Lorne Gunter has a fine piece in today’s National Post about pro-life clubs on campus and how difficult life can be for them. The open-minded and tolerant, we are now discovering, are only open-minded and tolerant of opinions they already agree with. The same is happening all over the United States, as Evan Maloney has documented in his splendid Indoctrinate U (the film is playing in Ottawa Feb. 18).

But what really got my attention in Lorne’s piece is the advice to pro-lifers at the end of the column.

I have read scores of anti-abortion pamphlets of the kind given out by campus pro-lifers, and while I passionately defend their right to distribute them, I have a friendly word of advice: Get new tactics.

Your efforts to use graphic photos of mutilated fetuses and claims of “genocide” aren’t winning you any mainstream supporters.

INDEED! While I would encourage people to see those pictures at least once – it’s important to understand what it is we’re talking about – I really don’t like the way some activists display the pictures without warning. These are deeply offensive and disturbing images (as offensive and disturbing as the procedure itself), and as such should not be thrust in anybody’s face. If pro-lifers want to hold such exhibits, they should have the right to do so. But not right where people (including children) will just stumble upon them.