If you're a pregnant woman, do you want to get stuck in traffic behind a car sporting a "Choose Life" bumper sticker? What if it wasn't a bumper sticker but a license plate, supported in essence by the taxes you pay and the state government by virtue of their oversight of the department of motor vehicles?
It's a fight raging in the North Carolina House of Representatives right now, and one that's been cropping up in other states. Are choose life license plates allowing the religious right to get its hooks too far into government?
Judges in Illinois, Arizona and South Carolina have summarily dismissed the proposal to add them to the fund-raising options in the department of motor vehicles' repertoire, citing the topic too controversial. In North Carolina, the current debate is over whether "choose life" is a political issue because civic groups are eligible for special plates but political issues are specifically not allowed.
Its proponents, of course, say it's political in the sense that it is free speech. That's why the pro-life Children First Foundation has taken the State of New Jersey to court over the plates - citing the state for denying them their Constitutionally protected rights. They've pointed out that individuals pay for the right to have the special emblems on their plates, an extra fee that goes to help support the department of motor vehicles as a whole - so pro-choice people aren't technically funding a pro-lifer's message. If anything, they'd be benefitting from it with the funds raised that offset our taxes.
But it's hard to separate license plates, issued by a government entity, from the emblems printed on them. Even if a pro-lifer paid for that emblem to be there, it still stands that the government allowed them to put it there, even took their money to do so. What's next? Nazi symbols printed on license plates? If this is a matter of free speech, than why not? Although I am very decidedly pro-choice, I am not equating the general pro-lifer with Nazis.
But I would ask whether pro-lifers are ready to have the government supporting pro-choice emblems printed onto their license plates, at the behest of the state. A bumper sticker bears the opinion of the driver, a license plate is representative of government.
And my baby, my body don't belong there.
Image: WRAL
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