Ted Cruz Announces Troy Newman Endorsement

Cruz Campaign Announces Endorsement From Troy Newman. Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign issued a press release announcing that he had “secured the endorsement of leading pro-life activist Troy Newman -- a driving force in the recent effort to expose Planned Parenthood's alleged sale of baby parts in a series of undercover videos.” Cruz said he was “grateful to receive” the endorsement:

Today, Presidential candidate Ted Cruz secured the endorsement of leading pro-life activist Troy Newman - a driving force in the recent effort to expose Planned Parenthood's alleged sale of baby parts in a series of undercover videos. Newman is the President of Operation Rescue, one of the most prominent pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation. He also serves as a Board Member for a number of pro-life groups including the Center for Medical Progress. In addition, Troy is the author of several books, including Refocusing the Pro-Life Movement for Victory and Abortion Free.

“I am grateful to receive the endorsement of Troy Newman,” Cruz said. “He has served as a voice for the unborn for over 25 years, and works tirelessly every day for the pro-life cause. We need leaders like Troy Newman in this country who will stand up for those who do not have a voice.”

“There are many people of extraordinary integrity running for President in 2016. And there are many candidates who are strongly pro-life. But when I look at the field of contenders, one man stands out as exceptional,” said Newman. "One man rises above the pack in his willingness to always tell the truth and do what he said he would do-on life and on every issue that matters to social conservatives. That man is Ted Cruz.

“I'm enthusiastically endorsing Ted Cruz for President because I know he will consistently and meaningfully fight for the unborn and always stand strong for decency and responsibility in our government and across our nation,” Newman continued. “I encourage anyone who shares these values and who wants a proven, trusted fighter as our president to also endorse Ted Cruz for President.” [TedCruz.org, 11/19/15, via Right Wing Watch]

The endorsement was also touted on Operation Rescue's website. [OperationRescue.org, 11/20/15]

Troy Newman's History Of Violent Rhetoric And Harassment

Newman Is President Of Operation Rescue And A Board Member For The Center For Medical Progress. The Center for Medical Progress has released numerous anti-Planned Parenthood videos purporting to show illegal activity. Multiple investigations have cleared Planned Parenthood, and called out CMP for its deception. [OperationRescue.org, accessed 11/20/15; Media Matters, 7/15/15]

Wash. Post: Newman Is “One Of The Nation's Most Controversial Antiabortion Activists.” The Washington Post wrote of Newman:

Newman is president of Operation Rescue, a group devoted to shuttering abortion clinics. He also serves as one of three board members of the Center for Medical Progress, the little-known California group behind a video project targeting Planned Parenthood over its fetal tissue donation program.

Newman has long been one of the nation's most controversial antiabortion activists, in part because of remarks he has made apparently praising the killing of abortion doctors and calling women who have abortions “murderers.” 

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Newman also says he is nonviolent and has taken credit for steering his organization away from civil disobedience toward lawful activity. [The Washington Post, 10/2/15]

Newman Claimed The Killer Of An Abortion Doctor Should Have Been Able To Argue The Slaying Was A “Justifiable Defensive Action.” In 2003, Newman issued a press release defending Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection for murdering abortion doctor John Britton and his clinic escort James Barrett. Newman argued that Hill should have been able to defend himself by classifying the murder as justifiable: 

"Today's scheduled execution of Paul Hill is not justice, but is another example of the judicial tyranny that is gripping our nation. A Florida judge denied Rev. Hill his right to present a defense that claimed that the killing of the abortionist was necessary to save the lives of the pre-born babies that were scheduled to be killed by abortion that day. Our system of justice is based upon 'innocent until proven guilty,' but in Rev. Hill's case, there was no justice because the court prevented him from presenting the legal defense that his conduct was justifiable defensive action.

“There are many examples where taking the life in defense of innocent human beings is legally justified and permissible under the law. Paul Hill should have been given the opportunity to defend himself with the defense of his choosing in a court of law. [Operation Rescue West press release, 9/3/03, via Media Matters]

Australia Cancelled Newman's Visa Over “Concerns That He Might Encourage Violence Against Abortion Providers Or Women Seeking The Procedure.” The New York Times reported in October:

Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, had been scheduled to begin a speaking tour in Australia on Friday. But immigration officials canceled his visa before he left the United States after Australian politicians raised concerns that he might encourage violence against abortion providers or women seeking the procedure.

He managed to board a flight from Los Angeles despite not having a valid visa but was detained by immigration officers at Melbourne Airport while trying to enter the country on Thursday.

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Terri Butler, a Labor member of the Australian Parliament, had called for the government to revoke Mr. Newman's visa this week. In a letter to Mr. Dutton, she cited passages from a book that Mr. Newman co-wrote that called for abortion doctors to be executed. [New York Times, 10/2/15]

Newman Wrote The U.S. Government "Abrogated Its Responsibility To Properly Deal With The Blood-Guilty. This Responsibility Rightly Involves Executing Convicted Murderers, Including Abortionists, For Their Crimes." Right Wing Watch noted that Newman wrote in the 2003 version of his book Their Blood Cries Out about his beliefs about Scripture and abortion providers:

When moms, dads, abortionists are added together, well over 100,000,000 people bear personal bloodguilt for at least one abortion. The doctrine of community bloodguilt found in Scripture further implicates the entire nation. The perpetrators are far too numerous and the bloodguilt has spread too far. We deserve God's judgment.

In addition to our personal guilt in abortion, the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people. Instead, the act of abortion has been elevated to a “God-given right” and the abortionists canonized as saints. Consequently, the entire nation has the blood-red stain of the lives of the innocent upon its head. [Right Wing Watch, 9/14/15; The Guardian, 9/30/15]

Operation Rescue, which continues to sell the book on its website for a donation, responded to criticism by claiming his argument was “in the context of a theological study of a government's ability to institute capital punishment, and was never in advocation of violent acts against anyone.” [OperationRescue.org, 10/1/15, accessed 11/20/15; Right Wing Watch, 10/1/15]

Newman Reportedly Suggested 9/11 And AIDS Were God's Warnings About Abortion. Right Wing Watch wrote of Newman's writing in Their Blood Cries Out:

After concluding that “judgment for America is a foreseeable inevitability” because of legal abortion, Newman explores what that judgment might look like. He posits that God is already “warning this nation, preparing her for a day of reckoning” through everything from road rage to terrorist attacks to AIDS.

It is possible that America is already within the clutches of remedial judgment. One needs only to analyze the current societal dilemmas to see the hand of God moving upon our land. The historical record of the Bible shows that God chastens before He sends cataclysmic destruction.

Listing a parade of current “societal dilemmas,” including the “drug epidemic,” “school shootings,” “unbridled pornography,” “divorce, marital infidelity, and rebellious children,” “terrible violence, from rape to road rage” and “unprecedented terrorist attacks,” Newman writes, “In all of these, it may be that God is showing that His hand of protection is being withdrawn.” [Right Wing Watch, 9/14/15]

Newman Tried To “Shut Down Abortion Clinics By Systematically Harassing Their Employees Into Quitting.” A 2004 Rolling Stone article profiled Newman's plan of “systematically harassing” clinics and their workers:

Operation Rescue's smear campaign against Phares is part of a new strategy to shut down abortion clinics by systematically harassing their employees into quitting. Banned by law from blockading clinics as it did in its early days, Operation Rescue has taken its offensive to the front lawns and mailboxes of clinic workers. In Wichita, members of the group rummage through employees' garbage in search of incriminating information. They tail them around town as they run errands. They picket clinic staffers at restaurants while they're inside having dinner and castigate them while they're standing in line at Starbucks. Operation Rescue is also visiting companies that do business with the clinic and threatening them with a boycott if they don't sever their ties with the facility. This is America's new abortion war, and the objective, in military terms, is to cut off the supply lines to abortion clinics and demoralize their troops.

Troy Newman, the head of Operation Rescue, calls it the Year of Rebuke -- and if it works in Wichita, he plans to unleash the campaign of intimidation on abortion clinics all across the country. “I want these employees to realize that their lives have changed,” he says. “As long as they're embedded in the abortion industry receiving blood money, they can't live a normal life. They just can't.”

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When I arrive, Newman and his small staff of zealous pro-lifers are buzzing with the news that the clinic's office manager has quit -- a result, they believe, of their name-and-shame campaign. The manager had been accosted by a neighbor in a grocery store who recognized her from an Operation Rescue flier that featured her photo. “You're that baby killer!” the neighbor screamed at her. Then Newman, through investigative methods he'd rather not reveal, discovered where the woman's husband works. “We think that's what clinched it,” he says. “He probably realized we were going to picket his workplace. I imagine he's the major breadwinner in the family, and he didn't want to risk his job.” [Rolling Stone, 8/19/04, via Internet Archive]

LA Times: “Newman Will Pick Through Clinic Workers' Trash,” Compared Pro-Choice Supporters To Nazi Doctor Josef Mengele. The Los Angeles Times wrote of Newman's stalking in 2004:

Newman will pick through clinic workers' trash to figure out where they do business; he'll trail them at a distance to learn their routines.

His goal is not just to make their lives uncomfortable. He wants to unsettle and disgust their friends and associates, so their hairstylists and their pharmacists, even their neighbors, make it clear they're not welcome in Wichita.

“If Josef Mengele came into a bank saying, 'Here are a few gold teeth I ripped out of the Jews before I gassed them,' the bank would be horrified. They'd say, 'I'm not taking your blood money.' That's the picture of abortionists that we have to paint,” Newman said. [Los Angeles Times, 2/17/04]

Newman Compared Pro-Choice Support To Support For The Holocaust Or Pro-Slavery Dred Scott Decision. Newman wrote in a letter posted on the group's website:

We believe that every human embryo deserves the right to life, and we believe that personhood cannot be stripped from somebody based on his or her period of development, just like it was wrong for Nazi Germany to strip away personhood from the Holocaust victims and for the Supreme Court -- in the Dred Scott Decision -- to strip away personhood from black Americans. [OperationRescue.org, 7/15/10]