Pro-life demonstrators were at the Strawberry Festival in Portland, Tennessee holding signs — some with biblical verses, some with pro-life slogans, and one with a picture of a baby aborted in its second trimester. Based on complaints from just a few people, Bill Becker of Freedom X tells OneNewsNow the picketers were detained for a half hour and their signs were confiscated until the demonstrators’ release.

“Apparently police departments are not being trained in the First Amendment,” Becker suggests. “They believed that they were exercising their lawful right to avoid some type of confrontation and to avoid having people’s feelings hurt or avoid being offended.”

But the Constitution protects the right of people to express themselves, even if someone does take offense.

People freely talk about abortion in a positive way, and Freedom X filed suit because pro-life speech was illegally discouraged.

“This is a lawsuit that demonstrates that the right to be able to explain abortion to the public is a First Amendment right that cannot be violated by the state,” the Freedom X president asserts. “The city ended up having to pay us $20,000 and to train their police officers just so we could drive that point home.”

The suit has been settled, and Becker adds that other police departments could avoid the same situation if they would only teach their officers the constitutional rights of all parties.