Herb Titus, a Christian Reconstructionist attorney and longtime lawyer for Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, spoke to a radical anti-abortion conference last month, where he called on governors and other state officials to defy Roe v. Wade and enforce prohibitions on abortions in their states.
Titus gave a Skype interview to Arizona pastor Jeff Durbin, which Durbin played at a conference he hosted in April called “#EndAbortionNow,” at which speakers — all male — urged elected officials to ignore the federal courts and enforce criminal penalties for abortion. Also speaking at the conference were Matt Trewhella, a signer of the infamous 1993 “defensive action statement” justifying violence against abortion providers; Rusty Thomas of the anti-abortion, anti-LGBT group Operation Save America; and Joel McDurmon, a Christian Reconstructionist who has advocated the death penalty for homosexuality and who shared a conference stage last year with Sen. Ted Cruz.
Durbin and Titus discussed what should be done about states that still have criminal prohibitions on abortion on their books that aren’t being enforced because of Roe v. Wade, agreeing that those prohibitions are still valid if state officials would be brave enough to enforce them.
“You’re dealing with two different courts,” Titus said. “The court of public opinion, it’s very important to disabuse people thinking that Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. That’s impossible. That’s impossible. The court can’t make straight what God has made crooked, they can’t deny to a baby the full protection of laws prohibiting homicide, it just simply isn’t true. So the rhetoric we engage in is very, very important or otherwise people would think that we’re challenging a legal rule. No, we’re not, we’re challenging a rule that is based upon illegitimate statement of facts and assumption of law.”
He added that “lower magistrates” such as governors and attorneys general must “interpose” themselves to prevent the enforcement of an unjust court decision and instead continue to enforce their state’s unconstitutional abortion bans.
“The governors of states in today’s political climate are very reluctant to interpose between the people of the state and of the Congress or of the court,” he said, “and there has to be a cultivation amongst the lower magistrates, such as governors and attorneys general, to recognize that they have a moral and legal obligation to stand on the law and not just hide behind the skirts of the court that has decided a case in the wrong way.”
“It’s extremely important for the states to step up to the plate and get back to the business of protecting innocent life and not allow the federal courts to push them around,” he added.
