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The Fundamentalist Pro-Life Solution: Execute the (bad) Women | Righting America

by William Trollinger

A green brick room with a window looking into it; in the room is a white bed with brown straps and and an arm rest also with brown straps.
Photograph of the inside of an execution chamber. Image via Reason.com

On January 25 the Creation Museum hosted a political event designed to fire up support for anti-abortion legislation in Kentucky. The event featured Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (AiG) and Jeff Durbin of Apologia Church, Mesa, Arizona.

Durbin sees abortion as analogous to the Nazi slaughter of the Jews, although he thinks such a comparison “is a bit of an insult to Hitler,” given that, “if you take a body count of Hitler’s Germany to what we’ve had since Roe v. Wade, we beat him by the metric ton.” In response, Durbin argues that women who have abortions – and this includes instances of incest or rape – must be punished: 

Whether it’s a mother who kills her child in the womb or a mother who kills her five-year-old twins by drowning them in the bathtub, we would want it to be treated as a murder charge, and for that to be applied consistently under the law. I believe that a just answer to murder is the death penalty. Historically that’s the standard we held to for a long time, and ultimately when God has spoken to the issue of justice for murder, he says it’s a life for a life.

In short, Durbin is Ken Ham’s kind of guy.

Our friend Dan Phelps wrote an op-ed for the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader regarding the political rally at the Creation Museum. While Phelps provides a link to the views of “extremist Jeff Durbin,” the focus of Phelps’ op-ed is that such politicking is problematic, given that AiG’s status as a 501(c)(3) religious non-profit “preclude[s] such activities.” However, as Phelps acknowledges, “the IRS has generally been lax in its enforcement.”

AiG’s CCO, Mark Looy, wrote a response to Phelps’ op-ed (check out the comments section). To say that the response is flimsy is, well, to understate the case. For one thing, Looy never addresses the main point of Phelps’ op-ed, which suggests that Ham and company knew very well that this rally was a violation of AiG’s religious non-profit status.

So what does Looy have to say? For one thing, he points out that 

While we teach that abortion is taking the life of a human being and according to the Bible is murder, it is the government’s ordained role to maintain law and order, not the church’s (which the guest columnist omitted).

What? Looy actually thinks that this is a point that needs to be made? He thinks he needs to make clear to Phelps and others that Ham and Durbin are not in charge of determining the state’s specific punishments? While I am confident that Ham and Durbin fantasize about having that kind of power, it is ludicrous that Looy finds it necessary to tell the good people of Lexington that it is “the government that is responsible for determining punishment.”

But there’s more. From Looy:

It is also worth pointing out that our striking “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”exhibit in our museum stresses God’s mercy and forgiveness for those who have had an abortion.

Let me see if I have this right. As Looy, Ham, and AiG see it, women who have an abortion should be executed. But God will forgive them for their abortion, presumably if they repent while sitting in their cell on Death Row, or strapped onto the gurney in the execution chamber. So is the idea that they will be executed, but they will still have a chance to go to heaven? Is that the mercy and forgiveness that the Creation Museum is referring to?

(Just a note to put this into context. If you visit AiG’s Ark Encounter you will learn that God killed up to 20 billion people in the Genesis Flood. Ok, but he did show mercy and forgiveness to eight individuals who – mercifully – did not hear the screams of the billions of people drowning outside the Ark. The billions who included children, toddlers, infants, and, of course, the unborn.)    

Execute the bad women. Lots of them. All of them.

It’s the final fundamentalist pro-life solution.