A group of Christians commissioned a billboard in Texas calling for citizens to ignore Roe v. Wade. One day later, however, the display was removed because nearby landowners received death threats.
The billboard — which was paid for by Abolish Abortion Texas and was located in a rural area outside the city of Boyd — contained only the words “62 million dead and counting” and “IgnoreRoe.com.” The website explains that because “the Supreme Court of the United States has ignored the God-given rights of unborn children since Roe vs. Wade was passed in 1973,” Texas has a moral duty to ignore the Court’s opinion.
A press release from Abolish Abortion Texas explains that “complaints to the landowner (who has a business on the site), along with death threats, forced the advertising company to remove the billboard.”
“It is a sign of how intolerant Texas has become,” commented First Baptist Church of Briar evangelism pastor Jon Speed in the release. “There are no graphic images on the billboard, not even a strong statement. It’s just a website that seeks to abolish abortion in Texas. The fact that this happened in rural Texas is not only surprising in a self-professed pro-life state, it indicates how weak that commitment is.”
In a brief video describing the incident, Speed — who made national news two years ago for shuttering his New York bookstore in protest of the state’s aggressive abortion laws — explained that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) recently signed a “trigger bill” that would end abortion in Texas only if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade. However, Speed expressed doubt that politicians — and citizens — would follow through on the promise.
“The conservative nature of Texas is really an illusion when you can have people that call in and make those kinds of complaints and have a billboard taken down,” he commented. “Don’t be deceived by big splashes in the media about what Texas is going to say they’re going to do, because if you can’t even get this to stand in Texas, I don’t believe it.”
IgnoreRoe.com, therefore, encourages Texans to pursue the immediate — rather than incremental — abolition of abortion.
“Legislation or anything else that attempts to comply with Roe v. Wade (or its progeny) is wrong. Tyranny and evil must be resisted, not legitimized,” says the site. “Abolitionists believe that continuing to legitimize and bow down to judicial tyranny is the wrong way to try to end abortion. The federal courts are not the solution to the problem; the federal courts are the problem.”