Fox Five's Greg Gutfield Wants To Inspire The Next Robert Dear

Posted by: Matt Osborne , April 26, 2017

Remember when Bill O’Reilly’s imprecations against Dr. George Tiller helped inspire a forced birth terrorist named Scott Roeder to murder the abortion provider in the lobby of his church? Now that O’Reilly is no longer spewing hatred towards abortion providers in prime time, Fox News is looking for a replacement.

They may have found one in Greg Gutfield. On the show Fox Five last night, host Gutfield told his co-panelists that anti-abortion zealots should “start a war” if they are serious about their beliefs.

“I have a problem with saying you’re pro-life, but you respect the other side,” Gutfield said, “because that’s a PLC. I’m a PLC. I’m a pro-life coward. Which means I believe, and it’s untethered to religion, that it is killing a baby, but I’m not gonna do anything about it. Because I realize there’s nothing I can do about it.”

As far as anyone can tell, Gutfield is the first person to use the term ‘pro-life coward’ for people with strong feelings against abortion who stop short of violence in the name of their beliefs. It’s a talking point that seems calculated to push forced-birth activists over the line.

But if there was a spark of originality present, Gutfield quickly extinguished it as he continued his remarks with a common refrain about abortion being the moral equivalent of slavery. Which is weird, because the whole point of ‘pro-life’ laws is that proponents want to enforce motherhood on unwilling women, and that is actual-real-not imaginary slavery.

“If, in the 1850s, there was a talk show called the Ye Olde Five Shoppe…and you’re going, ‘I’m against slavery…I think it’s immoral but there’s nothing I can do about it’… If you are pro-life, and you believe it’s murder, you should be willing to fight for it. That’s the hypocrisy behind this whole idea,” Gutfield said.

Gutfield apparently wants every lunatic anti-abortion nutjob to prepare themselves for combat and assault the nearest provider like Robert Dear, who killed three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood facility in November 2015.

Deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial, Dear had planned his attack meticulously, creating a bulletproof vest out of silver dollars and duct tape, then positioning propane tanks that he tried to detonate with gunfire.

Dear’s victims included a police officer. None of them was present at the clinic to give or receive an abortion.

According to Gutfield, Dear is the very model of pro-life activism. “It’s that you should be able to start a war if you believe in this that strongly,” he finished. “But we aren’t, because we are PLCs.”

Of course, Gutfield was speaking in reference to the controversy within the Democratic Party over Bernie Sanders’s support of pro-life Democrat Heath Mello, who is running for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. Sanders drew criticism in recent days because he had withheld his support for pro-choice Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s special election to represent the 6th congressional district.

Deeming Mello more “progressive” than Ossoff, Sanders managed to infuriate the substantial female majority of Democratic activists by ignoring the fact that reproductive rights are integral to economic justice, which is his single theme as a politician.

The controversy led DNC chairman Tom Perez to make an unequivocal statement in support of abortion rights. Nevertheless, Fox Five framed their discussion as “Democrats in Disarray.”

Clinic escorts have noted an increasing level of aggression from protesters outside of provider facilities in recent years, with a sharp spike since the election last November.

There is video of Greg Gutfield’s remarks in context at Crooks and Liars.