That fetus in the first picture on that shirt is naked and you can see its butt. I know baby butts aren’t really a big deal but you shouldn’t have pictures of tehm on a shirt in school.
Let me point you here. (ok… I was trying to be funny… not offensive)
Anyway… Even H.L. Mencken went to school (night school, journalism).
Anyway… You still think I’m saying that a school shoud not have free expression… it can… BUT conforming to the school’s rules. You are allowed to say “hey, I believe that abortion is bad” (free speech). But you should not be permitted to stand on your desk and interrupt the class and yell out carrying banners saying “abortion is bad”. Or wear a tshirt saying the same thing. A school should educate you without bias… so that you CAN make up your own mind and decide where you side.
Even in this forum, you are allowed free speech. But you have this freedom, in a set of rules.
My belief is that a school IS for learning… your belief MAY be to go against what a school is trying to teach you — YOUR choice. If I don’t want my kids to wear a uniform, I put them in a school that doesn’t enforce this. Simple.
[Hijack] Oh. My. God. Ever wondered if a certain fetish existed but were too afraid to Google or even wonder aloud? [/hijack]
While I’m not a student of constitutional law, and never plan to be, I have to make a critical point to Kimmy_Gibbler here, which is this:
School handbooks that state in whatever context that “disruptive” clothing is not permitted are written by the people that live and work in the schools with those kids on a daily basis. They’ve seen the arguments, and the disruptive effect that certain messages on clothing have on the classroom.
Fine - find someone to fine tune the language so The Nine can agree that it’s fair, ok - no argument. But, YES - clothing with messages can have one hell of a distracting effect in a school. The administrators need to be able to regulate what’s allowed in clothing, behavior, and to some extent - speech in the school setting.
This isn’t a court, it’s a school. No one needs to prove something, a teacher just needs to know the people involved well enough to be able to make a best guess as to what’s going on.
oh!!! You’re sick!!! 
I think so, too. Definitely not something graphic, but something that indicates that death is going to result if xyz is not followed.
The reason for that, of course, is that it grants them the maximum discretion and provides the least grounds for challenge. But a policy doesn’t just have to be constitutional as written, it has to be constitutional as applied. And again, if the school is allowing some political expression via T-shirt and disallowing other, it is opening up itself to potentially successful constitutional challenge.
Courts will often go to great lengths to avoid pretty obvious flaws here, but sometimes they will actually remember what the constitution actually says.
Well, my guess is here that the challenge is an end in itself. Not only do certain groups like to appear persecuted, not least because it fulfills some quasi-Biblical fantasy they have about end times and ‘Left Behind’ but also because it gives publicity. The same thing happens with license plates - Pro Life plates will of course open the the door for Pro Choice ones, but the intention is to ensure that one can show the world how pious one is, as well as identify the heathen. Furthermore, abortion opponents tend to be more openly vocal about it.
Drugs/profanity are easy to ban. And while politics may be in short supply in teenagers, religious politics sure as hell aren’t. While there are pro-lifers who aren’t Christians, I would wager a bet that a significant majority of pro-life activists in the US would also identify as Christian.
Consider the breadth of this assertion. Here you are saying that “messages”–without qualification to their mode of expression–sufficiently “distract” pupils’ attentions from a government-mandated program of instruction that the First Amendment should stop at the schoolhouse. It is hard to think of a claim more antithetical to the entire enterprise of the First Amendment.
However inconvenient school administrators may find submitting to the demands of the First Amendment (and I have little confidence in the ability of most educrats to either appreciate the motivation for the First Amendment or to be able to detach themselves from self-serving assessments of pedagogical requirements), they are not freed from the obligation to show concrete and imminent disruption and interference. A simple all-purpose conclusory statement in a handbook will not suffice.
For a slightly different take -
Isn’t abortion only allowed in the first trimester (unless medically indicated). I am not a gynae, but the baby in the second panel looks waaayyy bigger to me than first trimester - in fact it looks to me to be around 41 sweeks gestation. So while not “graphic” I would tend to ban it from the school on the basis of being unneccessarily (wow - too many letters there?) and deliberately inflammatry
Ah, but you’re missing the beauty of the rule as written. “Anything that disrupts the classroom” can be interpreted pretty broadly and if a student raises a stink over a t-shirt the school has asked them to remove, the school can turn around and say “Well then no shirts with words or symbols on them.”
School is about learning and I really had no sympathy for the jackasses who used to be shocked when the school made them remove their “Big Johnson” t-shirt.
There is a less cynical rationale as well, which should not be neglected. Human beings are political animals, and when we think something unjust is going on or that some policy would make the world a better place, we typically feel the need to speak up about it. The ability to express one’s ideas matters. This is why we find the Stepford wives so loathsome: material comforts and social harmony are desirable, but if comes at the expense of thinking for ourselves and speaking out, we don’t want it.
Nope - under Roe, the end of the second trimester is the point at which a state may ban abortion except where the life/health of the mother is at stake.
Under the plurality of Casey, that point is reduced to viability, circa 22/23 weeks at the time of the decision.
Not missing it at all. That’s what I have been saying. If you are going to ban one viewpoint, you have to ban them all. Hence me saying earlier that the potential plaintiff here states that the school allows some expression and not other being a possible hook for litigation…
Thanks for righting my wrong 
OK…but even then isn’t the baby shown in the second picture waaay bigger than 24 weeks gestation? Totally seat of pants, but is seems to be intentionally misleading - which to me would be grounds for banning.
Maybe so, but I don’t think this argument (viz. the tee-shirt somewhat mischaracterizes fetal development) really has any legs with respect to whether school administrators may ban it without running afoul of the First Amendment. It really is a non-starter.
I’d love to see a defiition of “political expression” that you would accept.
I’ve been to tough, dirt-floor, no-windows, no-running-water, no-chalkboard schools in Peru and you’d never get beaten for that.
It’s not a baby, it’s a clump of cells, a blood clot, DO NOT humanize it…next thing oyu know you’re saying it has rights! the horror!!
Since 3rd trimester abortions are available (maybe not widespread) it is, at most, exageration.
Probably not - I just wish that in such discussions there could be a little more common sense displayed. If you wanna show the world you are pro-life, great for you. Just don’t mischaracterise the debate.
BTW - I am kinda nominally sorta prolife - believing that abortion is wrong in the general sense. I just that the mothers right to asses her own situation trumps this belief.
Yes. And this is how it’s always been. There has never been any absolute right of free expression for students in a public school.
I don’t think that second picture is as far along as you think. There’s really no flesh on that arm, and the eyelids look as if they might still be fused shut. I think it fits well into the 24 week window. If I had to guess I’d probably put it about 20 weeks.