Over on Huffington Post, Jen Boulanger has a piece titled Come Together to Prevent My Murder. Boulanger is the executive director of the Allentown Women's Center for northeast Pennsylvania. Her tale is quite chilling:
As Boulanger says: "This is not 'sidewalk counseling' designed to persuade women from choosing abortion." And she notes: "The recent rise in hateful rhetoric is not only poisonous but also contagious."
Commenters to this posting, don't tell me that Boulanger is following a tatic of the pro-choice activists to silence legitimate protests against abortion rights. I am not buying it.
I have to side with Fr. John Dear on this one. He wrote recently:
This is what Gandhi said in the early 1920s, after some of his movement activists beat five British soldiers to death. He called off the whole national civil disobedience program, went on a fast of repentance and resigned from the movement. He insisted, from his daily reading of the Sermon on the Mount, that there is no cause, however noble, for which we support the taking of a single human life.
In that spirit, I propose that the so-called 'Pro-Life movement' stop all its activities, perhaps for several years, and that the U.S. bishops take the lead. What we need is a thoughtful examination of our addiction to violence, and a new systematic study of Gospel nonviolence."
It is time to stop the violence and find a new way.