Paul Hill is one of a few who has ever been convicted of committing a violent crime. The pro-life movement has always been swift to denounce these actions.
After a few episodes of abortion related violence in recent years, pro-life leaders throughout Canada and the US have reiterated their rejection of violent action and have restated their commitment to peaceful conduct.
The leaders are also defending the pro-life movement’s right to characterize abortion as murder and killing, despite charges that such rhetoric triggers violent responses in unstable individuals.
In Canada, a definitive statement on violence was issued in February 1995 by CLC, the political arm for pro-life groups in this country.
“CLC is opposed to acts of violence against abortionists or abortion providers. It is not appropriate to make statements or conduct activities in support of such acts of violence.”
The statement added that if any CLC representative could not accept such a directive, he or she should resign. “Such resignations will be accepted,” it said.
Similar positions have been expressed by other, affiliated pro-life groups across Canada.
“You just have to be (non violent), in order to be part of the recognized pro-life movement,” says Jakki Jeffs, head of Alliance for Life Ontario. “The pro-life movement is made up of everyday Canadian people—teachers, doctors, housewives, the unemployed. You name it, we’ve got it. It’s everyday Canada.”
Jeffs characterizes charges of violence against the pro-life movement as a desperate attempt by pro-abortion forces to prop up an eroding position. “If you cannot argue against someone’s facts and arguments, when you try to discredit them. I believe that’s what they (pro-abortionists) are trying to do. They know, very simply, that the writing on the wall…the facts are against those who support choice on abortion.”
Ted Gerk, president of the pro-life society of BC, said he knows of no one within either the educational or political arms of the pro-life movement in Canada who would advocate violence. “The movement is undivided when it comes to leadership in terms of policy on this,” he says. “For that reason, the movement can hold its head up high and be very proud of itself.”
Choose Life Canada founder and president Rev. Ken Campbell says every pro-lifer’s thinking, words, and conduct must reflect a Christian attitude.
“I am able to participate in pro-life activity to the extent that the strategy and attitudes affirm the character of Christ”, he says. “I have not encountered anything which was allowed in such (pro-life) activism which was in violation of the character of Christ.”
Campbell blames the mainstream media for perpetuating the myth that the pro-life movement is prone to violence. “There’s no question of (the media’s) collusion with the death culture in promoting abortion propaganda. They’re incapable of challenging the abortion mythology…The media are hyperactive on the left, numb in the middle, and brain-dead on the right.”
In the US, thousands of groups are said to be pushing the movement against abortion, including Pro-Life nurses, Athletes for Live, Concerned Women of America, the Professional Women’s Network, and the American Life League. Like their Canadian counterparts, American pro-life leaders are adamant about the lack of a connection between the pro-life cause and violence.
“I think (violence) is strategically wrong and it’s not helpful to the movement or to our image,” says Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago, III. “There’s no organization that I’ve ever known that would support a bomber.”
Although they reject violent means, pro-life leaders say they will continue using the same methods of argumentation even though some have charged that their rhetoric fuels violent actions by unstable individuals.
Jeff says not calling abortion killing would be similar to saying the sky isn’t blue. “When you abort a child, you kill it. Its not ‘an interruption of pregnancy’… Too much today, we try to sanitize things, but you can’t sanitize something as abhorrent as abortion.”
“Abortion kills a pre-born human being, and that’s it,” she says. “If society is going to say that’s okay…I will always say it’s wrong to take an innocent human life.”
“Truth doesn’t kill. Abortion does,” says Gerk. “It’s a reality and we would be intellectually dishonest to say anything else…I make no apologise for that. There is nothing we can do.”
Gerk says the pro-life movement’s commitment to truth has always been its strength. “As long as the movement continues with intellectual honesty and calls a spade a spade…it will forever have the moral high ground.”
Meanwhile, June Scandiffio, president of the Toronto and Area Right to Life Association, says as an English teacher she fascinated y how pro-abortionists use euphemisms to support their cause. “Orwell had said before we change ideology, we have to change language. They’ve been trying for years to dehumanize the pre-born.”
