Fr. Tom Euteneuer Recounts Violent Acts of Pro-Abortion Radicals: From Being Splattered with Abortion Blood to Dog Head Thrown into Church

By Frank Walker, Pewsitter
June 19, 2009 - Pro-life leaders world-wide, having chosen to stand effectively against a violent and powerful industry, become targets for hostility. This week I asked Fr. Tom Euteneuer, of Human Life International, to describe what he and his organization have encountered.

Question: As an outspoken visible pro-life advocate, you work against the goals of pro-abortion politics and the abortion industry. In what ways have you been threatened, either written or verbally, with physical harm?

Fr. Euteneuer: In the days when I was more actively doing sidewalk counseling, I was threatened with death twice by abortion clinic workers, threatened with physical harm numerous times by boyfriends and others who accompanied women to the clinic and several times I was assaulted by people in vehicles trying to run me over. The verbal harassment is too numerous and gross to recount, especially when directed against a man of the cloth.


Question: What forms of harassment have you encountered in your work and travels, and which
groups or organizations seem to be sources of intimidation?

Fr. Euteneuer: There has been less harassment in my work with HLI given that I remain mostly in pro-life circles and focus on training and motivating. The anti-lifers are usually in their comfortable air-conditioned offices plotting the destruction of more children and do not harass us too much both because they are cowards and because they don’t need to have direct contact with us.

Several members of our international network who have direct contact with the abortion lobby in their countries do encounter problems however:

-In Kenya an abortionist tried to poison our director;
-In Mexico, the HLI director found a knife covered with red blood-like liquid stuck in his couch with a message to stay out of abortion;
-In Austria the anti-lifers have sued our affiliate (without success) and the city government of Vienna created special laws against them;
-In the Philippines there are attacks against the character of our pro-life people and one parliamentarian called for the deportation of HLI’s Dr. Brian Clowes when he did a speaking tour there;
-In Ecuador our affiliate leader was threatened with death, satanic graffiti was put on the door of a church against us, the severed head of a dog was thrown into a church with a desecrated Sacred Host in its mouth.

Question: What specific security steps must you take in order to protect yourself from these attacks?

Fr. Euteneuer: Prayer.


Question: In addition, have you learned of threats or violence to people close to you or in your family?

Fr. Euteneuer: There has only been intimidation of family members like my father who stands in front of the local Planned Parenthood. It is regular fare: he has insults hurled at him and bottles thrown from cars.


Question: How have these instances of intimidation and violence changed over the years?

Fr. Euteneuer: The violence and intimidation seems to change as political fortunes change: it tends to go from personal to institutional. For example, during the Clinton years the FACE Act was passed to shut down Operation Rescue-type protests; we can expect the same and worse in the Obama Administration. The physical assaults and intimidations will likely get worse also as the forces of death are emboldened by radical laws and policies.


Question: Have threats, intimidation or violent harassment ever come in an open or official capacity?

Fr. Euteneuer: HLI was denied official status at the UN in the late ‘90s due to its strong stance on the life issues. The only other example that I can think of in my case is when the Minister of Health in Zimbabwe officially vetoed my talk to a nursing school in Harare. The incident of Dr. Brian Clowes in the Philippines mentioned above is another example. Other than open criticism in the media, we are more of a grass-roots training and educational organization and under the radar screen of most governments.


Question: Finally, has there been an increase in irrational behavior including threats and violence?

Fr. Euteneuer: The behaviors have always been irrational, but the new element seems to be an occult element that I believe we will see more in the future. “Death-scorts” seem to be more prone to curse and "pray" against pro-lifers probably due to so many of them being involved in New Age and witchcraft. Some of it is overt and some not. The abortion clinic owner in Rockford, IL periodically comes out of his place dressed in a devil outfit, for example. He also puts blasphemous images of Jesus and religion in the window of the clinic. One abortionist in FL some years ago shook blood from his abortion instruments on the pro-lifers after a morning of killing. We will see much more of this in time.