EDITORIAL
Aerial fetus banners simply inappropriate

As champions and peddlers of free speech, we are more than uncomfortable with restrictions on political expression. But we're inclined to draw the line at airplanes towing 100-foot-long aerial banners picturing aborted fetuses.

So we support the city's ban on the campaign waged by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a California-based anti-abortion group. The same group drives trucks around Honolulu showing similarly horrifying images.

Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken rejected the group's claim that the city's ban violates its First Amendment right to free speech. She said the need for aerial advertising is outweighed in this instance by the city's interest in aesthetics. That just about sums it up.

We realize the whole point of these images is to dramatize the casualties of abortion, just as an anti-war group might want to depict the horrors of war.

But there is free speech and indiscriminate, inappropriate speech. Graphic images of bloody fetuses hold the power to traumatize children, pregnant women and women who have had abortions, among others. Besides, how do you exercise parental discretion when there's one flying overhead? Lock the kids indoors and close the drapes?

And there are other considerations: "It took away my right to explain abortion to my children," one mother told The New York Times of a similar effort on the Mainland.

Whether you're for or against a woman's right to choose abortion, the skies are the wrong venue to send out your message. We have the right to enjoy the outdoors without being assaulted in this way.