Recently, I got a lovely reminder of why I walked away from the forced-birth (pro-life) movement. A leading member of one of the more extreme elements of that movement recently had a meltdown over police in Norman, Oklahoma working an off-duty security detail at an abortion clinic.
Alan Maricle is one of the more prominent members of Abolish Human Abortion, an outfit that thinks groups like Operation Rescue and the Susan B. Anthony List don’t go far enough. MSNBC profiled this outfit last year.
They call themselves “abolitionists”—a deliberate nod to the anti-slavery movement. This outfit not only want a total ban on abortion, but would have anyone who got an abortion—even in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life—brought up on murder charges.
Well, Maricle recently wrote an article at Pulpit & Pen, a fundie blog, decrying two Norman cops for working off-duty at an abortion clinic about two miles west of the OU campus. He ranted and raved about how these cops were serving as “deathscorts” for an “altar to Molech.” He urged his readers to demand that the cops be disciplined.
In response, the Norman Police Department replied:
We do have officers who have secondary employment at the business spotlighted in this article. This business is operating in accordance with state and federal law. Our job and the oath all officers take does not allow us the freedom to pick and choose which lives we protect. Whether individuals share the same beliefs or not, we are obligated to protect those who feel threatened. Our role in this case is to protect lives and property and keep the peace as provided by law.
Not good enough for Maricle, who accused the police of siding against “the God of the universe.”
So by Maricle’s logic, abortion clinics have no right to seek protection even in the face of anti-abortion activists taking down license plates of women coming to clinics, setting clinics ablaze, and gunning down abortion providers. Maricle is treading on dangerous ground. By his logic, police shouldn’t give protection to white supremacist rallies. As repugnant as we may find their views, suggesting that they don’t have the right to seek protection for their rallies—provided that they are peaceful—is un-American. This is no different.