I go any further, let me tell you that I’m more pro-choice than anything, but I’m not vehement about it. It’s not a label that I flash around. It’s just the way I think.

But burping, dancing, chanting, singing, laughing and booing? Welcome to the ‘90s, folks, where we still honor a person’s right to speak and hold opinions. Another scrap of sage wisdom paraphrased: I might disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

We all have opinions. Whether we supress them, flaunt them, deny them or fight with them, we’ve got ‘em. Some of us write letters to the paper. Some of us like me write columns with our mug shots attached. Others hold ecumenical (here I go) services and others protest them. But our opinions are ours and we shouldn’t be crucified for holding them.

What the Femenist Front pulled Sunday was rude. It showed a severe lack of maturity and an attitude unbecoming to an organization who is looking for —or trying to maintain—a reputation of credibility.

Sure, they might feel a woman has the decision to do with her body as she wishes. The organizers of the service feel a baby has the right to be born and live. Both of these groups are standing up for rights, but the Front is denying the opposition the right to meet in peace to remember its cause.

Perhaps the Front could have made a better impression by presenting their own forum espousing their own views instead of picketing another. After all, the American settlers came here to worship as they wanted. It’s too bad the Front can’t remember that.

I know pro-lifers can make quite a protest themselves—in Rockford, they march at the Fort Dearborn abortion clinic all the time. But their marches are called protests, not services.

What happened here was a service. It was a time for those involved to remember what they view as tragic. They probably weren’t there “telling the rest of the people what to think,” as Julie Stege from the Front seems to think. But Julie, by the Front’s tapping picket signs and yelling obscenities, were you and your friends any different?