The Ghost of Reno Rides Again

With the killing of America’s most notorious abortionist, George Tiller, you can be assured that the abortion lobby and their media flunkeys are, once again, hyperventilating over the opportunity that has fallen into their laps.  As they have done in the past, they now get to project this image of poor hapless abortion clinic workers having to dodge a hail of automatic weapon fire every morning just to get from their car to the death camp door. 

As the curtain rises on this little dog and pony show, let’s make it our job to see that the audience keeps at least one foot in reality.  We need to be pointing out that, when the Department of Justice or the FBI publish studies on workplace violence, the rate of violence at abortion clinics is so statistically insignificant that it doesn’t make it onto the final charts.  In fact, even if the statistics are limited to only include violence against health care professionals, abortionists do not show up on the radar screen. 

To see how overblown this issue has been, consider just the two years during which the most violence against abortion providers took place.  Of the eight total murders that have occurred at America’s abortion mills during the past 36 years, five were in 1993 and 1994 alone.  But according to government statistics from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, during those same two years there were 2,154 other people killed in work-related homicides in the United States including seven school teachers, four members of the clergy, 10 lawyers, nine newspaper vendors, seven writers, six realtors, 22 waiters or waitresses, four groundskeepers, five architects, 40 garage or service station attendants, 23 auto mechanics, 21 janitors, 10 hairdressers, four carpenters, and six farmers. 

In other words, during the worst period of “pro-life violence” in American history, more farmers and twice as many hairdressers were murdered on the job than abortion clinic workers and abortionists combined.  And remember, the five abortion clinic killings during 1993 and 1994 account for all but three of the killings that have happened in the history of the pro-life struggle.

Compared to the thousands of taxi drivers, convenience store employees, police officers, firefighters, and other workers who were killed during that time, it is obvious that all of this wailing and hand-wringing about violence against abortion providers is complete nonsense.  This is confirmed by the reality that the media is only able to make such a big deal about “pro-life violence” because it is so rare.  If it were even remotely common, they could not give it so much press.  Also lost in this discussion is the fact that if abortion clinic shootings, assaults, bombings, arson, and other acts of violence were anywhere near as common as the abortion lobby claims, every abortion mill in the country would have to shut down because there would not be an insurance company on the planet that would sell them coverage. 

Cutting to the chase, any objective analysis of this issue shows that the level of violence committed by people opposed to abortion has been grotesquely exaggerated and that the pro-life movement is, by far, the most peaceful socio-political movement of its size and tenure in American history.  To see the truth of that, all you have to do is study the other causes which are most similar: the anti-slavery, civil rights, and labor struggles.  It is not opinion but provable fact that, in those movements, there have been many times during which more violence was committed in a single day than has taken place in the entire 36-year history of the pro-life movement.

Another thing that’s interesting to note is that not one of the murders of abortionists or abortion clinic employees occurred prior to the inauguration of Bill Clinton.  And the explanation for that is brutally simple.  

Immediately after taking office, Clinton and his Attorney General, Janet Reno, began paying off their campaign debts to the abortion lobby.  While Clinton got legislation passed to sweep the streets clean of peaceful non-violent picketers, Reno literally turned the Attorney General’s office and the FBI into a private police force for the abortion industry.  By the way, that analysis did not originate with me; it was given to me by an FBI agent who told me that he was sick and tired of being sent out to investigate “pro-life terrorists” only to find some 70-year-old nun in tennis shoes whose act of “terrorism” was praying the Rosary in front of some godless abortion mill.

When rumors about Reno’s witch-hunts first surfaced, she flatly denied that such a campaign even existed.  But documents were eventually uncovered that proved she was lying through her blood-stained teeth.  The project even had an official name.  It was called, VAAPCON and I know, first-hand, that it led to at least one pro-life organization having its mail illegally opened and its phones illegally tapped.  This happened despite the fact that this organization had no ties to even one single act of violence, had never endorsed violence and was not associated with one person who was accused of committing violence.  The reason I know this is because the organization I’m talking about is Life Dynamics.  And we were certainly not the only targets.  In the ensuing years, I have been told by other pro-life leaders that they too had the same experience. 

Given this environment, it is hardly surprising that less than three months after Clinton and Reno began cracking skulls, the first shooting occurred.  This is not to suggest that this atmosphere justified the violence.  But on the other hand, we cannot pretend that it occurred in a vacuum.  If a woman kills her abusive husband, even those who would argue that the abuse did not justify the killing would at least recognize that it may have been a motivating factor.  In this case, it would be illogical to ignore the fact that, before the Clinton/Reno inquisition began, not one abortion clinic employee or abortionist had ever been shot.

Now we fast-forward to 2009 and find the Obama administration, which mainly consists of has-beens and retreads from the Clinton administration, publicly labeling as terrorists anyone who thinks it is wrong to butcher unborn human beings by the millions.  Then a short time later, we have the first shooting of an abortionist since Bill and Hillary burglarized the White House on their way out of town.