http:\/\/www.splcenter.org\/<\/a>) takes aim at those who defend the use of force to save innocent womb children.\u00a0\u00a0 The editor, Mark Potok, was quoted liberally in a Canadian paper, the Hamilton Spectator (November 6) in which he\u00a0 says, “there is proof in the U.S. of the anti-abortion movement’s links with right-wing\u00a0 fanaticism, including white supremacists, anti-Semites and homophobes. There is a\u00a0 convergence to show they share the same ideology.”<\/p>\nI have already been contacted for a story with 60 Minutes.\u00a0 (I suspect the bent will be the same.)\u00a0\u00a0 The drumbeat against anti-abortion speech is being advanced (dare we say conspiratorially?) on many fronts.\u00a0 It is not just the media, but the legal establishment; and how well they coordinate their hostilities!\u00a0 We were sued in federal court in the fall of 1995 for $1.4 billion.\u00a0 The defendants have all refused to condemn the destruction of abortuaries. As we prepare for trial in December, the plaintiffs have changed tacks.\u00a0 They, like the federal investigators before them (Reno\u2019s task force known as VAAPCON:\u00a0 Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy), were able to find no violation of law; even laws as perverse as FACE and RICO could not be bent to impale us.\u00a0 Now the strategy they have taken up is to argue that we are speaking\u00a0 within a “context of violence” in which our otherwise\u00a0 tolerable speech has become\u00a0 threatening to those who “provide” the “service” of aborting children.\u00a0 We are not confident\u00a0 that the jurors drawn from the present well-debased American People will serve the truth\u00a0 or justice.\u00a0 Hope for justice\u00a0 is further attenuated by the fact that the judge – one\u00a0 Robert Jones – has appointed the ACLU to write up the guidelines for voir dire (jury selection).\u00a0\u00a0 The typical questions proffered to the jury pool in an abortion-related case go something like this: Do you have any moral convictions about abortion?\u00a0 Have you ever actively opposed abortion?<\/p>\n
One can expect no improvement (from our standpoint) by ACLU lawyers on the type of questions they will design to eliminate people who believe in the pre-eminence of the law\u00a0 God or even our own Constitution (as written) and therefore justice for children in the womb.\u00a0 The ACLU has its prejudices which certainly color its concern for free speech.\u00a0 William Donohue has pointed out handily in his Twilight of Liberty (Transaction\u00a0 Publishers, 1994) the priority given to the ACLU\u2019s\u00a0 Reproductive Freedom Project over its Capital Punishment Project, for example.\u00a0 Their official policy today (#239) is that “contemporary ideas of the significance of human life make imposition of the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Constitution” (p. 291).\u00a0 Moreover, “Children\u2019s Rights” (policy #272) declares: “Under no circumstances should a juvenile ever be subject to the death penalty.”\u00a0 But this principle was brought into conflict with abortion when the arguments for juvenile abortion rights were faced against arguments for the life of juvenile capital offenders.\u00a0 Donahue reports as follows:\u00a0 “This dilemma came to a head in 1988 in a brief the ACLU drafted in behalf of William Wayne Thompson, a Death Row candidate who committed murder at age 15.\u00a0 The ACLU brief, written by Henry Schwarzwald\u00a0 of the Union\u2019s Capital Punishment Project, maintained that juveniles do not have the same mental and moral development as adults.\u00a0 Due to the “diminished capacity of juveniles, Schwarzchild said, they should be exempted from the death penalty. But the brief was never filed because of opposition from Janet Benshoof, head of the ACLU\u2019s Reproductive Freedom Project. “Benshoof knew what the stakes were: \u2018Schwarzchild argues that teens have the incapacity\u00a0 to make moral, even rational decisions.\u00a0 In order to oppose abortion, he forces me to favor the hanging of teenagers\u2019” (p. 292).<\/p>\n
Why?\u00a0 because advocacy for the right of teenage girls to get their children aborted depended upon the contrary argument; to wit,\u00a0 teenagers have the mental and moral capacity to make their own decisions regarding abortion.<\/p>\n
What was the ACLU to do?<\/p>\n
“Sorry Willy.\u00a0 The right of the teenage girl to get that abortion is more important than sparing teenage kids from the death penalty.\u00a0 We have our priorities.”<\/p>\n
Or, as Nat Henthoff put it, the ACLU\u2019s hatred of the\u00a0 death penalty was made\u00a0 subservient to abortion” (Ibid.)<\/p>\n
The ACLU, putatively the premiere defender of free speech, has demonstrated a clear departure from its radical support of any kind of speech when it comes to abortion.\u00a0\u00a0 Just as it places the right to abort over the life of a juvenile capital criminal, it places the same right to abort over\u00a0 the right to free speech.<\/p>\n
Anticipating a loss in court, given the favor this judge has shown the plaintiffs, we offered to settle before trial.\u00a0 On 3 November in the federal court in Portland, our lawyers proposed that we satisfy the plaintiff\u2019s chief concerns over “wanted posters” by offering a promise from the defendants that they would not create posters featuring any of the plaintiffs on such works of art and expression.<\/p>\n
The response was conveyed to me by defendant Cathy\u00a0 Ramey as follows:<\/p>\n
“Number One: They want each and every defendant to “apologize for threatening” the plaintiff abortionists. Number Two: They want each and every defendant to publicly denounce any and all acts of violence used against abortionists and\/or their facilities.<\/p>\n
This is the heart of the matter.\u00a0 We acknowledge no commission of threats by our speech.\u00a0 We have propounded the truth:\u00a0 Abortionists are murderers who ought to be prosecuted as such;\u00a0 laws or policies of all municipalities ought to comport with this truth.\u00a0 Moreover, the corollary of this truth is the application of\u00a0 the principle of mercy and justice which allows the private citizen to use the force necessary (even lethal) to defend the innocent targets of\u00a0 Abortionists. We cannot refrain from speaking this truth on the basis of alleged fear that abortionists or their accomplices possess as a result of our proclamation.\u00a0 We regret the fears that the abortionists suffer; of course we lament all the more their decisions to continue in their misdeeds.\u00a0\u00a0 Therefore, we can make no apology for the truth we have spoken, neither can we denounce the use of force against abortionists\u00a0 and their machinery of death.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0 effort to suppress our speech in deference to the whinings of guilt-ridden abortionists is not surprising.\u00a0 But the failure of evangelical pastors to come to our support and affirm the truth we have spoken is disconcerting.\u00a0 The title of Well\u2019s popular book comes to mind:\u00a0 “No Place for Truth.”\u00a0\u00a0 The truth many speak – the imago Dei<\/em> in man –\u00a0 is inextricable from the truth concerning the defense of innocent human beings.\u00a0 The one is a\u00a0 corollary of the other.\u00a0\u00a0 You cannot keep the postulate and reject the corollary.<\/p>\nIn short, the question which has not been answered with any thoroughness is this:\u00a0 If children in the womb are innocent human beings or what principle may they not be protected from harm in the same way that any other person\u00a0 may be protected?<\/p>\n
The issue was taken up in a write in “symposium” printed in the December, 1994 issue of First Things<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Most replies were not cogent. Helen Alvare representing the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, for instance, concluded her 60-word piece with: “One can, under Christian principles, act to defend another\u2019s life; one may not intend to kill.”<\/p>\nOthers were not thorough.\u00a0 Hadley Arkes of Amherst College contrasted the selfish killing performed by abortionists and Paul Hill\u2019s killing of an abortionist saying, “Unless we dismantle moral reasoning altogether, or remove the gradations that are critical to moral judgment, it should be evident that these two acts of killing cannot stand on the same moral plane.”<\/p>\n
Robert P. George was the only delightfully sarcastic:\u00a0 “I am personally opposed to killing abortionists.\u00a0 However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. . . In short, I am moderately pro-choice.”<\/p>\n
Ronald\u00a0 Sider ducked the issue by subjecting it to “criteria required by \u2018justifiable revolution.\u2019”<\/p>\n
There were several other respondents answering quite cursorily.<\/p>\n
The point here is that academics have not been honest and they do a disservice to the church.\u00a0 We have expected this from\u00a0 those who do not love God\u2019s word.\u00a0 We hope otherwise for evangelicals.<\/p>\n
At last, I come to your question:\u00a0 how to help.\u00a0 You can urge evangelical academics to grab hold of this issue which they have avoided to this point.\u00a0\u00a0 How good and pleasant it would be, for example,\u00a0 for Francis Beckwith to include at one of those bio-ethics convocations a seminar on the “Ethics of the Use of Force by the Private Citizen”?<\/p>\n
Thanks for enduring this lengthy missive.\u00a0 I don\u2019t expect to be so windy next time.<\/p>\n
Cordially,<\/p>\n
Michael Bray<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Bray To:\u00a0 Michael Bauman (Philosophy Department at Hillsdale College) 12 November, 1998 Dear Dr. Bauman, I am following up on some email communication from 7 November in which I made reference to a series of articles in the Village Voice (http:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/features\/9845\/gonnerman.shtml) – the nation\u2019s largest\u00a0 weekly (with regard to circulation, at least).\u00a0 The series, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}