Justin Wright Post 10

Part 1: As soon as Justice Blackmun made the ruling in favor of abortion in Roe vs. Wade, legal abortions were being performed almost immediately. Some doctors were performing them the afternoon after the Court’s decision was announced. However, anti-abortion protests were only sporadic at first.

The Catholic church banned abortion over a hundred years prior to Roe vs. Wade. It was not treated as important news that it was now legalized, as its establishment as a sin was well entrenched. But the number of abortions performed in the United States became so large that Catholic John O’Keefe could not ignore it, so he began to stage sit-ins as a method of civil disobedience. O’Keefe pledged to follow in the traditions of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, and swore to use nonviolent tactics to fight abortion.

Groups of Protestants gradually allied with O’Keefe’s movement. But a few individuals began to become frustrated with the lack of results, so they resorted to more violent tactics on their own. Michael Bray, Thomas Spinks, Matthew Goldsby, and James Simmons, among others, began late night bombing raids on abortion clinics in 1984. All of them were captured, and the anti-abortion movement began to be portrayed as a few radical and violent people through the media. For those who bombed the clinics, any attention was good attention, but non-violent leaders such as O’Keefe were appalled. Support for the anti-abortion movement began to decline.

In Pensacola in 1986, Joan Andrews, John Burt, and two others stormed an abortion clinic during a protest and damaged equipment. Andrews refused to comply in any way with the prison system, and was given a five year sentence for a minor crime. Andrews became a martyr for her defiance, and an icon of the movement.

In 1988, Randall Terry led the rise of the fundamentalist Protestants in the anti-abortion movement. Catholics began to join his movement as well. Terry used similar tactics to O’Keefe, but wanted to create a national anti-abortion movement called “Operation Rescue.” While he did manage to assemble larger and larger protests, setting records for numbers of participants and arrests, he never generated a truly national following.

In 1993 there still had been almost no progress in the movement, and an outraged Michael Griffin shot Pensacola’s only abortion doctor, David Gunn, to death. This began a string of debates over whether murdering abortion doctors was justified, a debate that ultimately led to the increasing unpopularity and subsequent collapse of the movement. The federal government began conspiracy investigations to try to uncover a ring of anti-abortion protestors committed to the use of violence. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was passed and signed into law, which pushed protestors even further away from clinics and carried federal penalties for protestors who blocked anyone from entering an abortion clinics. The remaining activists transformed into extremists, and supported the use of violence to stop abortion. Those committed to more peaceful tactics began to give up, as abortion protests had been totally ineffective, and some even argued counterproductive, as they created a public perception of pro-life activists as backward and violent people.

Paul Hill emerged as a radical in favor of the new doctrine of “justifiable homicide.” He wrote a paper after Gunn’s death on the topic, and not long afterward shot Doctor John Britton, who came from Jacksonville to perform Pensacola’s abortions, to death, along with James Barrett who drove him from the airport.

At this point, O’Keefe said: “The direction of the [anti-abortion] movement?...I think it is a disaster.” (Risen and Thomas, “Wrath of Angels,” p. 371)

Part 2: McVeigh and Sikkink cite four factors that correlate with support for more radical protest movements: “volunteering for church organizations, a perception that religious values are being threatened, a belief that individuals should not have a right to deviate from Christian moral standards, and a belief that humans are inherently sinful.” (McVeigh and Sikkink, “God, Politics, and Protest: Religious Beliefs and the Legitimation of Contentious Tactics,” p. 1425)

During the time of anti-abortion protests, most Evangelicals stayed uninvolved in the issue of abortion due to a belief in rapture theology – “the belief that the Second Coming of Christ was close at hand – the End Times – so that there was no point in worrying about events on Earth.” (Risen and Thomas, p. 81) But the young Michael Bray began to read the writings of conservative minister Francis Schaeffer, which encouraged a return to old Reformation teachings by John Calvin. Bray began to incorporate Calvinist doctrine to his beliefs. “Bray came to see the rapture as a distraction, and he was anxious to find an alternate version of Evangelicalism.” (p. 81) Calvin argued for the doctrine of predestination, which declared that good works could get no one into heaven, only God’s chosen “elect” could gain entrance, and they were obligated to do His work. Since God expected his followers to carry out his will, “Calvin and his followers believed that God wanted them to run things on Earth.” (p. 82) This is clearly one of the four factors mentioned by McVeigh and Sikkink, a belief that individuals should be forced to follow Christian moral standards, as God authorized such force in Calvinist theology.

Bray took a job offer at Grace Lutheran Church in Bowie, Maryland, where he became deeply involved in church organizations, another of the factors that correlates with support for contentious actions. He joined the local right-to-life organization, spoke at a rally, and “prodded his church to help the Bowie Right to Life Committee to establish a local ‘crisis pregnancy center.’” (p. 84) When Bray was later forced out of Grace Lutheran for trying to take over the church, he founded a new one, Reformation Lutheran Church. Bray’s involvement with church activities kept him around like-minded individuals, and also provided him with an opportunity to meet future accomplice Thomas Spinks.

Bray also felt that his religious values were under attack from within his own church when he served at Grace Lutheran, which is another factor mentioned in McVeigh and Sikkink’s article. Bray “chafed under the liberal Lutheran theology preached at Grace Lutheran. He believed that the Lutheran denomination to which Grace Lutheran belonged indulged in excessive modernism and, worse, adhered to a revisionist interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.” (p. 84) One “excessively modern” doctrine was abortion rights, which had strong support at Grace Lutheran, enough to cause controversy over his establishment of the crisis pregnancy center.

Part 3: Interestingly, there were no articles in the New York Times about Paul Hill shooting Doctor John Britton, yet the incident is mentioned in articles the very next day as if it was already widely known. The article

A Cause Worth Killing For? Debate Splits Abortion Foes

By TAMAR LEWIN

New York Times (1857-Current file); Jul 30, 1994; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004)

pg. 1

is the first to mention the incident, and barely describes it at all compared to the length devoted to it in Wrath of Angels. This is most likely due to information not being known only a day after the crime. But generally, everything mentioned about Hill in the book is mentioned in this lone article as well, including Hill’s former priesthood, his paper on justifiable homicide, his appearance on Donahue, and his speech on justifiable homicide at a Chicago pro-life convention. Hill is portrayed a lone extremist who has tainted the anti-abortion movement, which is consistent with Risen and Thomas’s observations. Most activists were indeed distancing themselves from the extremism of the criminals in their midst.

Another article,

Suspect in Abortion Clinic Killings Is Charged

By RONALD SMOTHERSSpecial to The New York Times

New York Times (1857-Current file); Jul 31, 1994; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004)

pg. 26

mentions Hill being indicted, what happened at the crime scene, and community reactions to the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and the failure of local police to uphold it when Hill violated it. Of note is the opening of the article which states that Hill had “long advocated violence against abortion doctors,” but in Wrath of Angels, Risen and Thomas show that Hill only became involved with the doctrine of justifiable homicide after David Gunn’s murder, which had only been a year before Hill killed Britton and Burnett. This seems to be due to a perception soon after the murders that Hill was someone who had a long history of hate, even though it actually began at a definable point not too far into the past.

The image to the left shows Hill being led from jail soon after the killings, while he shouts, “Now it's time to defend the unborn in the same way we should defend slaves about to be murdered.” (www.christiangallery.com/DogsPartTwo.html) The second picture shows Paul Hill on death row for the murders. Hill appears happy in both photographs, since he went to the grave believing that he did God’s work. The images confirm what was stated by Risen and Thomas and in the newspaper articles – Hill killed out of religious fervor and had no remorse. He truly believed that he died a martyr.