Abortion
Fear.
The great motivator.
A few days ago, I received an “alert” from a national pro-choice organization asking me to send them money to help protect some abortion clinics in New Mexico. It seems that the powerful, anti-abortion group known as Operation Rescue is holding a series of protests against abortion providers in that area and this pro-choice group was concerned that this would “incite violence.”
Okay, I will admit that anything could happen. Yes, someone could go nuts, start shooting, run into the abortion facility, accost a woman seeking an abortion. Shit happens and you can’t control everyone out there. And I certainly appreciate the desire of this pro-choice group to protect the clinics but let’s get real here. (I always feel like I’m saying “let’s get real” in these blogs).
First of all, what can this abortion rights group do to stop this possible “violence?” If I contributed one million dollars to them right now, just sat down and wrote a check and couriered it over to them, what would they do with it to protect the clinics? I guess they could buy some bullet proof vests for the workers, but the would-be murderers now know to aim at the head. They could pay for some more rent-a-cops, but will that really help? I mean, c’mon folks, what do you need money for?
Second, this abortion rights group is giving Operation Rescue a lot more credit than they deserve. In its hey-day, Operation Rescue was a force to be reckoned with. They got thousands of protestors to surround Doctor George Tiller’s clinic in the early 1990’s. They could get hundreds of people at a moment’s notice to block access to abortion clinics. They were all over the national news and they literally struck fear in the hearts of abortion clinic workers and owners.
Then, the Congress passed a federal law protecting the clinics, the bullets started flying giving Operation Rescue and other anti- abortion groups a bad name, OR started broadening their agenda to include things like opposition to gay rights. As a result, their movement, and particularly the organization, started dying. I do believe that Operation Rescue is still headed by Mr. Flip Benham, who is based in Charlotte, North Carolina and, yes, he still causes problems for one clinic down there every Saturday. But Operation Rescue is nothing like it used to be. I mean, it’s a joke.
So, I imagine that Flip put out his press release recently, saying that they’re going to New Mexico to do something exciting but I will tell you that they will not get a lot of people to attend the event and they’ll just gather around the clinic, sing songs and pray most of the time. And, I would add, they have a constitutional right to do just that.
Meanwhile, however, the pro-choice groups, no doubt hurting for money because we have a pro-choice President and everyone believes abortion is safe for the future, are using the specter of “violence” to fatten up their coffers.
Just frighten people and they’ll respond. George Bush taught us that lesson well.
Abortion - Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information 
June 11, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Since you are so faithful and use God’s name to make you fell better about your decisions, let Him judge us.
People like you are unbelievable. There are many kids who don’t have a home, are hungry being exploited by their parents and others. Why don’t you help them? Isn’t that what God wants?
Here, I raise you to go help this people, me, a simple mortal want you to go out there and help people in need.
Has God ever spoken to you in that way? Have you ever heard his voice speaking to you?
The answer is NO, because people like you just imagine things and there for they are.
Get real, if you want to do something, do it because that is what you want to do not because your “imaginary friend”tell you to.
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June 11, 2010 at 6:03 pm
What?
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June 11, 2010 at 9:05 pm
C
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June 12, 2010 at 1:04 pm
About Abortion,
Kathy you make perfect sense.
That dunkle guy has no idea what he is talking about.
I don’t know other veiws , since most are about abortion, so hard to comment.
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June 12, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Lauren,
Typical anti abortion person.
They are incapable of supporting their position on on topic.
When they do not get their own way they resort to violence, refusing to live under the rule of law of this glorious nation.
Not civil disobedience, real violence.
On abortion they are a scary group.
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June 13, 2010 at 8:43 am
Elena, not sure if I agree with your comment that when pro-lifers do not get their own way, “they resort to violence.” That is an incredibly broad brush. The vast majority of pro-lifers that I have met are well intentioned although, I believe, misdirected and not well informed on why women seek abortions. But those who have resorted to violence are an incredibly small subset of their movement….
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June 13, 2010 at 11:18 am
Agreed, literally,
the intention of the violence statement was a broader brush already written,
breifly,
there is the set of anti abortion people.
A large percentage who do not get their way resort to Verbal Violence, as we see on this very blog. Now agreeably, so it does not have to be said over and over – there are crazies in every group. The anti abortion group ratio though is absurdly high. Why have some of them been labled terrorists? Rhetorical.
As one moves down the gradient, you get insiter’s of violence, proponents of violence,
people screaming and yelling at women,
that is violence. It is part of many syndromes of violence.
Then sabotage, robberies, offices blown up, 100,000,000s of death threats (you must admit that’s a lot). Letters with fake or real biological weapons. Stalking, etc., and then the murderers.
The violence is quite immence.
—–
On the second point I do not beleive that a good intention award can be reconciled with people who know no facts, don’t take the time to educate them selves and then try to legislate away another persons rights.
I think ignorance is a better word for that behaviour.
Regards
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June 14, 2010 at 6:02 am
I had to struggle to understand what Elana is saying above, but I think it’s this: anyone who believes that in every abortion a baby is tortured to death is a terrorist because that belief will incite someone with courage to act.
And I do think Elana hits the nail on the head. I have been trying to convey this same message to my fellow and sister prolifers for many years now, and the result: most of them avoid “going there” and some of them attack me verbally, in print, and through the law even more viciously than any of the killers helpers who comment here.
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June 15, 2010 at 7:54 am
John Dunkle benefits from participating at this site largely because he’s the only so-called “pro-lifer” here– he’s the star of the show, the guru in the cave at the moutaintop whose wisdom all pilgrims seek in order to understand. As such, he’s willing to endure the abuse heaped on him.
Additionally, any abuse he receives confirms what he already believes– that “pro-choicers” are evil, vicious babykillers with spite to spare for him. All attacks on him feed his sense of mission in behalf of his “unborn innocents.” They also reinforce his sense of bravery and Christian endurance.
While dumping on him or even expressing irritation while executing a logical argument against him might prove emotionally satisfying to the write, strategically it is a mistake. There is a different way to deal with his type successfully, but the “pro-choice” movement hasn’t recognized what it is.
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June 15, 2010 at 8:10 am
Until the third paragraph here, all was clear. I had noticed Charles making sense ever since I had stopped talking to him on this blog. (When I did talk to him, he was becoming increasingly incomprehensible.) I don’t of course agree with a single thing he says in the first two paragraphs, but, delightfully, they make sense. Then he throws in that third paragraph.
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June 15, 2010 at 3:17 pm
What do you mean, CG, when you say there is a way to deal with John successfully (but we haven’t recognized it yet)? How is one “successful?” How do you judge that you’ve been “successful” with John?
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June 16, 2010 at 7:07 am
Pat, the “pro-choicers” will have succeeded when the so-called “pro-lifers” are relegated to the same compartment in history as the Know-Nothings, the Copperheads, the Millerites and the Ku Klux Klan– people who were motivated by fear and fueled by anger, whose agenda is based on a crippling personal flaw and who need to be treated as the psychological cripples they are.
How do we get them there? Confront them with their lack of care for real human life. More importantly, promulgate that characteristic to the undecided or indifferent public and starve them of the inertial support they’ve been enjoying all these decades, much the way undecided Republicans withdrew their support from “Chicken Sue” Lowden in the Nevada primary.
You interview them on tape while they’re holding the “ABORTION IS MURDER” sign at the demonstration and ask them what they’re doing for children already born. Ask them how many children they’ve adopted, whether they’re in the process of adopting one right now, how many foster kids, how many hours they volunteer in public school classrooms, whether they’re Big Brothers and Sisters, guardians ad litem, parenting program staffers, spending 8% of their gross income directly on children with whom they have no kinship, class or social circle connection– and then you publish the results to the world.
It’s simply a matter of the public understanding the as-yet-unnoticed but bizarre gap between what they say and what they do that will move them to a shameful footnote in the nation’s history.
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June 16, 2010 at 8:36 am
Charles is the only saint I know, and he didn’t even mention that he wishes his parents had sacrificed his life to help his brothers and sisters. But just because I’m not a saint, does that mean I have to be a killer or a killer’s helper?
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August 1, 2010 at 1:02 am
“But just because I’m not a saint, does that mean I have to be a killer or a killer’s helper?”
That’s like saying “Sure, I smoke marijuana, but at least it’s not crack.”
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June 16, 2010 at 11:08 am
In a way, CG, I believe that the pro-life movement has already been relegated to the dustbin of history in some way. They are no longer the presence they were in the 1980’s and 90’s. Operation Rescue is a joke. Protestors have disappeared from most clinics and the Right to Life annual march in D.C. is pathetic. Sure, John is hanging in there,but….
What do you think, John? Is your movement dying?
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June 16, 2010 at 11:58 am
Yes, but like the phoenix.
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June 16, 2010 at 4:54 pm
I don’t think the Oklahoma and North Dakota legislatures would agree with you, Pat. Nor Scott Roeder. In my state, they overturned campaign finance laws. That was before Citizens United. The Supreme court overturned their RICO conviction, and they’re back in the faces of pregnant women. Just saying….
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February 10, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Hi Guys, thanks Anon (Melbourne), Paul and Chris, sure there is heaps of wiosdm and food for thought in your learned comments. But (there is always a but:-) on the very rare occasion one gets into such an unfortunate situation, and I believe that getting into such a situation in the first place was due to a lack of ‘due diligence’, at this point one is compelled to act. Unfortunately it may not help. Options? We can hand over all we have, beg, scream etc., etc., but many of us in this forum just cannot do that, can we?(I would love to make the other guy scream, I know shocking, such a statement from a saintly and peaceful looking guy like me:-) So what’s next? I would say massively damage the leader to a state of total dysfunction and act (remember only act) berserk,while coldly, calculatingly taking out the most immediate danger with a sharp eye for knives, guns and opportunity to get to a more crowded and safer place. Nice in theory but is it practical? what choice has one got. Let’s pray we don’t find ourselves in such a situ. Well praying in advance has certainly worked for me. Did I hear somebody scream?
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June 17, 2010 at 1:23 pm
What I meant to say that the pro-life movement, i.e., the organized, scary, get thousands of people in front of a clinic at a moment’s notice movement is gone. Of course, those who oppose abortion are strong in several state legislatures.
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June 17, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Well, true. In Kansas they went on to become the elected Legislature, royally screwing up just about everything. These people truly are dangerous, especially to their children’s future….
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June 18, 2010 at 10:28 am
What do you mean they are dangerous to their children’s future?
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June 18, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Pat, you should really go to the beach with your main squeeze for a week and do nothing but soak up the sun and read the aborticentrism blog to understand these people. Then I wouldn’t have to do a mini-blog in your blog!
Those of us who deal successfully with the knowledge of our own death, our cosmic insignificance in the scheme of the known universe, are able to put our talents to use in ways that we see as efficacious– we become Red Sox fans, or take up crochet, raise horses, spend hours listening, read, travel, work, and so on.
Those of us who don’t come to a resolution about it subconsciously struggle with it in many ways– certainly drug abuse and alcoholism, various “neuroses,” and “pro-liferism.”
Stultifying one’s children is not ipso facto part of the pro-life syndrome, but it frequently does happen in major ways, and more frequently happens in small ways. Denying one’s children good sex education is one of the small ways. Running for the Kansas Board of Education and writing Darwin out of the curriculum is one of the big ways. Which latter is what happened at many levels in Kansas politics. After the Days of Rage in Wichita, the so-called “pro-lifers” started small– running for school boards, town councils, and so forth– and wound up in a lot of the Legislature’s seats as well as health, education and welfare bodies. You have to read “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” by Tom Frank to appreciate how they used Kansans’ native populist resentment to get into positions where they could make things even worse for the angry people who voted for them.
As parents, they are not evil people, however, and they really don’t wish to harm their children. They sincerely believe that they are raising them well by crippling them intellectually and emotionally. But it’s part of their “pro-life” baggage– in their drive to prove to themselves that they can transcend the oblivion that Death brings to us all, raising children by their standards and their practices is simply another attempt to produce the proof they seek. If they were to even consider implementing the standards and practices foreign to their ken, they would be abandoning their drive for assurance of salvation.
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