The Myth of Pro-Life Violence
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

Media pundits on the left never tire of associating pro-lifers with violence. Figures such as Rachel Maddow use isolated incidents such as the murder of abortionist George Tiller as a means of attempting to discredit the pro-life community as a whole.

At the same time, pervasive and heinous acts of violence perpetrated by pro-abortion individuals receive little to no attention from the mainstream media, which are unapologetic in their preferential treatment of the pro-choice movement. In spite of media spin, however, pro-abortion violence is alive and well — and not just in-utero. In fact, the confirmed instances of such attacks far outnumber those purported acts of violence against abortionists, the latter of which the National Abortion Federation admits are rare.

The group, which represents America’s abortionists, reports that since 1977, there have been only 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers. These statistics indicate that proportionally, violence is rare among the pro-life community, which now counts the majority of Americans among its adherents, according to a recent Gallup Poll.

In stark contrast, the pro-life group Human Life International has documented more than 8,519 acts of violence and illegal activities by pro-abortionists. These crimes include:

1,251 homicides and other killings
157 attempted homicides
28 arsons and fire-bombings
904 assaults
1,908 sex crimes (including 250 rapes)
106 kidnappings
420 cases of vandalism
290 drug crimes
1,616 medical crimes

These incidents, which have been on the rise in the last few years, do not even include botched abortions which resulted in the deaths or permanent maiming of countless women. Many of these murders also entailed a psychological component, as many women were killed by their husbands or boyfriends for their decision to keep their babies and not undergo abortion, although the ordeal of these women is ignored by so-called “women’s rights” organizations such as NOW (the National Organization of Women) or the Feminist Majority. (In fact, an article in the Medical Science Monitor found that as many as 64 percent of abortions in America were coerced.)

Because the “pro-choice” position is politically correct, the media consistently give a free pass to violent innuendoes from groups such as Planned Parenthood. For instance, in 2005, a Planned Parenthood affiliate in San Francisco produced a cartoon depicting pro-life advocates being drowned in a trash can full of liquid, zapped with explosive guns, and decapitated. Had a pro-life organization produced a similar video demonizing pro-abortionists, there would have been immediate condemnation from all sectors of the leftist media.

Likewise, the media remained virtually silent when in 1993, pro-abortionist Eileen Orstein Janezic murdered pro-life activist minister and radio talk show host Jerry Simon. After killing Simon, she held police at bay with a pistol for six hours while spouting quotes from Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible. On October 27, 1994, a jury found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to life in prison. During trial, she admitted that she had shot Simon to prove her love of Satan.

Pro-lifers believe that violence is the inevitable inheritance of those who favor the killing of mankind’s most innocent and defenseless members.

Other abortionist criminals the media never report on include these three: Henry Howard Holmes, a provider of illegal abortions in the late 1800s, known as “America’s first serial killer” because of his murder of 50-200 babies outside the womb; Vilis Kruze, a Kaiser Permanente abortionist and former SS officer with a history of drug dependency and prescribing drugs to prostitutes in return for free sex; and Milan Chepko, a prominent Jackson, Missippi gynecologist who was a prolific producer of child pornography.

While none of the crimes of these individuals resulted in any official denunciations from groups such as NOW or Planned Parenthood, the isolated killing of late-term abortionist George Tiller in 2009 caused a flurry of condemnations of pro-life groups.

Human Life International President Father Thomas Euteneuer affirmed that Tiller’s killer “proved that he was no better than Tiller.” Likewise, American Life League executive director Katie Walker stated that Tiller’s killing defied the principles of the pro-life movement. An Operation Rescue press release condemned the attack: “We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning.”

Lately, there have been other documented cases of violence committed against pro-lifers by abortionists and their supporters. In 2009, pro-life activist Joe Pouillon was murdered by pro- choice activist Harlan Drake because Drake disapproved of Pouillon’s anti-abortion public lectures as well as imagery he displayed outside an Owosso, Michigan, high school.

Pro-Life Action League National Director Joe Scheidler (who condemned Tiller’s killing) was the subject of a violent attack in December, when two bricks were thrown through his front window, bearing the following message: “We are crazy feminist bi***** who will destroy your sexist ideas. P.S. I’ve had an abortion and no laws could ever stop me. You can’t make Queen Anne’s lace illegal, a******.”

These attacks, however, were overshadowed by the violent threats from Ted Shulman. The son of feminist author Alix Kates Shulman (author of the sexually-explicit novel Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, who boasted of having four abortions herself — “not one the result of carelessness”), Ted defined his activism by fierce and often extreme verbal attacks on pro-lifers which often threatened them with a violent end. Referring to himself as the "first pro-choice terrorist," he started a blog called "Operation Counterstrike." His mission statement proclaims: "Right-to-lifism is murder, and ALL right-to-lifers are bloody-handed accessories. Swear it, believe it, proclaim it, and act on it."

Shulman was arrested by the FBI last month because of his numerous threats to pro-life activists, following a two-year FBI investigation begun after complaints from threatened pro-lifers, including blogger Jill Stanek and Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue.

Shulman is also the object of a federal investigation in Wichita, Kansas, which could result in additional charges against him for making serious death threats against Operation Rescue staff members. Operation Rescue also maintained that similar threats greatly increased after MSNBC aired a Rachel Maddow documentary in which she inaccurately implicated the pro-life group in the murder of abortionist George Tiller.

While the media one-sidedly focuses on the plight of individuals such as George Tiller, victims of pro-choice violence such as Joe Pouillon and George Krail (who was run over by pro- choice protesters outside a clinic in southern New Jersey where he was protesting in 2004) go virtually unmentioned.

Ted Shulman’s terrorism was never once condemned by the abortion movement, nor did it receive any widespread media coverage. While those who commit the ultimate act of violence in the womb translate this into violence committed against persons outside the womb, law enforcement and the media continue to turn a blind eye.

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Photo: Students march in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.