Pro-life placards defaced and destroyed in Bay Area:

Some supporters of abortion rights have called BART to complain about the ads and demand their removal. The political Web site 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."

Interesting how "slickly produced" is supposed to imply something sinister and cold. And if they were amateurishly produced, that would be noticed and something else – stupidity, perhaps – would be implied.

Anyway, this campaign is sponsored by the USCCB Respect Life office. Here’s the website. The authoritarianism of those who scream for choice is always fascinating, isn’t it? Choose…but don’t be fully informed on all points of view. God forbid.