The parents of children who were allegedly asked to leave the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., recently for wearing pro-...
The parents of children who were allegedly asked to leave the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., recently for wearing pro-life beanies are considering legal action, and with good reason, if their claims are accurate.
According to WYFF, “an attorney from the American Center of Law and Justice says 12 Our Lady of the Rosary School students and chaperones were kicked out of the” publicly-funded museum for wearing the hats after they had just attended first March for Life Rally on Jan. 20 since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year and sent the issue of abortion back to the individual states. The attorney said that a security guard stopped the kids and called the museum a “neutral zone,” further informing them that they would either have to remove their hats to enter or leave the premises.
“They should be allowed to wear the hats that they were wearing and to be able to express themselves,” parent Nora Luz Kriegel told the local outlet. “And I felt it was very wrong that this person harassed them.”
The outlet reported that Kriegel has two young kids who attend Our Lady of the Rosary, which is located in Greenville County, S.C., and though they were not at the rally, she is one of a number of residents who are writing the museum to request a change in policy after the incident.
“Children deserve to be treated with respect and these children are standing up for human life. For the most innocent human life,” she told the local outlet. “I just don’t understand at all in my being how anybody could look at something that says “pro-life” and say that that is something that is offensive to them in any way, shape, or form.”
WYFF noted that reporters reached out to the museum and the school, with the latter referring the outlet to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, which responded via email.
“Thousands of Catholic students attend the March for Life every year and we support their right to stand for life,” said the diocese.
A spokesperson from the museum noted: “Asking visitors to remove hats and clothing is not in keeping with our policy or protocols. We provided immediate training to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of incident and have determined steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
In June, the nation’s highest court ruled 6-3 in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that overturned all state laws concerning abortion at the time and legalized it throughout the United States, claiming there was some hidden constitutional right to killing unborn babies added to America’s founding governing document.
“There is nothing in the Constitution about abortion, and the Constitution does not implicitly protect the right,” the ruling states. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
As such, abortions will continue to remain legal in states that deem it so; other states, however, are liable to ban the procedure altogether or severely restrict it.
The decision was foreshadowed prior to the ruling. In early May, a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito in February was leaked to Politico and it set off a firestorm, not to mention that the leak was unprecedented and set off a chaotic investigation to discover who did it.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito wrote.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he wrote in the document. “We, therefore, hold the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”