In New Mexico, Greg Fultz has responded to the loss of the baby he almost fathered with his ex-girlfriend by putting up a billboard along the Alamogordo, NM. thoroughfare that shows him holding the outline of an infant, accompanied by text that reads, “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!”
His ex- has taken him to court for harassment and violation of privacy, demanding that the billboard be removed. Fultz and his attorney are not giving in, and argue the order violates Fultz’s free speech rights.
Fultz may have a good case. I could see him prevailing in a First Amendment analysis that places free speech above the breach of privacy and the embarrassment such a billboard would cause. If his girlfriend really did have an abortion (she claims it was a miscarriage), I can also understand how many would sympathize with his claim of father’s rights.
It doesn’t matter. The billboard is ethically indefensible. It is motivated by hate and anger, and designed only to humiliate and hurt. Putting it up is a mean-spirited act of vengeance, with no redeeming virtues at all. I sure wouldn’t want to be the kid that had a man who would do something like this as a father, and I can certainly understand why the ex-mother is also an ex-girlfriend.
The only good thing about the billboard is that it doesn’t have a picture of any portion of Congressman Weiner.
Ethics Alarms 
*cough* OR not…
There is possibly another good thing about the billboard.
The people that paid for that ad now have less money than they did before, and greater visibility to their horrible behavior. Even if it could be said that “the billboard people shouldn’t have run that ad,” I think the money is safer in the hands of a questionable billboard owner than any of the parties who made the ad.
This is why freedom of speech is great. It shows us where the terrible people and terrible ideas lurk and brings them into the light.
“Hateful, Vicious and Wrong…Constitutional or Not”
I felt certain the headline was referring to abortion. Alas.
Indeed it would fit, in my view.
It is motivated by hate and anger, and designed only to humiliate and hurt.
The billboard isn’t motivated by hate and anger. Perhaps it’s creation, thus its creator, was motivated by hate and anger. (Parents tend to get angry when their children are killed…though I don’t know why. Money saved! Though I guess there are “sunk costs” depending on how old the child is.)
As for the billboard being designed to humiliate and hurt….that seems a bit strong. Those might be some of the effects, but do you really believe this guy didn’t design it to inform and provoke thought by displaying his personal experience?
Putting it up is a mean-spirited act of vengeance, with no redeeming virtues at all.
Why is this vengeance? The source article was horrible by saying he was “lashing out”. Did he say that exactly or are people trying to pigeon hole his motivations? I’m not trying to fall into an “Everybody Does It” trap here, but don’t a lot of people talk about their personal experiences to show how we need to reform laws? This guy is using his personal experience to spark thought and discussion.
Additionally, no names were used in the billboard. Even if people recognized him, they wouldn’t necessarily know of his girlfriend. That’s not the kind of billboard that is “designed to humiliate”. It may hurt his ex-girlfriend to see it and be reminded of what has transpired, but I don’t think that’s by design.
The whole AP article and yours hinges on the fact that this guy is known or recognized. If he hadn’t used an image of himself the billboard would have been 100% anonymous and the side effects wouldn’t exist at all.
But if he only wanted to make a broad, general stance on abortion, why put himself on the billboard? It seems to me that using his own picture is an explicit statement on his part that he did hope to be recognized and get his name out there.
Obviously, he didn’t want to make a broad, general stance on abortion, but don’t take that to mean he wanted to make a vengeful attack.
Putting his own picture is an explicit statement, but the statement is not that he wanted to be recognized and get his name out there. The explicit statement is that he is willing to come forward and share his story; to talk about things and that he’s not going to hide.
How is it that by getting his name out there, this particular girl is harmed or privacy violated?
You guys are mean to this guy to assume that this was his only girlfriend ever. For all I know as Joe Public, this guy has 4 concurrent girlfriends and yet I still accept the possibility that he’s talking about his high school girlfriend from 20 years ago and that the image he used of himself is from 20 years ago as well.
Uh…did you LOOK at that guy?
Your great strength, Tim, is that you don’t automatically accept the conventional wisdom and interpretations, allowing you to avid bias and stay open-minded. Here, I think, you misfire a bit.
He is recognized by those who know him and his ex. This is a public embarrassment to his former girlfriend, even if the number of people who know who he was referring to is limited. Her private medical procedure is nobody’s business but those whom she wished to know about it—if he phoned or Weinered everyone they knew saying the same thing as the billboard, that would be an act of vengeance and anger too.
I’m surprised you would conclude that when someone calls another person a baby killer, by name or not, on a billboard, the injury inherent isn’t by design. How could it not be?
I don’t disagree with your words. However, true motivation of the father must dictate whether we take your perspective or mine. If we applied your perspective to every situation, we would have a culture of silence. We don’t.
If a wife is beaten by her husband, she speaks out and tells her cautionary tale. Society accepts this.
A father loses his family to a drunk driver, and he speaks out and campaigns against drink driving. Society accepts this.
If you don’t want to be a part of another person’s story, don’t interact with people. You’ll have your story all to your self.
Her medical procedure is private, sure. However, he’s not talking about the medical procedure. He’s talking about a unilateral decision that was made regarding his offspring. When Hilary Swank goes into a surgery center and comes out looking like Dolly Parton, we aren’t talking about a medical procedure.
So how is it that telling people that know you something they, presumably, already knew, vengeful?
Also, you keep using “Anger” to suggest that it’s unethical to feel something….
Humans feel a wide range of emotions. None of them are unethical to act on, but it’s how you act that matters.
Point taken regarding anger. My only point is that anger is not an ethical motivation—it’s a non-ethical motivation, and usually linked to retribution, pay-back, or revenge.
Whether this particular question of morality (or lack thereof) has specific and questionable facts and issues, perhaps the bigger dilemma here involves the extent of an individual’s rights in general. For example, if I have a girlfriend with whom I was in a relationship for 18-24 months that ended by mutual agreement, and eight weeks later was informed by the woman via telephone A.) she was pregnant, B.) en route to have an abortion, and C.) follows through with it, what does this mean?
Aside from the meaning to the woman, it certainly also means I became a man whose unborn child was aborted against my will and without my input or consent. These are all traumatic events taking place in my life, and happened TO me. Which also means someone is responsible for these events. To then say I have no right to discuss or write about these events that happened TO me, in MY life, is wrong. To also say identifying the individual responsible – who does not deny her actions or decision-making process leading up to them – is wrong or immoral is closer to protecting the privacy of a criminal than it is to protecting the privacy of an independent woman faced with a significant choice with endless implications.
If abortion truly was the immoral, embarrassing act women feel a need to keep private, perhaps the choice itself was selfish and emotionally damaging to others. Any woman who feels justified in her choice and confident that her reasons were valid would not seem to have such a strong need for privacy. Either way, if something traumatic happens in my life over which I had no control (or even the opportunity to discuss) causes me AND my family severe emotional pain and distress, I would feel justified in discussing it publicly and feel like the woman should have realized the full extent of the consequences of her decision. Consequences she could’ve avoided, among others.