Scott Roeder, who has confessed to the fatal shooting of a Kansas abortion provider, is fighting prosecutors’ attempts to ban the so-called necessity defense at his trial.

Roeders’ attorney filed a motion stating that Roeder should be allowed to argue that the killing was necessary to prevent Tiller from performing abortions, The Associated Press reported this week. The move was a surprise, because lead defense attorney Steve Osburn had said earlier this month that the necessity defense was not a viable option. At the time, Osburn was responding to Roeder’s statement to The Associated Press that he’d killed George Tiller and that he intended to use the necessity defense at his trial, scheduled for Jan.11. Osburn has not explained his apparent reversal.

The necessity defense is highly unlikely to succeed in Roeder’s case, according to two law professors who spoke to Hatewatch. “He may think this is his opportunity to explain why abortion is murder, but that’s not relevant,” said Michael Kaye, a professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas. ( continue to full post… )

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and other militant anti-abortionists announced yesterday their plans to hold a press conference at 2 p.m. tomorrow at the National Press Club, a Washington, D.C., organization that’s become the venue of choice for a rogue’s gallery of white supremacist hate groups, anti-immigration extremists and other right-wing extremists.

According to a press release, Terry plans to “discuss what he and other pro-life leaders will and will not do if healthcare passes and includes paying for child-killing, and what convulsions follow.”

Terry has been criticized in recent weeks for his organization’s vicious demonizing and targeting of Wichita, Kan., abortion provider George Tiller right up to the day Tiller was gunned down in May in his own church, allegedly by a man with a long history of antigovernment and anti-abortion extremism. Despite the heat he caught following Tiller’s murder, Terry shows no signs of toning down his rhetoric.

In fact, if anything, he’s ratcheting it up. A statement attributed to him in the press release about tomorrow’s presentation is loaded with fiery tax resister rhetoric, thinly veiled threats and warnings of violent retribution against elected officials and others who support abortion rights.

“Let all those in government be warned: They cannot order people to pay for the murder of babies, and betray God Himself, without horrific consequences,” Terry states. ( continue to full post… )