Friday 24 July 2015

Anti-Abortion Violence - is it Christian Terrorism?

An anti-abortion activist, proclaiming that abortion is a crime against the unborn, i.e. murder.

Looking through my Amnesty International traffic the other day, I noticed a report that anti-abortion campaigners had forced the closure of an abortion clinic in the UK for the first time. When I tried to find the name of the clinic mentioned, I found that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) were not disclosing the name or location of the clinic. I found this curious, so I checked the website of Abort67, one of the most militant anti-abortion movements in the UK. After gagging with horror at some of the images on their website, I looked at their "News" section of July 21. They say:
"It was announced on the British Pregnancy Advisory service (Bpas) website that an abortion clinic is to close "as a direct result of protest activity". According to an article on politics.co.uk, the clinic is Blackfriars Medical Practice, where anti-abortion group, Abort67, have been staging peaceful ‘public education displays’ weekly since October 2014, days before the BPAS clinic opened there. However, BPAS deny that this clinic is to close, despite making available private notes from the GP management to the journalist who claimed closure. Both BPAS and Marie Stopes deny that it is one of their clinics closing, yet BPAS refuses to make public which clinic is closing, despite using this information to gain support from MPs in an EDM tabled by Dianne Abbott."
Do I detect a slightly gloating note here? Perhaps not, but they go on to say that they are concerned about a possible threat to their freedom to protest peacefully outside abortion clinics. Ruth Rawlins, of Abort67, says:
"BPAS is a business which promotes abortion but it does not give women the full facts about the consequences of killing their babies and our peaceful display outside clinics are intended to give expectant mothers a clear understanding of the horrific nature of abortion – the destruction of human life - so they can make an informed choice...Our volunteers hand out leaflets and have conversations with passers-by. No one is pressed to engage with us and no one is obstructed from entering the abortion clinic. We simply present educational displays outside clinics to show women the results of abortion procedures.”
I do not wish to enter the discussion about the rights and wrongs of abortion itself - that goes on all the time. What concerns me is the fact that protest groups like Abort67 will see an abortion clinic's closure as a victory, and will try to close down more. To be fair to anti-abortion groups in the UK, they do seek to remain within the law (so far). Abroad, however, some elements of the anti-abortion movement have been much less restrained.
In the USA, there have been eight murders of abortion clinic staff, seven of which took place in the 90s. The victims included four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort. The most recent of these murders happened on May 31, 2009, when Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed by Scott Roeder as Tiller served as an usher at a church in Wichita, Kansas.
Besides these murders, there have been 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings and over 100 assaults on abortion clinic staff since 1977. Attacks of this nature have also occurred in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Again, in the USA, there is even an underground anti-abortion terror group known as "The Army of God". We can only hope that the tentacles of this organisation do not spread over here.
The remarkable fact about the perpetrators of these acts is that they consider themselves to be Christians. Now, I am not suggesting for a minute that all Christians who oppose abortion are terrorists; every Christian I know who believes in the sanctity of life (which is all of them) would totally condemn these crimes. So then, no, I do not believe anti - abortion violence is Christian Terrorism; it is the province of a small, bigoted minority. In which case, then, should we not stop talking about "Muslim Terrorism", when only a minority of Muslims - aka Jihadi militants- carry it out?

Scott Roeder, anti-abortion activist who saw no crime in committing the murder of an adult.
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2 comments:

  1. Neville Grundy25 July 2015 at 16:16

    Anti-abortionists, or pro-lifers as they prefer to call themselves, believe that human life is sacred while it remains in the womb. Presumably, pro-life killers believe that a different set of rules apply once you're born so that failure to abide by their standards means you forfeit the right to life. That's in the USA, of course, but if it's spreading over here, sooner or later someone will attack a British abortion clinic.

    The 'education' they promulgate consists entirely of images designed to shock, laced with lies. If you showed pictures of an organ transplant or a leg amputation taking place, they'd look pretty blood-soaked and shocking too - as would any major operation, in fact.

    Their tactics constitute extreme bullying at the very least. There's none so righteous than the spiritually deluded.

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  2. Roy the sinner26 July 2015 at 19:14

    I remember the days, not that long ago when abortion was illegal in the UK and many girls died or became sterile as a result of back street abortions. These were mainly working class girls in families that either could not afford to feed an extra mouth or who the unfortunate girls believed would shun them if their "sin" was known. Middle class anti-abortionists should understand the history of this situation before they massage their egos by using their god as a shield for their own inadequacies. Roy...the sinner

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