Pro-Life Action League

When news broke of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, Frank Pavone of Priests for Life was quick to declare that people should not "rush to judgment" over who might have been responsible: 

"I am saddened to hear of the killing of George Tiller this morning. At this point, we do not know the motives of this act, or who is behind it, whether an angry post-abortive man or woman, or a misguided activist, or an enemy within the abortion industry, or a political enemy frustrated with the way Tiller has escaped prosecution. We should not jump to conclusions or rush to judgment.

While that sort of statement is obviously somewhat self-serving, it seems pretty reasonable in comparison to this other quote from Pavone in this piece by The Washington Independent's David Weigel in which he seems to suggest that Tiller's murder was due to the fact that anti-choice activists "feel helpless" under President Obama and the Democratic Congress and that efforts to protect the right-to-choose and those who provide services to women will inevitably lead to more violence: 

Anti-abortion leaders quickly got out front to denounce the idea of a large-scale response to Tiller. Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, the head of the Christian Defense Coalition, staged a protest outside of the Supreme Court asking Barack Obama and Democrats “not to repeat the mistakes of the Clinton administration in the mid-’90s and use this tragedy for political gain.” One of the chief worries among activists — whether Obama will revisit a pledge he made to Planned Parenthood during the 2008 campaign and push for the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that would roll back Bush-era federal restrictions on abortion.

“I wouldn’t put it past abortion advocates in Congress to use this tragedy to put more protections in place for the so-called right to choose,” said Frank Pavone. “That would just feed into the problem. There’s a lot of disappointment and frustration out there as a result of 2008 elections. People feel desperate. I’m not justifying what happened to Tiller at all when I say that it’s not surprising that a pattern begins to develop — the administration is hostile to the anti-abortion movement, there are acts of violence from people who feel helpless.”

Weigel also quotes Joseph Scheidler of the the Pro-Life Action League claiming that efforts by the Obama administration to protect clinic workers is all a scam designed to distract the American public from the nation's economic problems:

Joseph M. Scheidler, the national director of the Pro-Life Action League, argued that the reaction to Tiller — including the federal marshals — was “just a show,” and no different from how “the abortionists blame the pro-life movement for everything, anyway.”

“It’s like the swine flu,” said Scheidler. “It’s something for the press to get people to focus on so they don’t obsess over the declining economic conditions.”

The Los Angeles Times recently reported on the reappearance of a somewhat rusty tactic in the anti-abortion movement’s tool belt: attempts to pass a “Human Life Amendment” to several state constitutions, which would purportedly grant full “personhood” rights beginning at conception. Such an end-run would circumvent a protracted political debate—which they could lose, as they did when South Dakota voters rejected an abortion ban last year—and likely end up in federal court, where activists hope new right-wing Supreme Court justices will take the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the major national religious-right groups have preferred a more incremental strategy of advancing less-sweeping restrictions and promoting Republican politicians who promise to appoint anti-abortion judges, leaving absolutist activists out in the cold, as the Times notes:

For the most part, the campaigns are run by local activists, with little support or funding from big national antiabortion groups. Similar efforts have failed in the past: Proponents in Michigan could not collect enough signatures to put a personhood measure on the ballot in 2006. The Georgia proposal stalled in the Legislature this year.

Indeed, Clarke Forsythe and Denise Burke of Americans United for Life—a legal group active since the 1970s—published an article in National Review today calling the HLA “a losing move for the pro-life movement.” While AUL is hardly an influential group in this decade, its anti-HLA commentary recalls the anti-abortion movement’s in-fighting in the 1980s and 1990s over militant clinic protests (and the occasional murder of doctors). Although AUL was happy to represent militant activist Joseph Scheidler and his Pro-Life Action League in court, at the same time it pooh-poohed the frenzied “Summer of Mercy” protest in Wichita in 1991. “[I]t is better to show the public that [the abortion provider’s] practices are unlawful than to engage in tactics that attract attention to the unlawfulness of pro-lifers,” cautioned AUL’s president.

Nov. 29: Update appended.

When it was recently announced that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) would speak at a global AIDS conference at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, radio talker Kevin McCullough was quick to denounce the partnership between the “evil” young senator and Warren, author of the best-selling “Purpose-Driven Life”:

In doing so he has joined himself with one of the smoothest politicians of our times, and also one whose wickedness in worldview contradicts nearly every tenant of the Christian faith that Warren professes.

So the question is, "why?"

Why would Warren marry the moral equivalency of his pulpit - a sacred place of honor in evangelical tradition - to the inhumane, sick, and sinister evil that Obama has worked for as a legislator?

According to McCullough, what makes Obama “a man who represents the views of Satan at worst or progressive anti-God liberals at best” is his position on abortion and his support of “the radical homosexual activist lobby.”

Obama, who in his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention famously called for political ecumenism, will appear with far-right Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) to be tested for HIV on stage. But the spirit of bipartisanship in approaching issues, like AIDS, that cross the ideological divide is not enough to tamper the Right’s political efforts. Perhaps hoping to preempt a future presidential bid by Obama, right-wing leaders are coming out unusually strong against the AIDS Day appearance.