First Amendment Days, a week of free food and special lecturers honoring the altar at which the Daily prostrates, got off to an early start last Wednesday when Wisconsin-based Missionaries to the Preborn showed up on campus to stump its anti-abortion platform to the ISU community.

According to Missionaries to the Preborn’s Web site, the stop was part of “Campus tour: Iowa” last week. Activists handed out literature that, along with information on abortion, featured stomach-turning photos the brochures said were of aborted fetuses.

When polarizing topics are brought up on campus, sometimes the warring sides forget that they’re on the same team when it comes to free expression, the essence of the First Amendment and of the United States.

The criticism of the anti-abortion group last week was often focused on the efficacy of Missionaries to the Preborn’s tactics, which speaks well to our community’s grasp of free speech. After all, we agree that repulsive images, particularly if they were dishonest Photoshop creations, are unlikely in the extreme to make anybody rethink his or her position on abortion. And if the intent was to rally the conservative troops, it didn’t work, because there was nothing new in the presentation.

Pointing out poor tactics is valid commentary. Some reports, though, including 12 calls to the police, suggest that there were also those who just didn’t want to be bothered.

Although we, obviously, did not observe all the activity on campus that day and cannot definitively say whether harassment occurred, we trust an ISU Police report that everything they saw was legal.

So, if you or someone you know would like to see Missionaries to the Preborn’s campus visits stopped by the state, we hope you or someone you know also opposed or would oppose, say, Reverse Campaniling at noon on the ISU campus. And vice versa.

It can be reasonably argued that there is a qualitative difference — that Reverse Campaniling was merely an expression of gays’ feelings and not an intrusion into others’ private affairs, like an abortion protest. But holding an event that many considered offensive on a widely trafficked Central Campus during one of the day’s busiest passing periods, at minimum, bears a lot of resemblance to loudly expressing the view that thousands of women and doctors each year participate in homicide.

We support both expressions. They can be shouted down by opponents, but they can’t be suppressed because they’re distasteful and/or bothersome.

We’re happy that the ISU Police did the right thing — nothing — when called Wednesday, and we’re pleased not to have heard anybody explicitly advocate a restriction on free speech.

By the way, today is Free Speech Day. If you have something to say, say it, particularly on Central Campus from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. We’ll even welcome Missionaries to the Preborn back if it has unfinished business.