Never Give In

Today is meaningful as a fulfillment of my life's work, of 30-some years.  It's not a final victory, by any means. But reversing Roe v. Wade was a goal, a marker.  Not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning, as Winston Churchill said.  And giving a check to whatever joy and relief may be found, is remembering the thousands of pre-natal children ever the years, children whose mothers dismissed or ignored my pleas to let them live and my offers of help so that the mothers may more easily do so.  All that happening as they passed me by at the abortion sites in Asheville. As of today, the battle has changed, but the killing will continue into the foreseeable future.Now that Roe is no more, after a brief tantrum, pro-abortion activists and politicians will quickly shift to the new fronts.  And, they believe they have their issue for the upcoming November elections.  I have spoken and written thousands and thousands of words on this subject.  At this point, I have said all that must be said.

“Women’s March on Asheville” & “Bans Off Our Bodies”

Press Statement by Meredith Eugene Hunt

For the occasion of the “Women’s March on Asheville” and “Bans Off Our Bodies” rallies in Asheville, North Carolina today, May 14, 2022:

“Pro-abortion reaction to Alito’s draft ruling is mass social hysteria.  Nothing they say, nor how loud they say it changes the reality of abortion hurting a mother and killing a baby.  Absolute “bodily autonomy” is violent and brutal when it means removing a pre-natal child from their natural environment, where they are perfectly viable. A child who only wants to be loved.

“The tragic part of Alito’s draft is it doesn’t recognize the humanity and personhood of pre-natal human beings.  It merely undoes the legal travesty that was Roe v. Wade, something the court should have done 30 years ago with the PP v. Casey decision. Pro-abortion people are declaring contempt for a Supreme Court that no longer affirms destroying a life.  But Justice Alito’s draft is persuasive.  It throws the “issue” of abortion back to the states because abortion never was a constitutional right.

“If the majority of the Court holds to Alito’s draft, the angry, absurd rhetoric to intimidate judges and lawmakers will continue in state legislatures.  The effort to drown and demonize voices who speak for women and children will intensify.  Our nation protected the enslavement of human beings for 200 years. The South relied upon slavery. It took a negation of a Supreme Court decision and war between states to end slavery

“Until we all recognize the personhood of pre-natal human beings, while also accommodating the unique nature of women, the division and conflict will only grow.”   

Hunt was the Director of Life Advocates in Asheville for 33 years.   

828-575-7300

lifeadvocates@earthlink.net

http://lifeadvocates.blogspot.com/

YouTube:  Life Advocates Asheville

Wandering Lost in the Wilderness

 

Over the past couple years I been thinking about our status in the mission to protect pre-natal children.  When I say “our” I mean those people who are anti-abortion.   My thoughts could be summarized by a few simple statements, but until the fall season of 2019, I didn’t have any sort of figure, metaphor, or illustration to explain them.  

Preachers, in my experience, often don’t give apt contemporary examples of Bible stories, and in this case, I was able to do it myself in a way that seems perfect.  Our pastor had been preaching a series on the life of Moses, and the section on this particular Sunday covered Numbers 13 and 14, the story of the Lord commanding Moses to send leaders of the Israelites to scout out the promised land, the land of Canaan. 

Moses asked them to investigate the strength of the people who lived there, the fertility of the soil, and the fortifications, if any, of the cities.  He asked them to bring back some of the fruits of the land.  As you may remember, the scouts came back and said the land truly flowed with “milk and honey,” but the people were powerful and the cities large and well fortified.  Then Caleb “silenced the people” and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”  At this the other leaders, other than Joshua, complained that they couldn’t attack the Canaanites who were far too strong for them. They even began spreading false reports about the land itself, and said that it was occupied by giants, the Nephilim, who made them feel as small as grasshoppers.   That night all the people complained and wept aloud that they wished they had died in Egypt.  They wanted to appoint a new leader and return there.  When Joshua and Caleb warned them about rebelling against the Lord, and again repeated that they should not be afraid of the Canaanites and could move into this rich land, the whole assembly wanted to stone them.

As a result of this rebellion, and their grumbling, the Lord said that the Israelites would wander in the wilderness for 40 years, one year for every day they scouted the promised land, and furthermore, every person 20 years or older, those who had seen his miracles, like the parting of the Red Sea and the pillars of cloud and fire, would die in the wilderness.  The very thing the people feared that might result from trying to take the land would happen to them, and in contrast the children who the people feared would be taken as plunder would be who entered the land God had promised.  Only Caleb and Joshua were excepted, because they had remained faithful.

So, here’s my contemporary application:   In our early Life Advocates newsletters from the late 1980s, we stated as our purpose the transformation of our culture to value the sanctity of human life.  Practically speaking, our goal was to change the laws, beginning with a reversal of Roe v. Wade, so that pre-natal children would be given the same protection as born people have, but not only that, but through education and ministry, this transformation would be peaceful.  Over time, as people learned the truth about human life in the womb, attitudes and beliefs would change.  I believed that this change was attainable within my lifetime.  I don’t recall the exact year, (it would have been in the early 1990s) but, immediately prior to the announcement of the Casey Supreme Court decision, we had scheduled a press conference at Asheville City Hall to respond.  We didn’t know how the decision would go, so we had prepared two statements, one to celebrate the reversal of Roe, and the other to express our disappointment at the failure of the court to reverse it.  We were, as history shows, to be disappointed. After all these years, it is hard to believe we thought we were anywhere close, but the reality of our societal direction and the infection of death was much starker and more grim than we imagined.

The real opportunity for change came during the movement under the banner of Operation Rescue.  This amounted to nearly a decade when thousands of people across the country peacefully interposed their bodies between the likely victims of abortion and the professional killers.  A friend of mine was one of the leaders of Operation Rescue. I can’t verify this without doing a lot of research, but he said that more people were arrested to trying to save pre-natal children, than were arrested during the entire Civil Rights movement.  The principal of rescue, and usually its practice, unlike picketing, protesting, education, lobbying, etc, and even ministry to pregnant women, directly addressed the immediate situation of people about to be murdered.  I remember those days well. The showdown between life and death was in play. Christians and others were putting their lives and livelihoods on the line.  I remember Dr. James Dobson calling people to Atlanta, where Randal Terry was taking a stand. Momentum was building, and if the rescue moment continued, it would have in time inspired and compelled the transformation for which we had hoped.  

But it failed.  Because of my acquaintance with one of the leaders of Operation Rescue, I know some of the inside story of this failure. I won’t go into that right now.  In the public realm however, Christian leaders failed to support the rescue movement.  They either disagreed with “breaking the law” or they remained silent and uninvolved. Their motives, I can only guess at from this distance. Was it that they felt they could do more good not being in jail? Where they afraid? That’s how I felt, though I supported Rescue. Without the widespread support of the church, those people who actually risked arrest, fines, and jail, became discouraged, disillusioned, and demoralized. And no one emerged who was willing to become a life-long martyr.  Despite several people carrying the name of Rescue for some time, the Rescue Movement was effectively dead. At this point, the bombers and shooters moved in.  That is a whole different chapter that I will not go into now.  You can read my novel, Universal Man for further exploration of all this.

As for the biblical analogy: transforming our culture to hold to the sanctity of human life was the promised land.  Our own nation, the United States and western culture changed (the adjective of “changed,” not the verb), was the promised land.  We scouted the land, and the Christian leaders, most of them rebelled and grumbled, and then said that land wasn’t so great after all, and worse, that it was held by giants, political, financial, the places of prestige, and the town criers, the media.  They all wanted to stone (defame, undermine, dismiss, ignore) the few faithful ones who said we could occupy the land.

Our status therefore is, we are now wandering in the wilderness. Look what has happened since them.  Unthinkable terrorism, drug epidemics, the “legalization” of homosexual marriage, etc.  And more recently, the ongoing world-wide corona virus epidemic, the resulting economic suppression, and even now riots, burning buildings, and looting in cities everywhere. 

As far as I can see, the apparent leaders of the anti-abortion movement now have no coherent vision of what we should be as a nation and a culture, let alone how to achieve or reach for that vision.  There are sporadic, uncoordinated attempts to tinker around the edges of the law, with varying success. To expect an additional Trump nominee to change the “balance” of the Supreme so that a reversal of Roe is possible, is naïve.  (There always has been who we think is a reliable vote that suddenly evolves.  Take some of the strange opinions of Chief Justice Roberts, for example.

The most active front of the anti-abortion efforts now calls itself the Abortion Abolition Movement.  I am very familiar with its ideas and people who identify themselves this way.  Their idea, as best I understand it, is that we must call for a complete ban on abortion.  I have heard some of them express that mother’s who abort should be charged criminally for murder.  There seems to be an underlying belief that what we called the “pro-life” movement is evil and actually has prolonged the existence of legal abortion.  Another aspect is the belief that only through preaching the gospel will individuals and our society will change.  Few “abolitionists” seem to understand rescue.  They don’t have a developed picture of what our society would actually look like having abolished abortion, or what it would take practically and policy-wise to reach this goal. Without going into a detailed critique, I will say that they are partly right and party wrong about all of this.  The hardest part for me personally, is the attitude that somehow they have something new that’s never been tried before. The confusion and overly narrow perspective of their viewpoint is part of wandering in the wilderness.  As least they are still active and out there confronting abortion.

We all are, in fact, wandering lost in the wilderness, myself included.  All of us are compromised to one degree or another.  None of us possesses a full comprehension of the reality of abortion that includes the full spectrum of responses.  All of us have devised spiritual, emotional, and psychological barriers to allow us to live more or less normal lives that accommodate the killing and allow it to continue without being any more than mildly troubled. This is the result of long term exposure and relative inaction, at least in proportion to the true urgency of the immediate life and death situation.  I myself suffer from compassion burnout.  I’ve reached a point where, on an emotional level, I just don’t care anymore.

Many, in fact most, “pro-life” antiabortion people participate occasionally in an ineffective or partly effective campaign or project related to abortion.  Or they vote and think that fulfills their duty. Some pro-life preachers will deliver a sermon on the subject once a year.  Some pro-life preachers will not preach a whole sermon, but will mention the subject in passing once or twice a year.  Some pro-life churches immerse themselves in and feel called to concentrate their efforts on other needs, such as hunger or homelessness, while simply effectively ignoring the slaughter that takes place a few miles from where they meet.  Many pro-life people and churches were once active and now are not.  This is all part of wandering lost in the wilderness. 

Roe v. Wade dropped on us coming on to 47 years ago.  The abortion of children in the womb was “legalized” six years before that in North Carolina. By comparison, 40 years lost and wandering in a wilderness doesn’t seem so long.  My point is, if the Biblical story applies here at all, it will only be a completely new generation that enters the promised land where human life is held important and valuable at every stage.  I don’t think I will ever see it. We seem to be headed in the opposite direction.  In fact our wilderness may be much, much longer than 40 years.  Maybe another, related Bible story applies.  The Israelites were captive in Egypt for some 400 years.

So, what do we do?  The short answer is, I don’t know.  I also don’t know if we can draw an exact parallel between the Numbers narrative and our present circumstances, especially the epilogue.  When those men who are responsible for spreading a bad report about the promised land were struck down and died of a plague, all the surviving Israelites “mourned bitterly”, admitted they had sinned and attempted to enter the promised land.  But Moses said this now was disobeying the Lord’s command, and the inhabitants of the land attacked and beat them down.  In other words, it was too late to avoid the 40 years wandering in the wilderness.

A longer answer, then, is that we must endure whatever comes and be faithful when and to what we can in the areas of being present where children are being killed, of seeking to change the law and educating and reasoning with our neighbors, in creating powerful artistic expressions, and in serving women and men who face difficulties with pregnancy and raising children.  We also must admit that we are wandering and not pretend that our schemes and strategies will make much of a difference on the culture, or that they will significantly change the death count.  My prediction for the future is that true Christians will suffer persecution and be forced to endure hardships, and this is part of the purification process.*  How long or short this term of wandering will be, I have no idea.  Whatever happens in this coming election and afterwards, the results will be alarming. 

-Meredith Eugene Hunt

 

*While I can’t say I know exactly what to do as an individual, I have some ideas of what could and should happen.  I didn’t want this commentary to be about my novel, but I did put these ideas in its story. Since nobody is really reading it, it doesn’t matter if I give spoilers.  The main title, Universal Man, is a statement that I wrote the main character, who, though flawed as any human being is, represents the Church.  He wanders for a time in the wilderness of the North Cascade Mountains as he hides from the government in power that is hunting for him.  The novel depicts these ideas better than they can be explained, because they are an example (admittedly fictional) of someone applying them in life, rather than a bare treatise.  This present essay, the novel, my short stories, and numerous articles written over the years are about all I have to say.  Sure, I could continue to offer rational, creative critiques of both current and past pro-life projects and pro-abortion rhetoric, but at this point in history, it is only so much spinning of words.

 

 

The World & the Devil's Hatred

Obviously, this photo is not for everyone to see, but it represents a sample of the kind of opposition we face just almost every Saturday at Planned Parenthood.  This person is standing on PP property, imposing himself between Edie and women going inside for abortion.  He dances around to try to distract and confuse Edie who is gently speaking on our amplifier.  We also have to be wary of police who have written tickets to some of the new people who aren’t as careful as we are with their use of sound amplification.  This photo was made on 1/11/20.

Make Way for Ducklings

Photo by Laura

On a Saturday in June, Laura was near the intersections of McDowell and Choctaw in Asheville when she found several wild ducklings that had fallen down through a sewer grate along the curb of McDowell.  They were deep in the hole and couldn’t possibly get out on their own. The mother duck was nearby, quacking, and aggressively hissing at anyone who came near.  The grate was too heavy for Laura to lift, and besides she was busy with something else important, so she “couldn’t leave her post” she said.  She called 911 for help.

Police and firemen promptly responded and managed traffic on the busy four lane road while they rescued the ducklings, six of them. The mother duck went a short distance away.  One of the ducklings was so deep in the hole, they couldn’t reach it.  Sadly, the firemen had to leave it behind.  When the fire truck left, the mother duck returned, gathered her family and led them across the road toward the creek westward as cars and trucks stopped to let them safely pass. 

This incident is so much like the illustrated children’s book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.  This is a book, first published in 1941, that I remember from my childhood and we read it to our children and now read it to our grandchildren.  It is a recipient of the Caldecott Award.  The story has a mother duck and ducklings parading all over town and people stopping to watch.  It even has a policeman named Michael holding up traffic so the ducks can cross the road. 

The rescue of the ducklings in Asheville is a cute and charming story.  It is impressive that police officers and firemen would value the lives of ducks enough to ride to the scene in their expensive equipment and use their training and authority to save them.  But this story is not really charming and heartwarming.  It is dark and depressing by contrast, because at the corner of McDowell and Choctaw, a block away from the duck rescue, is a place called Planned Parenthood, where small, dependent human children are killed by a “doctor” hired by the children’s mothers and fathers.   And if we called 911 for police and firemen to rescue them, they might come, but refuse to intervene, and we’d be arrested.  If they did intervene, they’d lose their jobs or worse.

As for Laura, she was present at Planned Parenthood to try to persuade parents not to kill their children.  For the most part, the parents ignore her and the other anti-abortion people at the site.  So, the anti-abortion/pro-life people are not usually successful at saving children, but their heart is revealed when they show their love and care for ducklings.

They do what they can.   

Letter: Abortion Protestors Should Go Home

The Mountain Xpress published a letter to the editor on June 5, 2019 that they headlined. “Abortion Protestors Should Go Home,”  referring to us who go to Planned Parenthood on Saturday mornings. The letter writer, Mark Wonnacott made several claims. 1.We pro-lifers believe that abortion is murder. 2.We mostly only go out on warm, sunny days and go home when it starts drizzling. 3.We are very careful to stay within the confines of the law.  4.We obstruct the bus stop.   He bases his claims on observations made from his vehicle at the traffic stop light.  His conclusion is that we are either “moral cowards of the highest order”, or that we “use an imagined sense of moral superiority, an artfully constructed victim narrative and a position of incredibly social power to bully women… or both.”  I guess the victim narrative would be about pre-natal children.  Anyway, he recommends that we should “Stop it. Go home. Pay your taxes. Hug your children. Trust women.”

The letter generated over 104 comments so far and 3.3k reads, many of the comments from me.  At some point the original letter writer joined the discussion.  He’s trying to make the argument that unless I protest 24 hours a day, I don’t allow pregnant women the same choices I allow myself.  It takes some contortions to reach that conclusion, and besides, his whole argument is an ad hominem that says nothing about abortion and the life of a human being in the womb.

Find the letter and comments HERE.  I think you will find it all interesting.

Aborting Father Threatens to Kill Pro-life Grandma

This happened at the Asheville Planned Parenthood a few weeks ago.  Someone called the police later in the morning, probably on us.  The police showed up in numbers, detained some of us, did background checks, and then gave us a talk about "good behavior."  I had originally posted this video on our YouTube channel, but then YT took the video down, citing their privacy policy.  I have this man's name and other identifying information, and in the future if he does anything else like this to us, I will press charges for communicating a threat.

Burning Roe v. Wade

Note: I purchased this volume to burn on a bonfire for the upcoming 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.  When I searched through the pages to find where the dissenting opinion of Justice Bryon White was, so I could remove it before burning the book, I COULD NOT FIND IT.  This book says it contains the complete text, but it does not.  I wrote a review of the volume for Amazon, but my review was rejected without them offering any specific reasons. I'm not going to spend a lot of time guessing what their problem was, but likely it is that I was blunt about abortion.  Below is my final review, a combination of what I sent originally and some changes and additions for the one I presently have on submission. As of this moment, it hasn't been approved.

The Review
First of all, Roe v. Wade is one of the most despicable documents in history.  It and slavish submission to it are responsible philosophically for the deaths of millions of human beings since 1973.  That itself is enough to earn this little volume a zero.  Less than zero. 

But if a person simply hopes to be objective and neutral, and approach the subject of abortion with an open mind and learn about Roe v. Wade by reading the original, full text, this volume fails.  Why?  Because it blatantly omits three additional dissenting and concurring opinions, ones that might give insight to the true meaning of Roe.  In particular, it does not include the scathing dissenting opinion of Justice Bryon White, joined by Justice William Rhenquist, who later became Chief Justice.

If you want to be educated about Roe, don’t buy this book.  In fact, there are no easily available sources of White’s opinion.  You will find it referenced on anti-abortion websites, but those are too easily dismissed.  The copy of Roe I have is from a bound law book in the law library at our county courthouse.  Because abortion is about blood and death, the truth about Roe v. Wade is hidden. If you want to find the complete text, you will have to dig.

White wrote: “I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.  The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother on the other hand.  As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to what it does today: but in my view its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.”

Justice White wrote those words above and much more. His dissent is one of the best reviews of Roe v. Wade.  But don’t take my word for it. Find the complete text somewhere. Unfortunately it’s not in this volume.

"Random Act of Kindness of Some Basic Life Essentials"

From the November newsletter:

Last Friday during the long morning, I took a “bathroom break”.  A short block away from Planned Parenthood is some vacant, overgrown property that affords adequate privacy.  It’s the sort of place where homeless people sometimes pass by.  Hanging on a gate was a nice, green, nylon bag, obviously heavy with goods.  Pinned to the top of the bag was a note on white paper.  The note read, “Random act of kindness and useful necessities.  Take or share, if needed.”  My first thought was to take it—I’m an opportunist and our family economics often require us to take advantage of small gains, but then I realized how stupid this was.  I didn’t need what was in the bag and someone else might.  I walked away happy that other people were doing

what we prolifers are also attempting in an out-of-the-way and inconvenient place—offering random acts of kindness and useful necessities to try to save the lives of children.  The difference is when I returned later with a camera to take a photo of the bag, it was gone, but few people welcome the random acts we offer.

Thanks so much for your support. It is needed.  We can’t give up.

UPDATE: That was a week ago.  Last weekend I found another green bag in a new location, and this time I was able to get pictures.  I had mis-remembered the words of the note.  The headline of the blog post contains the right words.  This time I looked inside the bag to see if I might learn who is doing this project.  There was no identifying information. The bag contained a stocking hat, gloves, a scarf, some soap, wipes, a hand warmer, a few snacks, a couple other things, and a bottle of water.  I left the bag as I found it.

The last photo here is not of Planned Parenthood, but a little place called Biscuit Head along Biltmore Avenue that we see every time we leave PP.  There's always a long line.  It seems so strange in this out-of-the-way place.  People standing in line in a parking lot.  I spoke with a couple from Missouri that was eating biscuits from a box off the back of their car. They had driven all the way from western Kentucky to visit Asheville for the weekend. They said it was faster ordering food here by take out.  The wait was an hour, they said.  I told them where they could go for a nice nearby hike to some cliffs along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

In the other side of this building is an office for TranzMission.  And we wonder why things seem to be changing so fast. They have money.  There's an organization. 

Become a Patron

[Note: I just moved this article from www.chaoticterrinpress.blogspot.com this morning.  The original posting was on 7/10/17.]

This below is what I posted on Patreon yesterday.  The idea is to invite a friendly audience of vehicular passersby to support us and my writing.

    You may have seen me “protesting” in front of Planned Parenthood’s abortion site on McDowell Street in Asheville, North Carolina. Maybe you gave a friendly honk and a thumbs up. (Thanks!)  Or maybe you flipped us the bird and shouted a degrading insult or obscenity. Or maybe you saw an advertisement somewhere for Chaotic Terrain Press. Whoever you are and however you got here, Welcome!

    My friends call me Mick and everyone else knows me as Meredith Eugene Hunt.

    The word “protest” doesn’t really capture what we are trying to do out there. Our signs that say “Let Your Baby Live, We Will Help” express the essence of our intention. Because we are in a public place, there is an element of protest, but that’s not at the heart of what we do. Our first audience is people who come for abortion. 

In nearly 30 years of anti-abortion work I’ve gone through a number of stages, including a decade of informally debating the subject of abortion on university campuses all over the southeast U.S. and elsewhere. At some point I got tired of debate. I won’t go into the why of it right now, except to say that debate has its limits because people erect barriers to reason. Everyone does. Logic breaks down into determined fallacy or else it’s built on weak, immutable presuppositions. Then there’s simply raw emotion. This is part of why I started writing stories in year 2000.

    I’ve published a three-part novel titled Universal Man (Graceful Runner, The Chinook Assembly and Then, a Soldier) and also I’ve published 26 short stories in a collection titled When Earth Whispers & Other Mostly Speculative Tales. I’ve written on my Chaotic Terrain Press blog what these stories and the novel are about. Abortion is a factor in several of them. The connection may seem to be obscure, but only when viewed on the surface. Look deeper. Think of the implications of, for example, physics running backward for your husband or wife and then read “Ships Passing in the Night: Romance and Marriage Between Lovers from Anti-synchronous Worlds” that I wrote for the Mad Scientist Journal. 

    You can read all 26 stories totally for free on my blog. Patreon is a way you can support my writing work. Or you can buy the books. And I need reviews: Good, bad, and even ugly. If the second and third option, expect a rebuttal, maybe. Or another story. Or silence. (Or a revision.) If you appreciate one of the short stories, try a long story—the novel. You can buy an electronic version cheap to read on your computer. I’ve taken almost all the photographs in the novel and those that accompany the short stories. The e-versions have the pictures in color.

    We endure a lot of verbal abuse on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. It’s a fish bowl out there. We have a narrow sidewalk, dangerous, noisy traffic, and hostility on all sides. But, we have passersby who are friends, too. Once in a while someone will stop and give us a little cash money, and when that happened yesterday (7/7/2017), I thought maybe others would support us if it were easier and convenient. Hence, here we are on Patreon. The stories help you get to know me and us better. They are what I have to say. I hope they’re fun. They might lead you to think in a new way. They might even, perhaps, lead you to join us to a degree you haven’t before now.

    I’ve put together a plan for monthly Patreon patrons to receive various free books, and I’ll also post some special things here, like working chapters of a novel in progress. Or sketches from unfinished short stories. Or my frog fishing story from junior high. (About shipping books internationally, I can only do this when Amazon permits.)

    Patreon suggests accompanying this text with a video introduction. I have posted such a two minute video HERE, but it’s not what you might expect. Like everyone else, I want to think about what’s beautiful or just entertaining. Maybe after 30 years of thinking about death, blood, and baby body parts, I’m more escapist than most people. Check out my other videos on my YouTube channel, UniversalDirt, especially the monarch butterfly ones. There’s a connection to abortion there, too. But I’ll leave you to work it out for yourself.

Happy traveling!*

    (P.S. If you feel like arguing with me, first read the two pro-life apologetics books by Francis J. Beckwith, then perhaps we’ll talk. If you’re thinking of attacking me, then read a couple stories first. Try “Attack of the Gravid Amazons.” It’s thought provoking. Remember, anyone can read the short stories for free at the Chaotic Terrain Press blog.)

*A reference to my ascending "reward" tiers Friendly Passerby, Kindred Spirit, Fellow Traveler, Trail Runner, Through Hiker, Wilderness Trekker, and Himalayan Climber.
  

To become a patron, go HERE.  Thanks!

Perspective

Three young Jewish women converse at a mass demonstration in Hyde Park 

to protest against the Nazi persecution of German Jewry.* 1933  USHMM

I've been thinking about the hatred and rage we experience when we are on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood.  Sure, lots of people give friendly honks and thumbs-up.  I appreciate those, even if the support is weak.  (It would mean more if people actually joined us.) The opposition on the other hand is emotionally fierce, and it sticks with you.

The other evening Edie and I watched the Martin Scorsese film “Silence”, based on the novel by Shusaku Endo.  I read the book years ago after seeing it on Marvin Olasky’s (editor of World News Group) essential reading list.  The story is about the horrific persecution of Christians in 15^th Century Japan.  What we go through in front of Planned Parenthood is laughable compared to what Christians endured then, and in other times and places around the world.   Still, we have time on the sidewalk to reflect on the daily bellowed “f___ yous” and up-thrusted middle fingers from passersby.  It’s not hard to interpret these as intended to be meant literally.  The ugly, vile, violent reference to what our Creator intended for human procreation is entirely consistent with the ugly, vile, violent response to the unwanted result of human procreation.  You almost view those people who do this to us as being of the same spirit of the inquisitors in medieval Japan.  I believe that if unrestrained by the law and encouraged, some of those bird flippers and shouters would attack us physically.  You see that sort of thing with the present so-called Antifa, or antifascist movement, who themselves use fascist tactics.

I don’t want to leave the impression that we are at great risk out there.  It is tense, but so far actual threats are almost non-existent.  We are able to focus on our purpose, which is reaching out to abortion bound people.

*The photograph has been cleaned up from the original, to remove specks. And cropped a little.To see the original and the documentation, go to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.  I considered using this photo in my novel, but getting permission to use a high resolution image was burdensome. The photo is in the public domain.

Planned Parenthood Protest, 2-11-17

It took a while for us to figure out why
 Planned Parenthood was closed,
but their parking lot was full.
Their people had gone
 to a rally in Raleigh.

Video: "Making the BEST Anti-Abortion, Pro-Life Signs Workshop"

This video will show you how to make the BEST pro-life, anti-abortion signs.  Includes a materials and tools list, and it shows an example of the WORST pro-life sign.  Watch HERE, and leave a comment.

Video: "Women's March on Asheville"

This is a video of the so-called "Women's March on Asheville" from our location at Spruce and College, and from our point of view.  Part One.

GRACEFUL RUNNER Available TODAY!

The link to the Amazon page is HERE.

A Novel for Roe v. Wade

Part one of my contemplative thriller, Universal Man will be released in a second edition for the upcoming anniversary of the abominable Roe v. Wade. It will be available on Amazon.com on Sunday, January 22.  Graceful Runner features a preface and a handful of original black & white location photographs. The story takes place in the Pacific Northwest. Part two, The Chinook Assembly will be available on March 1, 2017 for Lent, and part three, Then a Soldier will be available for next Easter.


To read the heart of the back cover of Graceful Runner, go to the page link on the right. The first, earlier edition of the book may be found HERE at the Barnes & Noble Nook store in an electronic version.

Planned Parenthood Spending Your Tax Dollars on Flavored Condoms?

Here we have a UPS driver delivering cartons from Trustex to Planned Parenthood in Asheville.  I looked the name up and found that Trustex, according to one online merchant, is the "world's leading flavored condom brand. Available in seven individual flavors, or try a variety pack to sample them all!" Photo taken 12/23/16.

Berea College Students Stand for Life

Watch a short video made during the Q&A at the November 10, 2016 Berea College convocation that featured "Christian" abortionist Willie Parker. The video shows statements made by two pro-life students, one statement encouraging attendants to, like the original Bereans in the Bible, search the scriptures for the truth about abortion. The other speaker reads a statement affirming a commitment to help any pregnant woman choose life. She then asks everyone who agrees with the statement to stand.
The video may be found HERE.

The Swastika of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

This is a detail of the old logo of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice in Berea College blue.  Willie Parker is a member of the board of this evil organization-the RCRC.  Watch an HD video showing the old and current logos HERE.

Berea College in Kentucky Promotes Abortionist Willie Parker, The "Good Samaritan."

This above is a screen shot of a video of a slide show that promotes abortionist Willie Parker and his convocation of November 10, 2016.  The short video and a pan of the Berea College library, made two days AFTER the event, may be seen HERE.  Below is a screenshot of an online announcement.

Berea College Hosts a Serial Murderer in "Christian" Abortionist Willie Parker

November 1, 2016

Dr. Lyle D. Roelofs, President, Berea College

Dear Dr. Roelofs,

I had written a letter to you in response to your article in the Berea College Magazine (Volume 86, Number 3) where you referenced Francis A. Schaeffer’s book, How Should We Then Live? (HSWTL), but I accidentally deleted the letter and didn’t have the heart to write it again. I have occasion again to write to you.

When I was a student at Berea, I once traveled to Covenant College with a Berea professor and my future wife Edie Weatherford to hear Francis Schaeffer speak. The professor was a personal acquaintance of Dr. Schaeffer through her father’s work. I had by then read and studied Schaeffer’s work, not in any academic program, but out of personal interest. Edie and one of her sisters later visited L’abri in Switzerland after a Berea College Country Dancer tour in England. I am very concerned that your article misappropriated Schaeffer, first in that your article had little relationship to the content of his book, and second, by linking its title to a certain kind of tolerance of sexual disorientation. No doubt he would be an advocate of radical love, but never at the expense of biblical truth, which is that sexuality belongs exclusively between a man and woman in a lifelong commitment. The Berea magazine article that followed yours stood in sharp contrast with biblical truth.* Sexuality, as such, however, isn’t the subject I wish to discuss here.

You said that Schaeffer wrote HSWTL (subtitled, The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture) near the end of his life. Perhaps you are unaware that Schaeffer wrote two important works after this book. They are Whatever Happened to the Human Race? and A Christian Manifesto.

 “Whatever Happened” is about abortion, euthanasia and infanticide. What I chiefly remember about the book is that it contains one of the strongest apologetic arguments against abortion, one I incorporated into a science-fiction story published this fall in the Mad Scientist Journal. The story is “Ships Passing in the Night: Romance and Marriage between Lovers from Anti-synchronous Worlds” in which a man sees his child grow younger and smaller until she is un-born, and then she un-develops in her mother’s womb until fertilization when she ceases to exist.

One need not read “Whatever Happened” to know what Francis Schaeffer thought about human abortion. He presented the heart of his understanding in the pages of HSWTL where he discusses the breakdown of morality and the law, in particular within the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade.

Much of my adult life has been living the challenge Schaeffer presented in his writing. While at Berea I attended an evening convocation at Phelps Stokes Chapel led by the Rev. John Powell, who had written the book, Abortion: the Silent Holocaust. Later, I attended a Sunday evening chapel in Danforth led by a speaker who made a personal appeal to me to dedicate my life to ending abortion. Those speakers were among the many influences that led me to the pro-life activism I’ve been doing for the past 30 years. I majored in Agriculture at Berea, and my goal was to be involved in agricultural development in Third World nations, particularly in Bangladesh, which had suffered so much in those years from floods. It’s a long story about how I came close to fulfilling this goal, and how the diversion toward trying to protect preborn children was consistent with that goal—serving where the greatest need is and were the fewest people are involved. So, it is natural for me to write to you to express my dismay at abortionist and Berea alumnus Willie Parker being a speaker at a Berea College convocation on November 10, which happens to be the Thursday prior to Homecoming weekend. I’m dismayed even more that this abortionist will present a case that his Christian faith compels him to abort pre-natal children.

As an accident of my prolife activism, I have become a campaigner for free speech. I have been arrested several times resulting in interesting court cases in both state and federal court, one case resulting in lasting legal results here in Asheville. I have helped take the huge, graphic anti-abortion display, the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) to some 50 colleges and universities in the Southeast and elsewhere, including UK, EKU, and Transylvania University. I was an organizer when we held signs showing images of aborted children along Chestnut Street where it passed though the Berea campus in November, 2013. In considering all aspects of free speech, I understand its limits, both legal and moral. It’s immoral to advocate for murder, for example, and it will be illegal in many cases. In Germany it’s illegal to deny the Holocaust. I believe it is immoral and should be illegal to advocate for killing children in the womb and for its legality. This is precisely the atrocious message of Willie Parker, and not only his message, but what he does. He is, in short, a serial murderer, and Berea College has no business giving him the credibility of a platform, just as it would surely deny a platform to an outspoken racist or anti-Semite, let alone a person who advocated and boasted of holding slaves or of killing Jewish people, however euphemistic his language might be, however it might be rationalized.

I hope you will cancel the appearance of Willie Parker at your convocation.

Some years ago, Warren Wilson College, as part of its Service Learning Program, allowed students to work as escorts at the Femcare abortion site in Asheville. Willis, then retired from Berea, was a trustee of Warren Wilson. I acquired the names and addresses of all the trustees from an alumnus and sent each of them selections from a transcript of the on-campus training program for abortion escorts. I had asked someone to record that program, and it was fairly disturbing—especially the foul language and silly outlook. Shortly afterwards, the college discontinued its relationship with the abortion business. I remember giving Willis a copy of my cover letter and the transcript. We never talked about it because, sadly, he passed away just a week or so after that time. The Femcare place eventually was forced to close because of health and safety violations, and it opened up again briefly, but closed down permanently shortly afterwards. We, the group I work with, Life Advocates, were involved many years in protesting there and sidewalk counseling, in which we offer help to women at the last moment.

Willie Parker would be as potentially controversial with Berea trustees and alumni as the Asheville abortion place was at Warren Wilson College. I don’t speak for the extended Weatherford family, but I know that the ones I have communicated with so far are upset at you having him scheduled. I’m certain that when Willis was president at Berea he never would have allowed an abortionist to speak at a convocation. Edie tells me that Willis purchased the HSWTL film series for Berea College. I believe that his name attached to Berea College’s “Christian Center” stands as a testimony against what you’re doing with this convocation speaker.

There are some issues so big and divisive, that neutrality is impossible. Abortion is one of them. At the very least, attempted neutrality favors the status quo, which is to hold abortion to be a fundamental right and legal in most circumstances. My experience is with the public university, and as publically supported institutions they’re subject to the First Amendment and a battery of Supreme Court cases. That is how we gain access to the university campuses with GAP. Private colleges and universities aren’t bound by the First Amendment, and therefore can favor one position over another as an institution. What views they allow to be asserted on campus reflect the values of the institution. A private college or university may allow viewpoints it fundamentally disagrees with to be given expression in the spirit of fairness, or for educational purposes, or it may deny those viewpoints access to the campus without a threat of legal penalty, though either way, financial repercussion is another matter.

With GAP we show horrific images of aborted children. Having only civil, polite discussions and debates about the “issue” doesn’t do justice to the reality. Below is the narration from the conclusion to the PBS Frontline historical documentary, “Memory of the Camps” that shows graphic moving images of victims of the Holocaust.

The dead have been buried. It remains for us to care for these, the living. It remains for us to hope that Germans may help mend what they have broken, and cleanse what they have befouled. Thousands of German people were made to see for themselves, to bury the dead, to file past the victims. This was the end of the journey they had so confidently begun in 1933. Twelve years? No, in terms of barbarity and brutality they had traveled backwards for 12,000 years. Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall. But, by God's grace, we who live will learn.

The truth about abortion makes it clear that inviting and allowing the abortionist Willie Parker to present himself as a Christian who is acting in love when he aborts pre-natal children stands against everything good Berea College has represented in the past, and should represent in the future.  It does, however, make a statement about what Berea College stands for at present, and that is not good.

Parker is helping women kill their children, and any person who participates in the murder of an innocent person is bound to suffer psychological and spiritual damage. He hurts women. What does the subtitle of his speech, “New Wine in Old Wineskins” even mean? As I recall, according to the metaphor of Jesus, new wine bursts old wineskins.  Does Parker represent new wine bursting the “old” wineskins of the Old and New Testaments, the character of Christ, and centuries of Christian ethics and tradition? (In HSWTL Schaeffer cites the Council of Ancyra, a.d. 314, and the Synod of Elvira, a.d 305-306). I’m familiar with the many distorted interpretations of the Bible that attempt to legitimize abortion as being something other than the deliberate killing of an innocent person made in the image of God.) Parker is not the Good Samaritan, as he seems to think. Rather, he’s the robber who left someone naked and bleeding in a ditch—the mother—and someone dead—her baby.

Again I would refer back to your article in the Berea magazine. You mentioned Berea’s seventh great commitment, which includes the aspect of having “concern for the welfare of others.” Abortion is the anti-thesis of concern for the welfare of others, both mother and baby, fathers and grandparents, siblings and cousins. Berea College should cancel Parker’s appearance, but it should also go much further by taking an active, even aggressive role in helping women in troubled pregnancies, so they will not consider abortion as a viable option, and in helping save pre-natal children, in part though the education of your students about the true nature of abortion.

Sincerely,

Meredith “Mick” Eugene Hunt, ‘79

PO Box 19205, Asheville, NC 28815  828-575-7300

P.S. Here is a link to my blog post about our past project at Berea:

http://lifeadvocates.blogspot.com/2013/11/god-made-all-peoples.html

Please watch the introductory video at http://www.abortionno.org/.

I see that Parker is speaking on November 11, at the Draper Building, with lunch.

*In HSWTL Schaeffer mentions Alfred Charles Kinsey’s books: “[T]heir real impact was the underlying conception that sexual right and wrong depend only on what most people are doing sexually at a given moment in history.” The situation today differs in that sexual right is what any people are doing, provided there is consent between participants.

cc: Loretta Reynolds, Thomas Ahrens