Want fewer ads?

Dave Francis Leach is a Des Moines anti-abortion activist and publisher of the extremist newsletter Prayer & Action News and web site The Partnership Machine. His publications support the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors, the same doctrine cited by Prayer & Action News subscriber and contributor Scott Roeder prior to the Assassination of George Tiller, a Kansas abortion doctor. Leach reprinted the Army of God manual, which lists ways to damage abortion buildings from putting super glue in locks to two simple bomb recipes, in the January 1996 issue of his magazine. The manual had previously been published only anonymously, and mailed anonymously to pro-life leaders and news reporters. Leach's reprint of it was the first printing that was not anonymous. The introduction explained that Janet Reno's Virginia Grand Jury had, for a year, subpoenaed pro-lifers and "commanded" them to bring any copies they had of the Army of God Manual, which were then taken, treating possession of a book as some kind of crime. Leach explained that reprinting it threw down the gauntlet: "if owning a book is a crime, here I am; prosecute me." Within days after reprints went in the mail, the Virginia Grand Jury was disbanded.

The manual concludes with a paragraph commonly said to advocate the killing of abortionists. The sentences are "...Whosoever sheds mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed [Gen. 9:6]...we are forced to take arms against you. Our life for yours..." Leach insists that the problem with interpreting this as advocating justifiable homicide is that (1) it says "our life for yours" instead of "your life for the babies'"; and (2) the book only shows how to damage property, never how to hurt people. The alternative interpretation Leach says he had when he reprinted the manual is that the "arms" could mean the tools of vandalism, and "our life for yours" could reference the Christian concept of paying the penalty owed by another - viz. "we will pay the penalty you have earned, by risking spending the rest of our own lives in jail to right your wrongs." Leach cites page 48 of his reprint, which says “murder” is “something no pro-lifer would recommend, being pro-life”. And page 76: “We must die that others may live....don’t construe this to mean I recommend executing abortionists. I do not. Although I think it easily justified from Holy Writ, the A. O. G. adheres to the principle of minimum force. Mercy, rather than justice is the driving force behind our actions.”

Leach’s clarifications should not be taken as distancing himself from the concept of “justifiable homicide”. On the contrary, he wrote a legal brief for Scott Roeder, docketed in Roeder's case January 7, 2010, which alleges that shooting Dr. George Tiller was not only justified by the Bible, but by Supreme Court case law in 2003, Federal law in 2004, and Kansas law in 2007.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "David Leach", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0