[Bumped In Honor of Ragsdale Week] Ragsdale Admits Pulling Speech from Web Site

from Stand Firm by Greg Griffith

In a comment at a blog run by one of the weapons-grade crazies (I won’t link, and I’d appreciate it if commenters wouldn’t either, but most of you know the one*), Katherine Rasgdale freely admits pulling her “Abortion is a Blessing” speech from her own site:

BTW, and for the record, it is true that I have taken the speech down from the blog—or made it invisible (I’m not really a blogger and don’t know how these things work). And, yes, though it is on a sermon collection blog site it was, in fact, a speech, given at a rally to conclude the defense of a clinic under siege, yet again, from anti-choice protestors who harassed and frightened the staff and patients. The clinic had been shot up in the past (the owner still had the bullet-riddled door) and everyone was feeling a bit terrorized by the protestors when they asked me to fly in to stand with, and try to comfort and inspire, the defenders.

Anyway, I removed the speech from view to try to quiet down the commenters. There’s probably a way to just stop comments but I haven’t had time to explore that—kind of busy here right now.
At first I thought it would be a good thing to let the world see what the anti-choice (anti-woman) vitriol is really like. As you’ve pointed out, those who have only encountered the anti-gay stuff have no idea just how nasty things can get when it’s women being attacked. But then ...

1) the comments kept coming and coming and my blackberry kept vibrating to announce new ones and I couldn’t deal with the constant semi-interruptions,

2) my friends were getting angry and upset. I’m used to this—been dealing with it for 25 years—but people who love me where feeling very hurt by it. Even people who barely know me were starting to feel hurt

3) I began to think that I was providing an occasion for sin by providing a place where people could spew such hate and violence.

4) I don’t want to seem to trivialize any of this by saying I was getting bored, but really .. how many ways can people find to call me amoral, demonic, sub-human scum? It was getting awfully repetitive

So, the speech is no longer available for view. If I can find time to work out how to make it available without providing opportunity for more comments I’ll try to put it up again.

And again, dear friend, thanks for your righteous indignation, your defense of all women, your clear critique, and your friendship.
KHR

Got that? Just too annoying… too inconvenient. Made her Blackberry vibrate too much. Got on her nerves. So she killed it.

Let me briefly address just one other point.

Rasgdale writes, “At first I thought it would be a good thing to let the world see what the anti-choice (anti-woman) vitriol is really like.”

No one here is “anti-woman,” ma’am. We are anti people like you claiming to be Christian priests, driving minor children across state lines without their parent’s knowledge, to have babies pulled halfway out of their wombs and their brains sucked out of their skulls with large needles.


That is what we’re against.

We oppose you - have no doubt about that - but you need to be clear exactly what it is about you we oppose. Don’t flatter yourself: It’s not because you’re a woman, or a liberal. It’s because you think murdering unborn babies is a blessing, and you’ll go to what seem like any ends to make sure it happens.


* It pops right to the top if you Google “newark episcopal crazy secrets”