Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach. (Video screengrab)

Leach and a group of anti-abortion activists posted a dozen items on the auction site in order to raise money to hire a private attorney for Scott Roeder, who is accused of murdering Tiller because he performed abortions. Around a dozen items were posted, including graphic artwork drawn by fellow inmates and signed by Roeder as well as an “Army of God Edition” of Leach’s newsletter which lists ways to damage abortion buildings from putting super glue in locks to following two simple bomb recipes.

After five hours, eBay removed 10 items, with the final two items removed by late Monday afternoon. The company said in a statement that the anti-abortion memorabilia violated its listing polices which prohibit items being posted that “promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views.”

Leach said the site allows plenty of postings that fit that description.

“You sell World War II stuff, which ‘glorifies’ our role in it,” Leach said in a letter to eBay executives obtained by The Iowa Independent on Wednesday. “You do not censor things which honor police, who exist for their capacity for judicious violence. So it seems to me that your statement cannot be made sense of, without a common sense appeal to the context of violence.”

In August, Leach drafted a legal brief of Roeder claiming the necessity defense, which argues that a crime may be permissible if it is committed in order to avoid a much greater harm. The money raised would go toward finding an attorney willing to argue that defense.

Leach’s hope is that refusing to contest the facts of the case will leave no other option to the judge but to let the jury hear argument regarding whether Roeder was forced to commit murder in order to stop an “unlawful harm,” meaning abortion. That argument has been tried before and has repeatedly been rejected by judges regarding crimes committed to stop abortion because abortion is legal, and therefore protected by the law.

“[O]ur project has nothing to do with ‘promoting or glorifying violence,’” Leach said in his letter. “It is all about moving judges in abortion prevention trials to stop censoring the only trial issue, and the only defense, from the hearing of the jury. Does that sound to you like a fanatical, extremist, violence-glorifying, radical goal?”

Leach argued with the assertion that his postings “glorified violence.”

“For example, would you accuse the Bible of ‘promoting violence against an individual’ when such individual is slaughtering thousands every year?” Leach said. “How about items which honor police, who exist for the purpose of inflicting violence upon individuals when justified?”

In a note accompanying the letter, Leach said he and his associates may pursue other options in order to go forward with the auction, saying he has looked into purchasing software to make the auction a reality.

“We have had enough publicity, I think, to attract buyers,” he said. “Especially if we do it soon.”

Leach, who has received his fair share of bad press over the years regarding his association with radical anti-abortion movement, said he is comforted that Jesus received bad press as well.

“But I have been pondering the ‘bad press’ Jesus got from the Pharisees, and how he handled it, and a strategy remains alive in my mind how to turn this all around into a public move to end abortion,” he said.

Leach publishes a newsletter called “Prayer & Action News” that describes itself as “a trumpet call for the Armies of God to assemble.”

Roeder was a contributor to the publication, which advocates the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors. Along with Leach, the auction was organized by Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. Since Roeder’s arrest in May he’s been in regular contact with what The Wichita Eagle describes as “a who’s who of anti-abortion militants.”

Bishop Richard Pates, of the Diocese of Des Moines, wanted parishioners at the 82 locations that comprise the diocese to contact their U.S. representatives and senators to encourage them to support amendments within health care reform that are anti-abortion.

Congregants with the 82 parishes affiliated with the Diocese of Des Moines received this information as an insert within their bulletin this weekend. Click to view larger PDF version.

“We are at a critical moment in encouraging people to engage in the debate,” Pates said and noted the bulletin inserts distributed to the parishes contained background on the health care reform debate and contact information for legislators.

According to Rob Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the insert is “an example of permissible issue advocacy.”

“Churches run into problems,” Boston said, “when they endorse or oppose candidates for public office. That is not permitted under federal tax law. They can also run into problems if they link candidates to certain issues and then comment on those issues. In the absence of an election, this looks like strictly issue advocacy which is permitted.”

Regardless of the legalities of the action, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America interpreted the action as their own call to arms.

“It’s clear that every group opposed to a woman’s right to choose is pulling out all the stops this week to bring all the progress we’ve made on health care reform to a grinding halt,” Cecil Richards, president of PPFA, wrote in an action alert to supporters Monday evening.

The organization is calling on its supporters to also contact Congressional lawmakers — especially those individuals who are Catholic and support women’s rights in relation to health care.

The U.S. Catholic bishops strongly support health care reform that “protects life and dignity of all, from the moment of conception until natural death.” The bulletin inserts were prompted by information from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that concluded none of the current bills approved by congressional committees contain policies against abortion funding or abortion coverage mandates. Analysis by other groups that have scrutinized the bills, however, has determined that the reform language will not usurp mandates of the Hyde Amendment, which prevents taxpayer funds from being used for abortion services.

“The only potential problem with something like this — and it really is a non-legal issue — is that whenever religious groups speak out on public policy some people perceive that as heavy-handed and then it just spurs them to do the opposite of what the church wants,” Boston said.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has also lamented the lack of fully protected conscience rights in health care, as well as the lack of adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. Those items, however, were not addressed in the bulletin insert that was delivered to Catholics in Iowa this weekend.

But the ad, which aired for the first time Wednesday night during Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” relies on outdated, untrue claims.

The ad claims that “the U.S. actually has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia,” but the Energy Information Administration, the statistics branch of the U.S. Department of Energy, reported last year that the United States has 2 percent of the world’s oil, or 22 billion to 30 billion barrels. Saudi Arabia has between 250 billion and 270 billion barrels of oil, or roughly 20 percent of the world’s supply.

The ad goes on to say that “Congress has put up to 85 percent of these resources off-limits.” But the San Francisco Chronicle reported in July that most of the country’s estimated offshore reserves — about 75 percent — lie in areas that have been drilled for years or are being opened for exploration.

From the Chronicle:

“Roughly 48 percent of the nation’s estimated reserves, or 41 billion barrels, lie beneath the western and central Gulf of Mexico, where oil companies armed with new drilling technology are pushing into ever deeper water. Another 27 percent of the estimated reserves, or 23.6 billion barrels, are believed to lie off the north coast of Alaska, where the federal government sold oil exploration leases this spring, despite fears that the work would hurt the polar bear population.”

The ad also asserts the idea that Cuba is preparing to drill off the Florida coast, an urban legend that has been debunked time and time again since it was first uttered in 2006. Jorge Pinon, a senior energy fellow at the University of Miami specializing in Latin America, told McClatchy Newspapers that Cuba doesn’t have refinery capacity, and the Cuban embargo prohibits the oil from coming to U.S. refineries.

In June, U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Florida, told the St Petersburg (Fla.) Times (the newspaper cited in the American Future Fund’s ad) that reports that any country is drilling off the coast of Florida are untrue.

“Reports to the contrary are simply false,” said Martinez, a Cuban-American and the Senate’s resident Cuba expert. “They’re rumors, akin to urban legend.”

The ad closes by contrasting 45-cents-a-gallon gasoline in Saudi Arabia with fuel prices in the U.S., citing a Wall Street Journal article that warns about the possibility of $6 gasoline. The National Journal points out that the reason gas is so inexpensive in Saudi Arabia is because prices are kept artificially low by government subsidies. The magazine quotes American Future Fund’s communications director, Tim Albrecht, as saying he would be opposed to similar subsidies for American gasoline because “We’re free-market capitalists here.”

The ad was produced by Larry McCarthy, the group’s media strategist, who in 1988 produced the infamous, racially tinged Willie Horton television ad that helped then-Vice President George H.W. Bush bury Michael Dukakis under charges that he was soft on crime.

Representatives of the American Future Fund did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this story.

The ad is expected to run for a week on Fox, MSNBC and CNN.