On Jan. 20, I was a guest on the Crossroads Television System program,The Michael Coren Show. The subject was The Nuremberg Files website. The other guest, by telephone, was Rev. Donald Spitz, of a group called Pro-Life Virginia. Spitz is a close friend of NF creator Neal Horsley.
The Nuremberg Files is what we at Campaign Life Coalition call “anti-abortion” rather than pro-life. It has positive points. It advocates an end to abortion and contains powerful photos and other material revealing the true horror of abortion. It makes a strong case that many Christians – especially political, religious, and even some pro-life leaders – have been terribly negligent in not doing more to stop this holocaust. Horsley also argues that abortion will lead to a general meltdown of our culture. Many of us would not disagree with him on that.
Unfortunately, TNF is also counter-productive and wrong on several points, and it exhibits a retributive interpretation of Christianity.
It appeals to viewers for the names of, and every possible detail about, abortion providers and pro-abortion judges, law enforcement officers, and politicians to add to a list, which TNF people hope will one day be used to bring these “butchers” to justice. Names on the list are categorized as follows: “Black font (working); Greyed-out Name (wounded); Strikethrough (fatality)”. There is a link to Paul Hill’s article, “Why I shot an abortionist,” and one about Michael Bray and his book, A Time to Kill.
Without explicitly advocating violence, TNF indicates that attacks against abortion providers are to be applauded. On the Coren show, Donald Spitz made it plain that he shares this attitude. He even indicated he would have no sympathy if an abortionist’s child were accidently killed in a violent attack on the abortionist himself.
I presented Campaign Life Coalition’s pro-life response to Donald Spitz and The Nuremberg Files as follows:
1. “Violent pro-lifer” is an oxymoron. Violent tactics contradict everything the pro-life movement stands for. Violent opponents of abortion should not be called “pro-life,” but “anti-abortion.”
2. Those who approve of killing abortion providers are really “pro-choice.” Like our opponents, they believe there are circumstances where one may choose to kill someone, although they claim this is not for everyone, and they wouldn’t necessarily do it themselves. Such killing is called “justifiable homicide” – the same term increasingly used by abortion advocates to justify abortion.
3. Killing abortion providers is seen as a quick solution to a difficult social problem. Sound familiar? Abortion is never a solution to a crisis pregnancy. It adds life-long suffering to the original problem. The same applies to violence against abortionists. Abortion advocates grossly exploit incidents of violence. This always leads to more repression of the pro-life movement, more money and protection for the abortion industry, and more, not fewer, dead babies.
4. Neal Horsley, Donald Spitz, and company are like the Black Panthers and Malcolm X of the U.S. civil rights struggle. Violence creates a cycle of more violence that often destroys advocates of those tactics. Many angry, pro-violence civil rights activists eventually died in a hail of bullets. Their cause was just, their intentions were probably good, but their tactics were simply wrong.
5. People who oppose abortion should focus on converting abortionists. Many abortionists have become powerful pro-life advocates, the most notable being Dr. Bernard Nathanson. There are strong indications that Dr. Barnett Slepian was having second thoughts about his practice just before he was murdered last fall.
The Nuremberg Files website was the most useful evidence for prosecutors in the recent $107 million judgment against 12 U.S. abortion activists, one of whom was Michael Bray. After the judgment, TNF’s Atlanta web host, Mindspring, removed TNF from its server without notice. It deleted all files and all unread e-mail. At least two other companies that agreed to host the site have since changed their mind because of outside pressure. One was a free speech site from the Netherlands. To date, Neal Horsley has been unable to find anyone else to host TNF.
The bizarre aspect is that no one from TNF was even a defendant in the legal case. Planned Parenthood exploited the website to crush other abortion opponents.
We should all be concerned about the judgment in that case. It set a historic precedent of suppression of traditional free speech rights in the United States. Mere association with someone who advocates an extremist position was deemed reason for massive financial penalties. Mainstream, legitimate pro-life websites and other communications, could all be endangered if the judgment stands.
