Radical right-wing anti-choice activist Seth Gruber recently spoke at Calvary Tucson Church, where he argued that women who have abortions should face the death penalty.
Gruber, founder of the White Rose Resistance, has consistently been a leading voice among anti-choice activists demanding prosecution for women who obtain abortions and made the case during his recent conversation with Calvary Tuscon pastor Robert Furrow that potential penalties for doing so should include the death penalty.
Furrow declared that the only way to completely end abortion is to outlaw the practice and to prosecute women who have them but dismissed as "hypothetical" claims that women would be imprisoned as a result.
Gruber, for his part, made no such effort to downplay the ramifications of this position.
"You want to know what the role of the state is according to Paul in Romans?" Gruber said. "They're to be a terror to those who do evil. Do you know that's in Romans 13? What's the role of the state? To be a terror to those who do evil. Basically to be a deterrent."
"Paul says the state does not bear the sword in vain," he continued. "So in other words, here's a firing squad—to apply it to the 21st century, or an electric chair; in Paul's era, it was a sword—and the state is going to kill you if you murder innocent people. So there's this deterrent that floats up in the ether, and a lot of people never have to endure the punishment of that deterrent being applied because just the fact that the deterrent floats there up in the ether stops most people from doing those things."
"As a pro-life leader, I say make the death penalty great again," Gruber declared. "The death penalty is a recognition of the sanctity of life, because it's saying what you did was so heinous and evil in murdering an innocent that you've actually rescinded your right to live. We don't do the ceremonial laws in the Old Testament anymore, but the moral law is still there. Live by the sword, die by the sword, tooth for tooth, eye for eye; that kind of stuff still stands."