Anti-Choice Crazies Swarm to Notre Dame to protest Obama

SOUTH BEND, Ind., May 12 -- As some students kicked a soccer ball and others stretched out on the bountiful lawns of the University of Notre Dame, the peace of a sunny graduation-week afternoon was broken by the incessant buzz of an airplane engine overhead.

Antiabortion activists see Obama's appearance before 2,603 graduates and the national media as a chance to challenge the president on turf hospitable to their cause.

Daily protests have begun outside the university gates. Promoters are issuing radio appeals to activists, inviting them to be arrested on Friday and Saturday in acts of civil disobedience.

At least 74 Catholic bishops criticized the invitation to Obama by Notre Dame's president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, and more than 360,000 people signed a petition calling for Obama to be disinvited because of his support for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

"It is clear that Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation," said Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He called the decision an "extreme embarrassment" to "many, many Catholics."

On campus, students expressed distaste for the methods of antiabortion hard-liners Randall Terry and Alan Keyes, who are leading the protests. They also described a sense of pride that Notre Dame chose Obama.

"We want this to be a political mud pit for Obama," Terry said. "Our mission is to tar him with the blood of the babies so he can never shake it between now and 2012."