You may remember that Jerry Falwell blamed the 9-11 attacks on legalized abortion and greater tolerance for gay rights–and got deservedly slammed from across the spectrum. Despite that, from time to time a religious right big shot spews garbage along similar lines. Earlier this week, it was the turn of Rusty Lee Thomas, the national director of Operation Save America–the original Operation Rescue. He opined that the main reason we have to deal with so many terrorism threats these days is–wait for it–legalized abortion.
In a press release blasted out on Monday, Thomas declared that “God himself” is opening the door for terrorism to warn us that “He will not be mocked!” Thomas argued that after years of “domestic terrorism in the womb,” we are now facing “foreign terrorism from without.”
Thomas further claimed that this country has run up “a great debt of blood guilt” for which the bill is “past due.” Unless we turn back to God and soon, Thomas warned that this country will share the fate of every country that “paraded their sin like Sodom.”
These kinds of hellfire-and-brimstone messages are standard-issue rhetoric from the pro-life movement. And yet, coming from Operation Save America, it’s nothing more than hot air. For those who don’t know, this is an organization that finds it acceptable to stalk and harass its opponents. Back in 2011, Operation Save America’s then-director, Flip Benham, was convicted of stalking a Charlotte abortion provider. He and his cronies took pictures of the doctor’s clinic and house, and collared several of the doctor’s neighbors to warn them that they had a murderer in their midst.
Thomas, who was Operation Save America’s assistant director at the time, penned a blog post at the Operation Save America Website declaring that all they were simply obeying God. Uh huh. So if you frighten a doctor so much that he has to tint his windows and come to work via a different route every day, it’s fine and dandy because you’re obeying God? This sort of talk is exactly what caused the scales to fall off my eyes about the pro-life movement.
Anyone who finds it acceptable to stalk an abortion provider simply in the name of obeying God has no moral authority whatsoever to lecture us on anything whatsoever. And this is what passes for leadership at a supposedly “mainstream” pro-life organization. Disgraceful.
