An Open Letter to the Pro-life Movement

"Abortion brings into the public arena a Van Tilian fact of life: an
aborted baby is either dead or alive. There is no neutral ground, no
halfway condition, in between dead or alive. The abortion issue was
the wedge of Van Tilian self-consciousness for millions of
Christians. They gained the first glimmer of awareness regarding a
Van Tilian truth applied to civil law: the State is not neutral.

"We began to see placards: 'Abortion is Murder.' But then ... that
terrifying judicial question: 'What is the proper civil penalty for
murder?' The answer was obvious: execution. The anti-abortionist
leaders all began to waffle, and they have waffled ever since."

- Gary North
In the most recent issue of Chalcedon Report

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I concur.

I used to own a house across the street from an abortion clinic,
before it was closed and then bulldozed. We have an extensive web
site dealing with pro-life happenings from the mid-1990s until
present.

See: http://forerunner.com/fyi/

I conceived the site as a way to identify a "mystery abortionist" who
wanted to keep his identity secret. Meredith Raney now runs the site
and has added volumes of information. Mademoiselle Magazine wrote a
critique of the web site a few years ago. The abortuary owners used
to accuse the local pro-lifers of being responsible for cutting their
business in half. They even filed four federal lawsuits against us as
a group claiming that the existence of the web site was a tortious
(yes, that's actually a word) offense.

I wrote an "open Letter to the Pro-life Community" a while back,
making the same point North makes above.

http://forerunner.com/abortionwars/abortionwars.html

Pro-life activists have done a lot to stop individual abortions from
occurring. But if we want a permanent solution, that we do have to
come to grips with the fact that although abortion has been
restricted in American history, we are one of the few nations on
earth that has not ever criminalized abortion.

There IS a lot we can do in the meantime. I chronicle some of these
in my "Open Letter."

But few want to deal with the weighty question of what criminal
sanctions need to be enforced.

While it is widely held that abortion was legalized in 1973 through
Roe v. Wade, this idea is absolutely wrong. While abortion was
restricted in various places, abortion has never been nationally
criminalized in American history. We must begin to create the kind of
tension in the minds of people that will help them to extend beyond
the current debate over the morality of abortion versus a woman's
right to choose. We must change the argument. Should abortion be
restricted by the state in the same way that the FDA puts
restrictions on food production? Or should an abortionist be tried as
a murderer and executed?

See my "Open Letter to the Pro-life Movement" for more details.

- Jay Rogers