Michael Bray

Author of A Time To Kill

Judge Robert E. Jones Shuts Down Free Speech 11/18/1999

Michael Bray
18 November, 1999 [Sent out as a press release]

Cathy Ramey, one of a dozen defendants in the anti-speech lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood, was threatened with jail unless she produces the subscription list for Life Advocate magazine. Judge Robert E. Jones of the U.S. District Court in Oregon, who granted every absurd request of the plantiffs throughout the trial which concluded last February, gave Miss Ramey 48 hours to produce the list upon penalty of jail until compliance.

Miss Ramey is a writer and editor of Life Advocate magazine.  She also edited the ethical treatise A Time to Kill written by Michael Bray (defendant). The book, with a forward by Western Baptist Seminary professor Carl Laney has been used in a political science class for several years at U.C.L.A.  But it was named in the suit as a means of threatening abortionists.

Life Advocate magazine is published by Andrew Burnett (defendant).  It is the foremost anti-abortion news magazine which has allowed discussion concerning the issue of slaying abortionists.  Mr. Burnett is also the publisher of the book, A Time to Kill. Andrew Burnett, told Planned Parenthood attorney Mari Villo in deposition yesterday that the magazine will no longer be published  due to the drop off in subscriptions following the judgment of $107 against defendants.  Subscribers have stated their  fears that the list will be used by federally funded Planned Parenthood and Attorney General Janet Reno to harass them.  They cite the draconian  investigations of by Reno, exemplified in the grand jury investigations which resulted in the high profile jailing of Cheryl Richardson in Virginia in 1995-6.   That voracious multi-million dollar inquiry guided by Miss Reno’s Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy (VAAPCON) resulted in the three-year imprisonment of Jennifer Sperle, nursing mother of four,  for $500 in damages at an abortion center in Virginia.

We contend that the investigation of groups of people, based upon association around ideas, has  violated not only the First Amendment freedom to speak but also the freedom to publish ideas.  The view points presented by Life Advocate do profoundly  offend federally-endowed Planned Parenthood and their many abortophile comrades in places of power. And  the published belief that the termination of abortionists by any citizen who seeks to rescue a child  may well frighten an abortionist.  But this court did not show that there were any threats as defined by law.  (This was a lawsuit, not a criminal trial.)  The quenching of these ideas has been a laborious effort, given the affection most Americans have for the Bill of Rights.  Nevertheless, the suppressive tactics throughout the trial process, including a gag order placed by the judge upon the defendants, resulting in some 30 motions for dismissal by defense attorneys, have seriously violated speech rights.

Defendants in the anti-speech lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood and a handful of abortionists have been found guilty and made liable for millions of dollars in fines and the imposition of various restrictions on their speech.  The speech at issue was the 1) public nominating of a select 12 abortionists across the contiguous United States as a “Deadly Dozen” in reference to their deeds of child killing;  2) the public circulation of “Wanted” fliers which charged that abortionists commit “crimes against humanity” and that they would someday  be charged with the same in a court of law;  3) and a web site <christiangallery.com>, featuring and soliciting names and evidence for the crime of abortion  for the same stated purpose as that for the circulation of the fliers. (Most of the media have failed to note that the owner of the web site,  Neal Horsley, is not a defendant and  testified to the fact that none of the defendants were responsible for the construction or maintenance of the relevant “Nuremberg Files” which  were on his site.)

The fliers call abortion a holocaust which will someday be recognized and publicly lamented as such.  This speech is a dramatic and creative way of clarifying and reiterating the pro-life rhetoric of the past quarter century.  It restates the truth as it exposes the lies which prop up the abortion culture. Abortion, from the beginning – even before the beginning – was called murder.  We continue to call it the same and we call abortionists murderers.  This is the truth we profess; we can call it nothing less.

Cordially,

Michael Bray

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