Abortion: To Protest or Not to Protest

Abortion has become a metaphor for the new America produced by the 60's revolution. For 30 years we have been all about peace and love and human rights—and legally killing a million and a half babies a year. Most pro-life activists are content with appealing to the conscience of the mothers, reserving their harshest epithets for the physicians who betray their profession and murder children. However, the truth is uglier than we like to admit. These "doctors" are simply hired guns, hit men who take the money and asks no questions about the guilt of innocence of their victims. But the really horrifying part is not the hired killers but the mothers—the millions and millions of mothers, who choose to kill their own babies.

As much as any Christian in America, I earnestly hope and pray that some day we can stop the killing—or at least live under a political and legal system that shares our commitment to life. How to go about realizing that hope is no simple matter. Despite all the time and money that has been lavished on political, judicial, and propaganda battles, the pro-life movement has achieved next to nothing. And if the leaders of that movement think that the leaders of the Christian Coalition are going to talk the Republican Party into outlawing abortion, they should resign their positions and go back to minding their own children and their own businesses.

The only positive results of pro-life agitation have been achieved in places like Minnesota and the Dakotas, where local demonstrators have peacefully and legally made life difficult for abortionists and their families. Many of the demonstrators are affiliated with Operation Rescue, which has also staged less legal and less peaceful demonstrations in front of big-city abortuaries. This week, Operation Rescue and its head Joseph Scheidler, are back in front of the Supreme Court, which is hearing their appeal against convictions and fines ($275,000) imposed under RICO statutes designed to inhibit the activities of organized crime.

The case is trivial in itself. RICO laws, even when applied to the Mafia or the Teamsters Union, are a distortion of Anglo-American jurisprudence. Applied to pro-life activists, they are a monstrous travesty. A victory for Operation Rescue, however, would change nothing. Mothers and doctors will continue to murder babies, and deranged activists will continue to degrade human life by waving fetuses and graphic photographs and show their contempt for Christian moral teachings by breaking good property laws in the vain expectation that good will come of it. St. Paul answered that one nearly 2000 years ago.

But the pro-life movement likes to cast itself as just another civil rights movement, trotting out the entirely irrelevant and dangerous comparison of abortion with slavery, Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott. Their faith may be Christian, but their "rights-of-man" philosophy is the pure anti-Christian Jacobinism spouted by Rousseau and Tom Paine, Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King. America, for them, is still a Christian country but America's Christian creed is summed up in Jefferson's "self-evident" truths and his deist trinity of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If Martin Luther King's followers broke the law in a good cause, why can't Operation Rescue?

The homicidal feminists and life-hating lesbians who sued Operation Rescue claim that Dr. King, unlike Joseph Scheidler, always told his followers not to block entries, but this is a distinction without a difference, because King, a practitioner of civil disobedience, was leading illegal demonstrations, and anyone who has followed the historical record knows that many of the demonstrations inspired by King turned into ugly riots in which neighborhoods were burned down and innocent people killed.

The problem is not that Operation Rescue's methods and tactics are worse than those of the civil rights movement, but that the two groups have the same principles. Joe Scheidler, good and brave man that he is, is dangerously wrong in his political and moral philosophy. His explanation of the case before the court is pure American Jacobinism: "One of the most beautiful things about this country is we can protest our grievances. That is a trademark of America."

The good old English right of petition is, in fact, contained within the Constitution, but protesting grievances is in the tradition of mob violence, labor agitation, illegal sit-ins, and anti-Christian groups like PETA, whose celebrity spokesman, Martin Sheen, is supporting Scheidler's right to protest. So murdered babies are now on par with minks raised for their pelts and the hens that are robbed of their infertile eggs by human exploiters.

But pro-life demonstrators who practice civil disobedience are making a fundamental mistake that is more grievous even than their ignorance of constitutional law and Christian morality and that is their persistent belief that America is a Christian country with a mistaken but basically Christian government that only needs a little adjustment.

Yes, there are protestors who have declared that in permitting abortion, the United States is no lo longer a legal regime but a Nazi tyranny, but that is nonsense: Many legitimate, albeit non-Christian governments have tolerated both abortion and infanticide. The point to keep in mind, however, is that the hallmark of Christianity, from the beginning, has been a respect, bordering on reverence, for the life that our Father has given us and that Christ has redeemed. Any doubts a man may express about the sanctity of innocent life is a sure sign that he has no faith, and a great country in which the overwhelming majority of the population claim to be Christian but think that abortion is permissible in cases of rape, incest, birth defects—or potential low IQ or halitosis or who knows what other irrelevant reason—is not a Christian nation, and there is nothing that Joe Scheidler or a million Joe Scheidlers can do about it.

This is an anti-Christian country, and the honorable Christian has limited options. The law is the law, and abortion is legal, as the harpies and ghouls of Planned Parenthood and NOW insist. If the law told us to slaughter the innocent, we should be compelled by conscience to refuse, but there is no practical way, legal or illegal, that we can employ stop the anti-Christians from killing their babies. What we can do, however, is to keep the commandments of our faith, obey the laws that are made by Nero or the Supreme Court as "a terror for . . . the evil." However, we can, by our life and example, attempt to move the conscience of the anti-Christians and, above all, to bring them to the Christ who promised His followers that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As a conservative libertarian, I admit that my logic as a "pro-lifer" was always built around the pragmatism that government has a right to regulate the industries of death, in contemporary terms, abortion and euthanasia. (The culture has agreed for a thousand years that hiring someone to kill another person has to be regulated with the power of the law.)

I extended the argument into political terms that it makes no sense to me that abortionist should be allowed to operate laissez-faire while other industries are heavily regulated.

It was my nature to support the protestors, but Fleming seems to have revealed that position to be a weak moral stance in the face of the greater issue at large. I will think this one over...

1. Directly killing any innocent person is a grave affront to the human dignity with which all persons are created - a dignity so great that God calls us images of God. No compromise.

2. Scheidler does not compromise.

3. Rather, Sheidler is using Nero's legal system to ensure he is not afforded less legal protection merely because he is trying to save babies from being unjustly slaughtered (in accord with unjust - thus invalid - laws).

4. Because Sheidler is known to NEVER compromise on the issue of abortion, there is nothing the least bit troubling about his use of legal arguments that can help him achieve his just due even if there are better arguments that can be made. Here, the courts have already told him he cannot use his best arguments. It is the courts that have reduced him to pretending that the salughter of innocents is not the real issue.

An interesting analysis by the author, though I disagree with the premise that no progress has been made. However, I won't go into that now. And regardless, there can be no end to the struggle for the rights of the unborn....no more than Wilberforce could have given up in his fight against the de-humanization of blacks. Within the historic Christian faith, there simply isn't an option to sit down and shut up.

On his point that this is an anti-Christian nation, I know I've been saying that for years. It's about time that it be acknowledged. It's not a Christian nation (although it was clearly founded by such and many today simply claim to be), it's not even a non-Christian nation....it's anti-Christian. But then, we are feeling the birthpangs of the endtimes and no Christian should be surprised by it. While I don't like it, I know that greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world. As believers we also know that we are overcomers - regardless of who and how many hate us. After all, they hated Him first.

Fleming is a very thoughtful writer, and this article really does cause one to think about the issues involved. I've always been a bit mystified about the pro-life side's use of Martin Luther King. King was overtly pro-abortion (he received a "Maggy" award from Planned Parenthood) and lived a completely immoral and depraved lifestyle much in the manner of Bill Clinton. I very much agree with Fleming's underlying premise about the nature of American society. The Christian Coalition, Dobson, and other Christian leaders still cling to the notion that this is a Christian nation despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

||| But the really horrifying part is not the hired killers but the mothers—the millions and millions of mothers, who choose to kill their own babies. |||

Yes, it is "horrifying", the surviving victims of abortion indeed suffer the consequence of their actions (be sure to read entirel linked article).

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On the issue of "to protest or not to protest" I will weigh in with the following.

For the agnostic: "neutrality” is a deceitful pretense. In this case, to not speak out against evil, you allow it to advance.

For the Christian, Scripture is graphically clear:

Revelation 3:15"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.
16 So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

Lukewarm = “neutral” = not taking a stand, and the consequences thereof.

annie and john,

You mention the roots of the USA.
They are ostensibly Christian.

However was it not always a Christianity focused on INDIVIDUAL freedom to consider Christianity to be whatever the INDIVIDUAL thought it might be? Thus Max is perfectly free to declare Act Z to be sinful, while Erma is free to declare the same Act Z to be godly.

I wonder if it was not inevitible that eventually the USA would become a society based on an absolute libertine view of personal freedom.

If one thinks that Christ's gospel can be interpreted correctly by every individual, then chaos is bound to result.

Churches based on episcopal hierarchies are not free from potential problems, but unity of belief and authenticity of doctrine is much more likely to occur when popularity does not determine doctrine.

"a great country in which the overwhelming majority of the population claim to be Christian but think that abortion is permissible in cases of rape, incest, birth defects—or potential low IQ or halitosis or who knows what other irrelevant reason—is not a Christian nation"

Any Christian out there who thinks abortion is permissible in cases of rape or incest, please feel free to reply with a defense of your reasoning. I understand how the politicians figure they have to include those exceptions in order to make progress but, I want to hear from anyone who thinks abortion must be permitted in these cases.

There are some gratifying emotional statements made in the article, which might make a pro-lifer feel good, but it is flawed in any number of ways. Progress HAS been made. Abortion clinics have been closed down in many areas. Abortion rates are slightly down. Younger Americans are more pro-life than their mothers. The Supreme Court now knows that this is an issue that will not go away, and that it cannot simply change the moral landscape by fiat. Pro-life politicians now have an advantage at the polls in most parts of the country.

One reason the Democrats lost at the polls is that they are now seen by many people as the party of sleaze and dishonor. One major reason for the perception is clinton. Another is the close association of Democrats with NARAL, NOW, NAMBLA, and the abortionists. If the Democrats stand for anything, they are the party of abortion and sexual perversion, and handy as these privileges may be to some people, they are not morally attractive. Many people feel a deep repulsiveness in this whole agenda.

I also fail to see why comparing Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court's earlier behavior on the slavery issue is irrelevant. Abortion is similar to slavery in that it takes a whole class of human beings and simply declares that they are not human. It is a similar moral atrocity. And the Supreme Court similarly supported it, until the moral fervor of the anti-slavery movement changed the country.

Sure it's a Christian issue, but it's also a Constitutional issue, and there's no reason not to appeal to both in our arguments.

Early Christianity did not immediately end slavery, abortion, or other such customs in the ancient world because it had no power to do so. But as Christianity assumed a more commanding position, both abortion and slavery were outlawed. Slavery disappeared in Europe until it was reintroduced in the 16th century. Abortion sometimes occurred, but it was not legal or smiled upon.

So in the end, I fail to see the point of this article. It seems to be the work of some purist who refuses to admit that pro-lifers should feel free to use any legitimate and effective means to eliminate abortion, however long it takes.

Perhaps we interpreted the article differently, however, I read that while the author (and my heart) may belong with the protestors, (and had I been alive-- I am a Northern Yankee-- I probably would have sided with MLK's protests against the state and overlooked the violence) the larger issue is ignored. The results of the so-called 'civil rights movement' were distinctly anti-American, anti-Christian with the disregard for property rights-- a fundamental staple of our law, and the American libertarian tradition.

The more I think about it, his take is dead on from the conservative-libertarian fusion point of view.

Perhaps we can agree to disagree on tactics, then, without challenging our commitment to the issue, perhaps not.

I wonder if it was not inevitible that eventually the USA would become a society based on an absolute libertine view of personal freedom.

If one thinks that Christ's gospel can be interpreted correctly by every individual, then chaos is bound to result.

Churches based on episcopal hierarchies are not free from potential problems, but unity of belief and authenticity of doctrine is much more likely to occur when popularity does not determine doctrine.

Thank you, Notwithstanding. This is something I've always understood intuitively but never put into words.

Pinging (as usual, if you would like to be added or removed from my "conservative" Catholic ping list, just send me a FReepmail.)

I find Fleming's analysis flawed and contradictory in some respects. He seems to at times value property over life. The first thing he needs to do is get some of his facts straight

...Many of the demonstrators are affiliated with Operation Rescue, which has also staged less legal and less peaceful demonstrations in front of big-city abortuaries. This week, Operation Rescue and its head Joseph Scheidler..."

Joe Scheidler is not the head of Operation Rescue.

deranged activists will continue to degrade human life by waving fetuses and graphic photographs and show their contempt for Christian moral teachings by breaking good property laws in the vain expectation that good will come of it. St. Paul answered that one nearly 2000 years ago.

Since Fleming derides such people as deranged and as showing contempt for Christian moral teachings, I would like to hear Fleming's analysis of Romans 13 wherein Paul describes what constitutes LEGITIMATE authority, with reference to what the purpose of law is in the first place. And Jesus, referring to the purpose of law, asked the question of the Pharisees, "Which is lawful, to do good or to do evil; to save life or to kill?" To that profound question Fleming has no answer but, "... "The law is the law, and abortion is legal". But which is more deranged, to accept as law that which is contrary to justice, and actually therefore no law at all, or to display a photograph of an aborted baby ? Perhaps Fleming can walk by on the other side of the road and rationalize that the victim he refuses to help is not his neighbor, but if he himself were the one about to be taken into a building to be butchered, then perhaps he might have a different perspective on his "it is legal" argument.

But pro-life demonstrators who practice civil disobedience are making a fundamental mistake that is more grievous even than their ignorance of constitutional law

Fleming is is no position to lecture us about constitutional jusrisprudence. He is wrong about Jefferson's "self-evident" truths and his deist trinity of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, because Jefferson actually took the ideas from Scottish Presbyterians. Fleming dismisses the comparison of abortion with slavery as entirely irrelevant and dangerous, and then implicitly repeats the same mistake of essentially accepting the categorization of human being as chattel by accepting what he himself characterizes as murder as "legal". Had he been there at the time, perhaps Fleming would have objected to the rescue of the baby Moses because it was "illegal".

Let him save his invective for the baby murderers, not those trying to save babies from the fire.

Cordially,

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