U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

“You have to be a little bit careful here because the way the … amendment is written, it can now be taken to other steps. For example, every health insurance company in America could now lose some of its tax benefits that it gets for providing health insurance if it provides abortion services. You can take this on down. You could just say that anybody that got a federal loan for housing could not get an abortion. You can take this and just keep going on and on and on with no end in sight,” Harkin said.

The language inserted in the House came by way of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which prohibits abortion coverage for any health insurance product subsidized in any way by the federal government.  As it is written, the bill dictates that any person seeking insurance is barred from purchasing abortion coverage, even if the premium for such insurance is paid out-of-pocket, if the person receives any government assistance.

“I just fear that the House-passed language goes far beyond [previous restrictions] and will effectively prevent women from receiving abortion coverage under the new health exchanges even if they are using their own money to buy insurance,” Harkin said. “I think that is unfortunate and goes too far. So, we will be addressing this issue before [the Senate bill] goes to the floor. My hope is that we can strike the appropriate balance.”

Harkin said his personal preference, and the one he believed all lawmakers had agreed upon prior to the introduction of this amendment, was maintenance of a nearly three-decade agreement that barred use of federal funds for abortion except in cases of incest, rape and life of the mother.

“I think keeping the status quo is the best thing we can do,” he said. “I think it has worked well over the past 20-some years, and I see no reason to change it at this point.”

The Democratic senator from Cumming, who serves as chairman for the Senate Health, Education, Pensions and Labor Committee, did stop short of saying he would vote against a reform bill in the Senate that included language similar to what was in the House version.

“I’m willing to work with my fellow senators, and my refrain is going to be, ‘Don’t upset the apple cart.’ Right now, I believe everyone in our country — except, let’s face it, some fringe groups — like what we have right now. It works well. We have conscience clauses. We provide no federal funding for abortions anywhere except for incest, rape and life of the mother. I think time has shown that these provisions work well. I see no reason to go beyond that now and to let maybe one fringe group or the other upset our whole health care bill because they want to change what has been an accepted law and practice for the past almost 30 years,” he said.

Although every Republican member of the U.S. House voted in favor of the amendment to further restrict abortion access, only one Republican ended up crossing the aisle to vote for the whole reform bill.

“I think that there are a lot of people, and I think you’ll see this in the Senate debate, who want to vote for amendments and will never vote for the bill,” Harkin said, and noted that within the HELP Committee more than 200 Republican amendments were considered, and 161 adopted, yet no Republican member could find a way to vote for the committee’s final bill.

“I think it will become clear that those who are doing these things aren’t just amending the bill to make it better or to try to make it work better. They want to kill the bill. Period. Republicans have said that repeatedly. They want to kill this bill. They want to stop Obama. They want to stop these changes.”

Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach appears in one of a series of Web videos arguing that killing doctors who perform abortions is justified, and that judges should allow the theory to be argued in court.

Leach told the Iowa Independent in an e-mail that he was not expecting to hear a decision from Roeder until Tuesday.

“But right after I got your e-mail he called and confirmed,” Leach said Monday afternoon.

Leach has been advocating to Roeder for months to use the necessity defense, even going so far as to draft a legal brief on his behalf. Roeder is charged with one count of first-degree murder in Tiller’s death and two counts of aggravated assault for threatening two ushers at the church where he shot Tiller on May 31. Roeder has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in January.

Roeder confirmed in an interview with the Associated Press that he murdered Tiller but that it was necessary to stop him from continuing to perform abortions.

By stipulating to the facts of the case, Leach said the judge will have no choice but to allow the jury to hear the necessity defense, which says it is permissible to commit a crime if it stops a greater harm. Legal experts disagree, saying it is unlikely a judge would allow an argument that murder is justified to stop something that is protected by law.

Leach said now that Roeder has made his intentions clear, the public can begin to see how important this case is.

“Now, hopefully, the public can begin to hear about how essential this defense is to the Rule of Law in America,” he said. “Our everyday lives would become insane if the letter of every law were enforced even in situations where that would cause tragedy and death.”

Scott Roeder (mugshot)

In addition to crafting the defense, Leach, who is not an attorney, redrafted a document called “Defensive Action Statement 3^rd Edition,” which states the belief that juries should be allowed to rule on whether Roeder was justified in killing Tiller.

“We further declare that Scott Roeder’s jury, but not his judge, is qualified to weigh the fact question of ‘when life begins,’ which determines whether lethal force is justified to defend the lives of unborn children,” the document states.

The statement is signed by 21 anti-abortion activists, three of whom are serving prison sentences for actions against abortion providers.

Leach publishes a newsletter called “Prayer & Action News,” which advocates the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors. Roeder was a contributor to the newsletter. Following Tiller’s murder, Leach’s association with Roeder garnered attention from the national media.

But Leach’s history of anti-abortion activism goes back more than a decade. In the mid-1990s, Leach’s association with the accused killer of a Florida abortion doctor helped persuade U.S. marshals to guard the Planned Parenthood clinic in Des Moines.

In the January 1996 issue, Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions. Because of this, he was fired from his job as a writer for an Ankeny newspaper.

In 2002, he tried to air videotape of patients entering a local Planned Parenthood clinic on public-access cable TV. Mediacom Communications Corp. decided it would not allow him to air the footage.

Scott Roeder (mugshot)

Leach has been pressing Roeder for months to use the so-called “necessity defense,” claiming even if he is found guilty it would open the door for future use of the legal maneuver to defend actions against abortion providers. In August, Leach drafted a legal brief for Roeder using that argument, which says a crime may be permissible if it is committed in order to avoid a much greater harm.

Leach produced a series of videos explaining why he believes the necessity defense is so important. The videos feature two young girls, surrounded by stuffed animals and pretending to be reporters, interviewing Leach about whether a “pro-lifer can shoot an abortionist and still get a trial of the only contested issue in the case by jury.” Leach’s hope is that by confessing to the all the facts of the case, including the murder itself, the judge will be forced to allow the jury to hear arguments on the necessity defense.

Leach even organized an online auction with the goal of hiring an attorney willing to argue that defense.

Judges across the country have uniformly rejected that argument, saying that since abortion is legal it is protected by law. Margaret Raymond, a law professor at the University of Iowa who previously practiced as a criminal defense attorney, told the Iowa Independent in August that the likelihood of a judge allowing this defense quite small.

“Typically, you don’t get to use that defense in murder cases,” she said at the time. “The problem with a necessity defense in this case is that it is hard to say that something that the law permits is an act that must be prohibited at the cost of death.”

Raymond says the argument could prove problematic for Roeder, since it involves confessing to a crime.

Leach could not be reached for comment.

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.”

Scott Roeder (mugshot)

Leach publishes a newsletter called “Prayer & Action News,” which advocates the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors. The man accused of murdering Tiller, Scott Roeder, was a contributor to the publication. Leach and several other anti-abortion activists want to hire a private attorney in order to pursue a “necessity defense” for Roeder, which in general terms says that it’s OK to commit a crime in order to avoid a much greater harm.

In an exclusive interview with The Iowa Independent in August, Leach said he had drafted a legal brief on Roeder’s behalf using the “necessity defense.” Leach’s argument is that Tiller’s murder stopped an untold number of abortions.

Now Leach is organizing an online auction of items on eBay to raise money, an effort that launched Sunday night. The items include several graphic drawings done by a fellow inmate and signed by Roeder. A spokesman for eBay initially told the Kansas City Star that while the company does not oppose all listings that raise money for legal defense funds, “our policy does not permit listings that benefit someone charged with or convicted of a crime.”

The company has since announced that it will remove the items it deems violate the site’s listing policy, however several items are still available, such as a Bible once owned by an Oregon woman who shot and wounded Tiller in 1993.

Leach did not respond to a request for comment by the Iowa Independent.

Since Tiller’s murder, Leach has garnered a lot of media attention, both for his ties to Roeder and for his controversial statements regarding acts of violence against abortion providers. Shortly after Roeder’s arrest, Leach told The Iowa Independent that when human law conflicts with God’s Laws, “we ought to obey God rather than man.” He later told The Des Moines Register that he is personally no danger to abortion providers because he doesn’t know enough about guns to do any harm.

In the mid-1990s, Leach’s association with the accused killer of a Florida abortion doctor helped persuade U.S. marshals to guard the Planned Parenthood clinic in Des Moines.

In the January 1996 issue of his newsletter, Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions. Because of this, he was fired from his job as a writer for an Ankeny newspaper.

In 2002, he tried to air videotape of patients entering a local Planned Parenthood clinic on public-access cable TV. Mediacom Communications Corp. decided it would not allow him to air the footage.

In particular, according to my notes, he didn’t mention same-sex marriage or abortion at all.

I can’t remember the last time I listened to a Republican politician speak without hearing at least something about those issues, even just as a side-comment.

AP’s Mike Glover even asked Brasntad, point-blank, about conservative anger over the fact that one of his Supreme Court appointees wrote the decision legalizing same-sex marriage in Iowa. Branstad refused to answer the question, and he didn’t even take the opportunity to say how he thinks marriage should be defined.

It seems unlikely that Branstad’s positions on either same-sex marriage or abortion are out of step with the GOP primary electorate’s, but he’s going to have to talk about them a lot if he hopes to convince social conservatives that he’s committed to their values.

Even if Branstad can ultimately (miraculously?) win the primary without tacking to the right on social issues, he should be at least a bit concerned about an independent social conservative candidate skimming votes from him in the general election. Depending on what happens between now and June, that’s a real possibility.

Fairfield resident Mary LaFrancis walks behind the line of individuals defending Dr. LeRoy Carhart's abortion clinic in Bellevue, Neb. Despite her attempts to speak with those on the line and show them an ultrasound picture, she is ignored except for chants of "Welcome. Welcome. This clinic stays open."

“The drive is nothing when you consider the importance of defending Dr. Carhart, this clinic and the women who had scheduled appointments here,” said Des Moines resident David Rosenfeld, 46, who abandoned his local city council campaign for the weekend to come to Bellevue. “I didn’t even think about [the drive]. I just knew I had to be here.”

According to Lt. Chuck Clark of the Bellevue Police Department, those who came to defend the clinic from a protest initially announced by Kansas-based Operation Rescue substantially outnumbered protesters throughout the scheduled two-day event.

“Both sides — the anti-abortion protesters and the pro-choice demonstrators — started about 7:30 [Saturday] morning or so, and probably their numbers peaked between 8 and 10 a.m. At that time there were probably about 150 of the pro-choice people and there were about 50 of the anti-abortion protesters. There were more here throughout the day, as people came and went, but at those peak times the ratio was about three-to-one,” Clark said.

The ratio of Iowans who traveled to Nebraska to be part of the demonstrations was even more lop-sided. Of the roughly 20 Iowans who participated, only one was there to protest the clinic.

Mary LaFrancis, a retired nurse who lives in Fairfield, had been making the 7-hour drive into Wichita, Kan., to protest Tiller’s clinic before the doctor was gunned down in the foyer of his own church.

“Women come from all over for late-term abortions because they are sold lies in their vulnerability and desperation. Just as they explained to me at the clinic, the circumstances make the choice… That’s why I’m here,” said LaFrancis, who was previously arrested during protests at the University of Notre Dame.

LaFrancis, who became an activist following the Terri Schiavo controversy, said that “man proposes and God disposes.”

“Each one of these people should be in that abortion room and see what they are doing and hold that woman’s hand. And, hopefully, some day they will see it differently,” she said. “When we come to understand that the unborn child is a person, a person from the very first cell, and how would — I mean — they should have done this thing to our president. You know? What if their mothers would have done this thing to them? Would they see it differently?”

Des Moines resident David Rosenfeld and ISU graduate student Kendra Malone were among more than 150 individuals from 17 states who traveled to Bellevue, Neb. to defend Dr. LeRoy Carhart and his clinic.

LaFrancis believes that abortion under any circumstance is murder and, she said, that belief justifies her urgency. In Bellevue, she walked behind a line of people defending the clinic with an ultrasound photo that she described as “the truth.” She attempted to show those in the line the photo, which Operation Rescue officials claim was taken that morning of a woman who changed her mind about having an abortion. LaFrancis, like all the protesters who crossed the street in hopes of communicating directly with clinic defenders, was ignored except for a nearly continuous chant, “Welcome. Welcome. This clinic stays open.” Unlike Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, and another protester who refused to identify herself, LaFrancis simply moved back to the other side of the street and didn’t laugh or offer comment to the chant.

Cheryl Sullenger, a senior executive with Operation Rescue who was made infamous by a two-year federal prison sentence in connection with an attempted California clinic bombing and by her name and phone number being on the dashboard of the man charged with murdering Tiller, also walked around the clinic attempting to distribute the ultrasound photo. Sullenger said that the woman wasn’t aware that there would be demonstrators when she made the appointment, and that “pro-abortion people were calling her name over a bullhorn, and that upset her.” The Iowa Independent was on the site well before the woman allegedly arrived on Saturday morning, however, and those affiliated with the clinic or defending the clinic were not seen using or carrying bullhorns.

Despite attempts by The Iowa Independent to make direct contact with the woman who anti-abortion organizers said provided written consent for her ultrasound photo to be used, an interview could not be arranged and the woman’s name was not provided. It remains unclear if the woman was truly an individual who, when presented with an ultrasound, chose to remain pregnant, or if she was party to a publicity stunt meant to bolster the protesters’ meager presence at the clinic.

Clinic officials, who would not say if any patients had missed scheduled appointments that morning, did reveal that at least one woman who had come to the clinic for an abortion turned out not to be pregnant. Whether the woman was simply misinformed about her condition, or if she knowingly scheduled an appointment for an unneeded procedure also remains unclear.

Whatever women’s reasons for entering the clinic on Saturday, Kendra Malone, an Iowa State University graduate student, said she was happy to be there for them.

“We are here to support them, to let them go about their business and so that they can get the care they need,” she said. “We wanted to show them that there are people out in the community that support them and the decisions that they have every right to make.”

Jean Classon, president of Iowa NOW, stands near the intersection of Mission and Lincoln in Bellevue, Neb. to show support for women's rights.

Des Moines resident Jean Classon, president of the Iowa chapter of the National Organization for Women, said those who support a woman’s right to choose abortion are also not the people who are drawing attention to women who make that choice.

“This is what NOW is all about — defending women’s rights. The most basic of those rights is to have an abortion and to have it be safe and legal. I couldn’t imagine not participating in some way,” she said. “But our side of the debate isn’t usually the side that starts these things. It doesn’t make sense to stand outside of clinics if there is nothing to defend against.”

Classon, who helped defend Planned Parenthood clinics in Des Moines from local anti-abortion activist Dave Leach, said that maybe Iowans have become accustomed to the state’s progressive tendencies and are a bit complacent in the battle for women’s rights.

“We need health care reform so badly, and they are trying to tack on all these things to ensure that women are not included in this reform effort,” she said. “It irks me to think that we’ve been fighting this fight for 35 years and it is still going on, and it still seems to be in the same place. I think that people that have grown up since this started — when the Roe v. Wade decision came down — I think that there is maybe a whole generation of people who think that it is a given right and that there is nothing that could ever stop it from being that way. Unfortunately, it could happen — and very easily.”

Malone and Rosenfeld agree, insisting that there can be no compromise or common ground found between those who believe a woman should have ultimate control of her own health decisions and those who believe women should not.

“The government should have nothing to do with what happens between an individual and his/her health care provider — be that abortion, reproductive health services or any aspect of physical and mental health,” Malone said. “There is no compromise because if you draw one little line you can constantly be taking way and backing up until we have nothing again.”

Rosenfeld, who was raised by parents who were active in the women’s and civil rights movements, views the very concept of common ground as dangerous.

“This is something that President Obama has raised and that others have raised and I think it emboldens [opponents of women's rights]. The key thing is why abortion should be treated differently than other medical procedures that you could get benefits for or financial aid for. It is one of the many erosions of this right since it was won. So, the question isn’t about where to find common ground, but how to ensure that this is a right that all women have access to,” he said.

While this battle is a win for the clinic defenders — in terms of both numbers on the ground and contributions raised through the pledge-a-picket program, activists on both sides of the issue understand that the war is far from over.

U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, listens to question at a town hall forum in Indianola.

Health care dominated Latham’s discussion with nearly 200 people at the Warren County Administration Building just south of Des Moines, and while he was quick to point out his opposition to many of the ideas being floated to fix the nation’s health care system, he was equally quick to dismiss untrue claims being spouted of late by reform opponents.

Despite the fact that many of his fellow Republicans say otherwise, including fellow Iowan and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, Latham said so-called “death panels” are not in the bill. The provision in question deals with funding for voluntary end-of-life planning, he said.

You also won’t find any mention of abortion, he said. An advertising campaign paid for by anti-abortion groups says a lack of specifics on abortion in the bill will end with taxpayer dollars being spent on abortions.

The bill that has been passed by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee stipulates that the only abortion services that could be paid for with government funds would be those in which the mother’s life was endangered or in cases of rape or incest.

“There is nothing in the bill one way or another,” Latham said, later adding that while there have been amendments in committee that would specifically prohibit it, those were voted down.

In contrast to the civil discourse inside the town hall meeting was this poster, taped to the side of a truck parked just outside.

There is no question something has to be done to fix America’s health care system, Latham said, because there are too many people without access to quality health insurance.

But because any health care reform will touch the lives of every citizen, it should not be “rushed through in the middle of the night” without giving lawmakers and the American people a chance to weigh its ramifications, he said.

He opposes any government-run option, but he does think there is a lot of room for improvement.

“We’ve got to step back and work together,” Latham said, later adding: “We should be careful when we label insurance companies as ‘bad guys.’ Des Moines is the second-largest insurance city in the country. We’re talking about Iowans here.”

Latham’s solution to health care would include setting a permanent floor for Medicare payments to eliminate geographic disparity for doctors in rural states; allowing small businesses to pool together across state lines to negotiate affordable health insurance with private providers; and allowing individuals to fully deduct the cost of insurance from their taxes, regardless of whether coverage is through an employer.

“We have got to have competition in the marketplace,” he said. “And there are a lot of things we can do to make things better.”

Latham also discussed nonprofit health care cooperatives, an idea making the rounds as a possible alternative to a new government insurance plans. Until he sees how they will be structured, Latham said he cannot give an informed opinion or say whether he would vote for or against bills that supported the idea. But he did say he is not comfortable with the idea of the government providing funding for the co-ops.

Cooperatives, which can be defined as private, nonprofit, consumer-owned providers of health care, have already been attempted in Iowa with no success. As the New York Times pointed out Tuesday, Iowa adopted a law to encourage the development of health care co-ops in the 1990s. However, the extreme competitive advantage insurance companies like Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield hold in the Midwest killed the only co-op ever created in Iowa, and to this day no one has established another.

There was very little of the contentiousness that lawmakers faced in other states, as the audience was polite and respectful. That is, until the final question, asked by a woman who said she has had problems holding down a job and maintaining insurance coverage because of chronic illnesses. Before she finished her question, several audience members shouted her down, with one telling her to “Shut up, get a trade and get a job.”

Latham, who had already announced that the forum was over, left after the yelling without addressing either party.

Dan Cesar, a registered Republican who in 2008 garnered 1,600 votes in HD90 as a member of the Fourth of July Party, said he believes his district is waiting for a true conservative to emerge, and Republican Stephen Burgmeier is not that person. He is running again without the official endorsement of either major political party.

“Steve and I have been personal friends for 20 years. This is not about Steve and Dan,” Cesar said in an interview with controversial radio host Steve Deace on Friday. “This is about how you phrase your campaign. He has avoided the words pro-life in everything he says. He’s avoided the fact that he’s a Catholic and belongs to a faith community. I take exception to that. His handlers are telling him to do that.”

The race for HD90 is shaping up to be a contentious battle for the seat vacated by Democratic Rep. John Whitaker. The Iowa Democratic Party and Republican Party of Iowa have promised heavy investments in the rural district in the southeastern tip of the state, and several special interest groups are already involved.

Some Republicans are privately voicing concern that Cesar will play the role of the spoiler, siphoning off just enough social conservative voters to tip the election to Hanson. Cesar said if Republicans would simply embrace the pro-life movement and stop avoiding it, he wouldn’t have to run.

“The party told me they don’t want to focus on pro-life,” he said. “So I either run again as a third party or shut up. Shut up and let a coward run as a Democrat and someone I consider a sellout run as a Republican. I stood up and said I will run.”

Cesar then echoed a criticism voiced in new Web ad paid for by the Iowa Democratic Party, pointing out that as a member of the Jefferson County Board of Supervisors Burgmeier voted five times to raise taxes on Jefferson County residents and four times to increase his own pay.

“He’s the best friend the county bureaucracy has ever had,” Cesar said.

Burgmeier and Hanson will participate in a forum hosted by the Fairfield Area Chamber of Commerce and Fairfield Economic Development Association at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center’s Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts. Cesar and the independent candidate in the race, Douglas William Philips, have not been invited to participate.

UPDATE: In the comment section, Brent Willett of the Fairfield Area Chamber of Commerce said Philips and Cesar have officially been invited to participate in the Aug. 25 forum.

Scott Roeder (mugshot)

Dave Leach publishes a newsletter called “Prayer & Action News,” which advocates the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors. The man accused of murdering Tiller, Scott Roeder, was a contributor to the publication.

In an interview with The Iowa Independent, Leach said he has spoken with Roeder several times since his arrest, including twice on Thursday to discuss legal strategy. Despite the fact that Leach is not an attorney, he has prepared a legal brief he believes will get Roeder acquitted, and “Scott is willing to go along,” he said.

Leach sent a copy of the brief to Roeder’s attorney but has not gotten a response.

Leach has proposed that Roeder stipulate that the facts alleged in the criminal complaint against him are true in order to focus the case on the so-called “necessity defense.” Roeder is accused of shooting Tiller in the foyer of his Wichita church on May 31 in order to stop him from performing abortions.

The 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.

“In probably all previous cases, the dog-and-pony show proceeded, the prosecutor bringing in his witnesses to prove what nobody seriously contests,” Leach said. “That way there is an appearance of a right to trial by jury. The jury gets to weigh the facts, which the defendant does not contest. But I have proposed to Scott that he stipulate to the alleged facts, making the dog-and-pony show irrelevant to any additional information the jury needs to make its determination, and dramatically isolating the necessity defense as the sole contested issue of the case.”

In the past, judges have thrown out “necessity defense” arguments regarding crimes committed to stop abortion because abortion is legal, and therefore protected by the law.

“Legally protecting a harm does not render it harmless,” Leach said. “The necessity defense requires reasonable people to judge whether a harm is in fact harmless, regardless of how courts or lawmakers feel about it.”

If the decision is given over to a jury, Roeder will go free, he said.

Margaret Raymond, a law professor at the University of Iowa who previously practiced as a criminal defense attorney, has not read Leach’s legal brief but said the likelihood that a judge will allow a jury to hear an argument of “necessity defense” in a case like this is quite small.

“Typically, you don’t get to use that defense in murder cases,” she said. “The problem with a necessity defense in this case is that it is hard to say that something that the law permits is an act that must be prohibited at the cost of death.”

Juries are only permitted to hear claims that fit within legal parameters. If the law permits the claim, the facts surrounding the claim would go to the jury to decide.

“The jury doesn’t get to hear a claim that isn’t legally plausible,” Raymond said. “If there is no legal basis for the claim, then it cannot go to the jury. Juries are not supposed to decide things outside of the law. They get to decide fact within the law.”

The necessity defense, in general terms, says that it is OK to commit a crime in order to avoid a much greater harm, she said. For instance, a person with a suspended drivers license could drive a person to the hospital if it meant saving their life.

“The question would be whether the necessity defense would permit somebody to claim that something that is legally protected created a necessity to justify homicide,” Raymond said, adding: “My guess is that this is not going to be a strong defense. The irony is that the first thing he is asking him to do in order to use a necessity defense is admit he committed the crime. That is not necessarily something a criminal defendant wants some third party going around announcing.”

Even if the judge allows this defense to go forward, Roeder may still go to prison, Leach said. But he believes it would set a legal precedent allowing those who block the entrances of abortion clinics and “perhaps even building burners” to use that defense in the future, Leach said.

“I, personally, would prefer a bloodless way to stop bloody abortion. But it isn’t up to me,” he said, adding: “So I suppose the correct answer would be, yes, lovers of abortion have great reason to fear that they will suffer the same violence they have voted to inflict upon 50 million American unborn. But not from me.”

Leach is not the only anti-abortion activist to contact Roeder in prison. The Wichita Eagle reports that he has been visited by “a who’s who of anti-abortion militants,” a fact that has worried abortion-rights advocates.

Fear of a possible conspiracy to commit more acts of violence against abortion providers has led to a federal investigation, and the FBI has questioned several of Roeder’s visitors. Leach said the FBI has not contacted him.

He has been in contact with other anti-abortion activists around the country to share his legal brief, Leach said. So far, only 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, has given him feedback.

This is not Leach’s first brush with the spotlight. Following Tiller’s assassination, Leach was prominently featured by national news media due to his previous ties with Roeder.

In the mid-1990s, Leach’s association with the accused killer of a Florida abortion doctor helped persuade U.S. marshals to guard the Planned Parenthood clinic in Des Moines.

In the January 1996 issue, Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions. Because of this, he was fired from his job as a writer for an Ankeny newspaper.

In 2002, he tried to air videotape of patients entering a local Planned Parenthood clinic on public-access cable TV. Mediacom Communications Corp. decided it would not allow him to air the footage.