As you might expect, if you operate an abortion clinic in Oklahoma, you probably aren’t the most popular person in the world. But when a religious right blogger got word that police officers are working a security detail at a clinic near the University of Oklahoma, he went into a conniption fit. The idea that–horrors!–an abortion clinic actually needs protection apparently doesn’t sit well with some on the religious right.
In mid-December, Alan Maricle of Pulpit & Pen got word that two officers from the Norman Police Department, Jeff Robertson and Neelon Greenwood, were working an off-duty security detail at the Abortion Surgery Center, located roughly two miles west of the OU campus. Maricle hit the ceiling. He denounced Robertson and Greenwood as “deathscorts” for helping women walk inside “this altar to Molech.”
This is pretty extreme rhetoric, even by pro-life standards. However, it turns out that Maricle is a leading member of Abolish Human Abortion, a movement that thinks people like Operation Rescue and the Susan B. Anthony List aren’t going nearly far enough. MSNBC profiled this outfit in 2014. It not only wants a complete ban on abortion, but wants any woman who gets an abortion to be tried for murder–even in cases of rape or incest. They even call themselves “abolitionists”–an obvious link to the anti-slavery movement. To give you an idea of just how extreme Maricle is, read this condescending reply he gave to a woman who became a mother as a result of a rape.
And apparently it hasn’t occurred to Maricle that if not for some of the ugly, nakedly aggressive, and in some cases outright criminal tactics adopted by some pro-lifers, this abortion clinic probably wouldn’t need off-duty police protection in the first place. Remember how George Tiller was gunned down by Scott Roeder? Or how a group of Texas pro-lifers have started taking down the license plates of every car that shows up at an abortion clinic? Or how someone tried to burn down an abortion clinic in Pullman, Washington? Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
In response to numerous emails from Pulpit & Pen readers demanding that Robertson and Greenwood be disciplined, the Norman Police Department replied–rightly–that its officers cannot “pick and choose which lives we protect,” and that it is obligated to “protect those who feel threatened.” Not good enough for Maricle, who railed that by allowing Robertson and Greenwood to stand guard at an abortion clinic, the Norman Police were standing “against the God of the universe.” When Robertson’s sister, Cynde, came to her brother’s defense, Maricle accused her of defending a “modern-day Gestapo.”
So let’s see if I’m reading this right. By Maricle’s logic, law enforcement shouldn’t protect white supremacist demonstrations, or the likes of Westboro Baptist Church. No matter how repugnant you may find someone’s views, to even suggest that they don’t have the right to ask for police protection is fundamentally un-American. I wonder what Maricle would say had the head of the South Carolina Department of Public Safety simply allowed a white supremacist to die from heat exhaustion rather than help him to safety. There is no difference at all between a black state trooper refusing to come to the aid of a racist knuckledragger and a police officer refusing to protect an abortion clinic. None, zip, zero.
Maricle seems to want Robertson and Greenwood to pull a Kim Davis and refuse to protect this abortion clinic. The official reply from the police department says it better than I can–an officer cannot be expected to ask whom he can protect and serve.
