The following is a plot summary and comments on the newly published
book by Charles Colson entitled Gideon's Torch. This book is of
interest to the pro-choice community as it provides both a
justification of and a how-to manual for murdering abortion providers.
This review was written by a front-line clinic defender who
does not have access to the internet. She asked
for it to be put on the net for comments and feedback. Please let us know what you think. Also, for those who lurk on the anti's conferences or get anti-choice magazines, please let us know if anything pops up there about this book.
Book Review
Gideon's Torch by Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn Wood, 1995 0-8499-1146-X $21.99
In the provocative opening chapters, a doctor doing "late-term" abortions at a clinic in Fargo, ND is murdered, shot at point-blank range in her office by a woman patient. These chapters have such great detail they serve as a virtual "how-to" manual for such an assasination. Although Colson claims in a forward that the book was written before the last several abortion murders, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the hearings on D&X abortions, all of these events are eerily outlined.
What we have in Gideon's Torch is an anti-woman "Turner Diary" for the 90s, authored by former White House insider, then convicted Watergate conspirator Colson, now a professional "born-again" ex-con darling of the Christian fundamentalist lecture circuit. The book is reportedly selling well in Christian bookstores. Clearly shaped by intellegence from the Lambs of Christ anti-abortion shock troops, the book is built on the defense of anti-abortion violence to save babies as the rational response of Christians who hold a morally superior position to those who are pro-choice.
In the wake of the doctor's murder, the Federal government puts Federal Marshalls at every abortion facility and mounts a nationwide hunt for the killer, breaking down doors simultaneously in many cities to pull anti-abortionists in for questioning. Gradually, the anti-abortion "Life Network" discovers a secret National Institutes of Health plan to establish "regeneration centers" for the harvesting of brain matter from live fetuses in a new treatment for AIDS. In Colson's fantasy, these late-term abortion facilities where the D&X (dilation and extraction) procedure is used to abort now thousands of fetuses to aid the "greedy AIDS community," are now well-funded by the government and by "lavish Hollywood galas." One cell of the Network steals an NIH-produced training video on the D&X procedure and hijacks satellite time during the ABC evening news to show it.
When the American public is outraged not at the video's contents but at the hijacking of the airwaves, elements of the Network decide they must go further. An ex-Special Forces Gulf War veteran (Colson makes the point that being Black, he is motivated by the supposed racism of Planned Parenthood) carries out the bombing of a new regeneration center, killing 3 people. This brings further massive government action looking for a conspiracy behind the bombing, including the military. (Interestingly, Colson's moderate Republican administration responds much more drastically to this bombing than the Clinton administration actually did to the Oklahoma City bombing.)
The bombers are swiftly killed in a shootout with a Federal SWAT team, but one bomber's brother, a suburban Virginia fundamentalist minister leading a Network cell, is convicted of conspiracy by a mostly-Black District of Columbia jury. He didn't stop the bombing, and feels morally bound to tell the truth (that he told his brother to follow his conscience), in the process converting a cynical pro-choice female Attorney General by his moral example. He's sent to a maximum-tough Federal prison and is martyred for trying to help a young Black prisoner, thereby serving as Colson's moral focal point--an honest Christian who has exhausted all reasonable means of opposing immoral governmental authority.
Colson's near future is post-Clinton. It begins with the doctor's assasination on Friday, January 10, a date which actually occurs in 1997. The moderate Republican elected is pro-choice but morally bankrupt, a cynical and rich politician who worries only about the polls. Only one member of his administration, an assistant attorney general, follows his conscience, becoming another Colson heir. But Colson, who worked in the besieged Nixon White House, may know well what he's talking about here. The administration pulls off what Nixon couldn't by deploying the National Guard to the inner cities for an extended tour to fight "crime" using the public's outrage at anti-abortion terror as a political cover to avoid protests at the massive violation of civil liberties.
Most particularly, this book functions as a fairly sophisticated argument against the moral degeneration of the U.S., targeting the pro-choice, non-churched, homosexual and morally-lacking liberal establishment with responsibility. To the extent that Colson acknowledges the increasing numbers of people living near poverty, they are insignificant players, with problems that could be addressed by regular church attendance. His heroes, mostly male, are flawed but honest, human, and struggling with morality. His women do not lead. The one woman who does lead is unhappy.
The most significant aspect of the book is its chilling scenarios which indicate inside knowledge of how to commit crimes often threatened by anti-abortionists. The abortion facility described is one which actually exists and is the only clinic in North Dakota. The bombing of the regeneration center is carefully described.
Colson's use of fiction is equally disturbing. The D&X abortion procedure was actually used only about 400 times in the last year. It has just been criminalized by the U.S. House and is now undergoing consideration by the Senate. In Colson's story, it becomes commonplace as a way of "harvesting" brain material from live fetuses, a preposterous scenario, but very usefully contributing to the hysteria created about what the anti-abortionists refer to, erroneously, as a "partial birth abortion."
This is both a "how-to" manual and a justification for explicit anti-abortion violence. As such, it deserves to be read, critiqued, exposed, and opposed by those who are concerned with the right-wing onslaught against women's rights and reproductive choice.
12/23/95
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