Thread by NYer.
June 16, 2009 - In the aftermath of the shooting of late-term abortionist, Dr. George Tiller, American pro-life leaders have been receiving death threats prompting round-the-clock protection from authorities.
Jill Stanek, vilified last week at MSNBC, is the Illinois nurse who exposed the practice of abandoning babies that survive abortions. She has tracked and reported on the career of Dr. Tiller for years at her blog. When I asked her this week about her own safety in wake of the shooting, Stanek said that she, along with Troy Newman of Operation Rescue and Fr. Frank Pavone at Priests for Life, had been receiving credible threats from a "troubled man involved in the abortion industry." Jill said that this individual is the child of a pro-choice advocate/writer and his mother had aborted several of his siblings. Following the Tiller shooting, the stalker emailed Stanek again. Federal agents are currently monitoring his movements.
Pro-life leaders have uniformly been forced to increase security measures to address threats of violence. In recent days Stanek has been placed under continuous police and federal protection following email threats to kill her at church or as she left her home
"Let me know which address is right, there's a few I could post. Or I could just drive around the houses and wait to see which one you walk out of.... Don't worry, I will find it."
Stanek also stated that her local pastors have gotten emails calling for her murder at church services.
"the least you could do is offer to hold a rifle blessing service in her honor."
When questioned about security, Fr. Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, said that he needs armed escorts at speaking engagements to guard him against disruptive pro-abortion demonstrators. Individuals from groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and Catholics for Choice are often bussed in to derail these presentations. Even peaceful prayer vigils, so common to the pro-life movement, can be dangerous. Fr. Pavone was leading a prayer service in Bellingham, WA when someone confronted him and spit in his face. Prior to his appearances, local groups Fr. Pavone calls, "pro-abortion radicals and anarchists," often signal their intent to lead violent demonstrations; but in recent days he says he’s gotten more serious messages.
Father Frank, It would make me very happy if someone were to respond to this by snuffing YOU. No fooling. Right-to-lifers, in my book, no longer have a right to life.
At the Priests for Life blog, another anonymous writer said: "Killing Father Frank will not be murder. It will be justifiable homicide."
In November 2008, months before Dr. Tiller was murdered, Fr. Pavone received the following:
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR FATHER FRANK PAVONE
I am predicting that there will be more anti-abortion terror because of this election. I AM ALSO PREDICTING THAT THIS TIME IT WILL BE ANSWERED IN KIND BY PRO-CHOICE COUNTERTERRORISTS, who will mount similar terrorist attacks against well-known right-to-lifers. FATHER FRANK will be a natural target for pro-choice counterterrorists.
I therefore advise you, Fr Frank, if you read that there has been another abortion-clinic shooting or bombing, get out of town immediately. Take a vacation abroad. Go visit the Vatican. If there is another act of anti-abortion terror, your life will not be safe in the USA.
Good luck.
Visible anti-abortion figures in this country get regular threats on their lives and receive violent anti-social messages. In 2008 UCLA undergrad Lila Rose garnered national attention for exposing illegal practices at Planned Parenthood clinics. The menacing emails have continued since Rose went public with her investigations.
Columnist and mother of nine, Jenn Giroux is founder of the pro-life group, Women Influencing the Nation. Giroux was a leader in the grass roots effort to take legal action against Tiller and his clinic. Following the shooting, she suspended her website, ChargeTiller.com, due to a barrage of profane and violent posts.
Pro-abortion aggression isn’t only a reality for movement leaders. Judie Brown heads up the American Life League, a landmark organization founded after Roe v. Wade. In response to our questions the league issued a statement. It calls to mind the hostility pro-lifers face at every level as they, "stand in beautiful and striking contrast to both the violence inherent to the abortion mill and the street-side violence and drive-by intimidation of abortion supporters."
Thread by me.
We’re hearing a lot these days about human rights and social justice—particularly among younger evangelicals, but also among secularists. It’s a good thing that there is a growing concern for the poor and the oppressed around the world.
But when the younger generation approaches people like me and tells us that we need to be working for “social justice,” what I tell them is that we’re already doing it. In fact, I believe it’s the single greatest apologetic of the Christian Church.
But what makes us different from the secularists, however, is our worldview—especially in our belief in a fundamental truth that goes right to the heart of who we are. We know all human rights and social justice are grounded in the imago Dei—the fact that we are created in the image of God.
I can’t emphasize that enough. The secularists want social justice, but at the same time, they want to turn right around and deny the very thing that makes social justice possible. It doesn’t work.
I heard a magnificent sermon recently by Dr. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. He makes this point powerfully in a sermon called “In the Image of God.” With great eloquence, Keller talked about what it means to be created in God’s image and its implications for the way we live.
Because we are created in the image of God, human life is sacred. We have value, worth, and dignity. Science by itself doesn’t give us any basis for that view. So when a society loses its belief in God, it starts to believe that humans are only valuable based upon their “capacities”—and then you get views like those of Dr. Peter Singer of Princeton, who believes that some human lives have no value and deserve no protection.
The whole civil rights movement sprang from a biblical worldview. It’s not just a tradition in Western thought, Dr. Keller reminds us. Even “Aristotle said some races are born to be slaves.” But the Bible tells us in Genesis that humans are accountable for each other’s lives, precisely because God created us in His image. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders took their views directly from this way of thinking about God and humanity. Dr. King even talked about the imago Dei in his sermon “The American Dream.”
And this is exactly why you and I can’t make a distinction between being pro-life and fighting for human rights. As Dr. Keller shows, there is an unbroken connection between human life in the womb and human life in all other stages and circumstances.
That is the Christian view. It’s why early Christians condemned abortion and cared for abandoned babies. It’s why I wrote in my book The Faith that if you say you are a Christian and are pro-choice, you’d better check whether you are acting in obedience to God and belong in the company of Christian fellowship. “When you believe in the image of God,” Dr. Keller explains, “the circle of protected life expands. But when you don’t believe in the image of God . . . the circle will continually contract.”
Visit our website, BreakPoint.org, to find out how you can order a copy of Dr. Keller’s brilliant sermon, “In the Image of God.” You’ll never hear a better explanation of one of the unique and most important contributions Christianity has made to Western civilization.
Al Quaeda is pro-death too.