Three years ago, a woman was beaten and gang raped on a bus in New Delhi, India. The attack got global attention, but it wasn’t unique. It wasn’t even the most shocking: this year, multiple children between the ages of two and five were also gang raped in the city. One suffered a slashed throat before being dumped near some train tracks.
Crimes like this have provoked outrage, and many Indians are taking to the streets in protest. Others are fighting in the political realm for tougher legislation. Meanwhile, some people in the city of Dimapur found another way to express their feelings on sexual assault….
They lynched a man.
In March, Syed Farid Khan was being held on rape charges when an angry mob stormed his jail cell. He was stripped, tortured, and dragged before his mutilated corpse was eventually hung up. Gruesome pictures went around the world, and the story got even more disturbing when conflicting reports about the physical evidence began to emerge, suggesting Khan may actually have been innocent.
Were anti-rape activists responsible for the murder? Of course not. Rape needs to be condemned in the harshest possible terms, and activists shouldn’t refrain from doing so. Because while torturing a potentially innocent man to death was heinous, there’s only one group who should be blamed for that act: the people who committed it.
Similarly, gunning down a police officer and two others at a Colorado Planned Parenthood center last month was evil. However, the guilt lies with the one who pulled the trigger, and that wasn’t the pro-life movement.
The man who allegedly did, Robert Lewis Dear, wasn’t part of any pro-life organization. The shooting he’s accused of violated the movement’s values, as did his alleged history of domestic violence, voyeurism, and cruelty to animals. In the same way that those campaigning against sexual violence in India shouldn’t be silenced by the actions of a lynch mob, American pro-lifers shouldn’t quieted by Dear’s violence either.
Now, before you complain I’m being unfair in comparing “choice providers” to child sex predators, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I am not saying that the abortion industry is full of people who habitually rape children.
They just help those who do.
They certainly helped Timothy Smith. Smith took his thirteen year-old stepdaughter to Planned Parenthood after getting the child pregnant. You might think her being well below the age of consent would be a reason to contact the authorities; staff at America’s largest abortion chain thought otherwise. While being deposed for a subsequent lawsuit, a Planned Parenthood employee stated that “being thirteen and pregnant alone is not a red flag.”
Gary Cross got help with his thirteen year-old stepdaughter, too. After her mother noticed that she was gaining weight, Cross brought the victim to Planned Parenthood. Once again, staff failed to notify law enforcement, arranging an abortion instead. With the evidence gone, Cross went back to raping her.
In her lawsuit, Denise Fairbanks recalled telling Planned Parenthood staff that she was being forced to abort by her incestuous father; they turned her back over to him when they were done.
It doesn’t stop there: John Blanks, Jr., Adam Gault, Joseph Coles, Kevon Walker, Edgar Ramirez, John Szorady, Tyler Kost, Grey David Woods, and dozens of others received similar assistance. And not only do abortionists enable sexual abuse, their lobbyists oppose legislation to protect victims. When Texas state Rep. Molly White proposed a bill requiring that abortion facilities offer a private room equipped with a telephone to contact law enforcement, NARAL Pro-Choice Texas condemned the idea as “not needed.”
Here’s something that really isn’t needed: public funding for the abortion industry. Every year, Planned Parenthood receives over half a billion tax dollars, despite a litany of scandals. You can help change that by telling Congress those funds should be redirected to community health centers instead. Unlike Planned Parenthood, federally qualified health centers provided women with more than five hundred thousand mammograms last year, while providing abusers with zero cover-up abortions.
As both the lynching in Dimapur and the murders in Colorado demonstrate, there are violent individuals in the world. But whether it comes to fighting rape in India or fighting an organization that enables it in America, that’s no reason for concerned people to remain silent. The good news? We’re not planning to.
