Notorious anti-abortion activist Randall Terry announced to supporters this week that he has bought a church and school campus in Memphis, Tennessee, to start “a training academy to train pro-life warriors in activism, politics, running for office, media production, and more.”
Terry is calling his new project “Rescue Resurrection,” a nod to Operation Rescue, a group he founded and led for a while and later battled in court.
When abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in 2009 while attending church after a long campaign targeting him, Terry responded by calling Tiller a mass murderer, “every bit as evil as Nazi war criminals,” who should have been tried and executed. Terry said Tiller “reaped what he sowed.”
Terry has called for making all forms of birth control illegal and has insisted, “A woman has to go to jail if she kills her baby.”
Terry was the 2024 presidential nominee of the far-right Christian nationalist Constitution Party. He used his candidacy to force television stations to air graphic anti-abortion ads, with fundraising help from Republicans who figured, as Terry assured them, that his ads would help Trump. He said part of his mission was to “destroy the Democrat Party.”
Terry is also stridently anti-LGBTQ. He is among the religious-right figures who have backed Russia’s anti-gay laws. In 2019, he declared that Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign was a sign of God’s judgment on the country. The Constitution Party opposes marriage equality and believes states should be allowed to criminalize “offensive sexual behavior.”
