Mobile telecommunications behemoth Verizon Wireless has decided to get into the nanny business - or more correctly, your personal moral choice business. They’re rejecting the application of NARAL to establish an opt-in mobile text messaging alert system for its members:

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

The other leading wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code…

This is what is known as a “slippery slope”, or “camel’s nose under the tent flap”. When a telecommunications carrier choses to block opt-in text messaging from an activist organization that it doesn’t agree with, it’s a very short drive to having common carriers acting as moral police.

The last time I checked, abortion was still legal in the United States. While the procedure is not as freely available as it once was, it’s not like NARAL is advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government, or transmitting porno through the wires. And free speech regarding the procedure is still protected by the first amendment.

More importantly, wireless alert systems for advocacy groups such as NARAL are strictly opt-in. In other words, you aren’t going to receive a text message alert from NARAL if you haven’t signed up for it. So, what’s Verizon Wireless’ beef?

Verizon, one of the nation’s two largest wireless carriers, told Naral that it does not accept programs from any group “that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users.”…

Ok, so, this means that Verizon Wireless will also be extending the ban on text messaging to the National Right to Life Coalition? And the Pro-life Action League?

And how long before the Verizon corporate mothership won’t let any “controversial information” to be communicated through their web interfaces?

Update: Apparently, Verizon Wireless did hear from its customers - long and loud. This morning, the company reversed its decision to ban NARAL text message mobile alerts:

“The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,” Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, said in a statement.

My guess: Verizon Wireless’ customer service reps received a lot of angry calls and threats of switching carriers. No doubt that the bad PR factored into the decision, as well.