To the Murderers, the Cowards, and the Silent
I write from the heart of a living holocaust.
Not the ashes of Auschwitz, not the bones of Treblinka —
but the bloodstained sidewalks of our own towns,
the sterilized killing floors we dare to call hospitals and clinics.
Here, under flags and laws and smiling faces,
we have engineered a Final Solution more absolute, more perfected,
than the architects of death at Wannsee could have ever dreamed.
I have looked into your eyes.
Paul Honig — Pro-Choice Candidate, smiling as you sign away the lives of the smallest citizens.
William Tong — Attorney General, sharpening the blade of legality against the necks of the voiceless.
Susan Bysiewicz — Lieutenant Governor of Death.
Ned Lamont — Governor whose hands are too clean, whose conscience is too dead.
But I have also seen the rage in the eyes of the people in the streets.
The ones I face in my abolitionist work.
The ones who cannot bear the sound of truth.
They would tear me to pieces if they could,
rip the voice from my throat,
drive the sword through my heart if only the law allowed them.
For now, they settle for flashing their middle finger,
wishing it were a weapon sharp enough to silence me forever.
But you are not alone.
Worse than you are the cowards.
The pastors who could have been generals —
who could have led battalions of righteous men —
but instead stand behind their polished pulpits,
trading their calling for celebrity, security, and silver.
Feeding themselves while the flock starves.
Polishing their image while the children perish.
And the sheep —
those who lift their thumbs in my direction as they walk by,
their feeble gesture a small price to pay for the soothing of a guilty conscience.
Their comfort secured by my suffering,
their peace purchased by my public shame.
This is your world.
You built it.
You defend it.
You baptize it in the language of rights and freedoms,
and call it good.
You have transformed every womb into a Gulag,
every home into a camp,
every clinic into a temple of human sacrifice.
The unwanted children the Romans left to die on stone are now left to die on metal.
The medical tortures once condemned at Nuremberg are now sanctioned by law.
The madmen of Auschwitz have been reincarnated in the laboratories of Planned Parenthood
and every research facility harvesting the body parts of the living.
And you pay for it.
You legislate it.
You celebrate it.
I walk among you —
and I know.
I know what it is to live inside a holocaust,
to breathe its poisoned air,
to weep while the world smiles.
But know this:
There is a Judge you cannot bribe.
There is a Day you cannot escape.
There is a fire you cannot extinguish.
You may silence me, you may bury me, you may erase my name from your records —
but you will not escape the cry of the blood you have shed.
It rises even now to the throne of Heaven.
And Heaven has heard.
Norman Harold Patterson Jr.
Director, The Connecticut Foundation to Abolish Abortion