Some parents say abortion protesters crossed a line last week when they brought their message to the sidewalk outside of a local middle school, but one of the men behind the demonstrations disagrees.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, as students were dismissed from class, protesters held large signs and passed out pamphlets that included graphic depictions of aborted fetuses on the sidewalk outside of Chilliwack middle school and directly across from Chilliwack secondary.

Gord Byers, who has three children who attend the school, said that middle schoolers are too young to have to confront such graphic images and such a controversial issue.

"There's a place and time for it, but they don't need to be where they are," said Byers.

Both city officials and the RCMP received calls about the protesters. The RCMP determined that it was a city bylaw issue. City spokesperson Starlee Renton said that a bylaw officer was deployed to the area and found that the protesters--who were on a public sidewalk--did not pose a safety hazard and were not obstructing traffic, although they were the target of frequent verbal barbs from parents. Renton said the city concluded that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the right of the protesters to be at that location.

Byers would like to have seen something done, and said the demonstrators did nearly cause an accident. But he also put the onus on the demonstrators to pick an appropriate spot to protest.

"If you're doing that sort of stuff, you have to have some sort of morals as well."

Fellow parent Andrea Dunphy agrees.

"It only makes me lose respect for their message," she told the Times. She said many middle schoolers aren't even interested yet in the opposite sex.

"They don't even like to see tampons in stores, much less dead baby fetuses," she said. "I don't have a problem with freedom of speech or freedom of demonstration, but I think they need to use some common sense about their audience."

But one of the people behind the protest said that teenagers are the protesters' audience.

"We picked the middle school and the secondary school specifically because that's around the ages where they're getting sex education," said Jonathon Van Maren. "If you're old enough to have sex, you're old enough to know the consequences of what that might be."

Van Maren led protests last month in front of the courthouse. He said the group decided to move in front of the schools because there was more foot traffic in the area.

He said the focus was the secondary school across the street, but that he didn't have a problem with handing out pamphlets to middle schoolers either.

And he dismissed concerns over the psychological impact of the graphic images on children.

"I talked to a lot of kids over the couple days," he said. "Not one of the kids was in any way disturbed or aggravated. They come, they're curious, they ask questions, they make really interesting responses. The only people who got worked up at all about the protests were adults. No kids got worked up at any point."