Violence of the Lambs: The Legacy of Anti-Choice Extremist Father Norman Weslin
When Father Norman Weslin, founder and head of the notorious anti-abortion “rescue” group Lambs of Christ, died on May 16, the small handful of remembrances that were sent out in anti-choice circles reflected where he’d stood on the spectrum of the “pro-life” movement: an extremist who lived in the swirl of the most violent faction of the cause, while professing that his was a nonviolent witness.
Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, and most recently the force behind the new anti-abortion “cyber-pub,” Pro-Life Warrior—a website that recently published an article titled “Who Do We Kill Next?,” written by the attorney of an abortion doctor assassin—reminisced about hosting Weslin at his home, traveling with him and being arrested at his side. Troy Newman, the current head of Operation Rescue, declared the priest a “great pro-life hero.”
And the Thomas More Society, a Christian legal defense group that represented Weslin as part of the “Notre Dame 88” (a group of abortion protesters arrested in 2009) praised him as a visionary who was “ahead of his time” in his promotion of nonviolent civil disobedience.