u235

I have a knee-jerk reaction to bumper stickers. Often if I find the advertised message offensive, retarded or just plain asinine (e.g. 'I love Cats, they taste great with sauce', '"W"', 'No Jesus, No Peace') I feel free to immediately cast aspersions on their thinking, their looks and their lives. Hell if you feel comfortable enough to glue your message to the side of your car, you're clearly comfortable enough to receive my opinion on it.

Of all categories of stickers none will piss me off faster than right-to-life bullshit. Having a 'I'm pro-life and I vote' sticker is a clear signal to me to flip someone off, cut them off or block them in behind the slowest 'wide-load' vehicle on the three lane highway. The other day, however, as I was about to give the finger to the 'clearly too old to reproduce, but not too old to fuck with other people's lives' Octogenarians, I had to pause. Their sticker said "Choose Life, your mother did".

The first response was "well yeah so did Stalin's mom, Hitler's mom and Barbara Bush." But then I thought about it some more. While phrased as a command it still had the word "choose" highlighted. Choose. That's important. The inference there is that they support a women's right to decide, which is quite different than trying to change the laws to deny women their right to control their body and their future.

"Choose life". Well ok, so long as you support the ability to choose otherwise, then I can wholeheartedly support your right to express your opinion and try and change individual opinions through conversation, advertising or other media.