It takes a special kind of cluelessness for an elected official to post a fire graphic on Facebook under an article about a Casper abortion clinic opening after someone tried to burn it down.
Opinion
That’s the most generous reason for such baffling action I can offer. A much more disturbing explanation is that it’s a menacing call from the mayor for more violence in his city.
Bruce Knell, Casper’s anti-abortion mayor, recently denied the latter. It wasn’t an endorsement of arson, he said. Rather, it was a reminder to his neighbors and constituents that they are going to hell “for eternity.”
“By killing babies, you’re opening yourself up for a chance to go to hell,” Knell told the Casper Star-Tribune. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me saying that whatsoever.”
Wellspring Health Access Clinic in Casper is one of six plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state of Wyoming’s latest abortion ban that has resulted in the law being temporarily on hold. A trial is scheduled for later this year.
Last summer the clinic planned to become the state’s second practice providing abortions, along with the well-established Women’s Health and Care Clinic in Jackson, but in May an arsonist torched the interior before the building was completed. The estimated damage was $290,000.
Unbelievably, Knell said he never thought that the fire gif he posted could be tied to the widely publicized arson case, which resulted in the arrest of 22-year-old Lorna Roxanne Green of Casper, who is being tried in federal court. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
“Not at all, the thought never entered my mind,” Knell said. “… I typed in ‘hell fire’ and literally picked [an image].”
I don’t know how the campfire gif Knell posted is supposed to substitute for the eternal damnation he thinks awaits pro-choice Wyomingites, but he claimed that’s what he wanted to convey. Knell immediately contradicted himself when he added, “I don’t condemn them for it. That’s between them and God.”
“That the mayor of the very city in which our clinic was burned down would share such an incendiary and violent post, on the very day that we finally announced we’re open to patients, is extremely disappointing and disheartening,” Wellspring President and founder Julie Burkhart told the Star-Tribune. “Anti-abortion violence is real and ongoing, and for the mayor of Casper to trivialize that, let alone tactically endorse it, is unconscionable.”
Burkhart vowed that Wellspring “will not be bullied out of our mission, no matter by whom.”
Knell countered that for a Christian man, to say nothing about abortion is “inappropriate.” But Knell wants us to know he has love in his heart for the sinners: “We still have to love each other, and we still have to take care of each other and listen to each other.”
Listen, maybe, but make no mistake, there is no two-sided conversation between the mayor and his constituents; it’s his way or hell. “I can promise you in conservative Wyoming, there are more people who share my view,” the mayor told the Star-Tribune.
Actually, the data suggest Knell’s wrong about that too. In 1992, Wyoming voters overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. In 2012, voters amended the Wyoming Constitution to enshrine that “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”
Last October a University of Wyoming poll found 36% of respondents consider abortion a matter of personal choice, and a like percentage said abortion should be allowed in cases of incest, rape, and if the life of the mother is in danger. Only 7% said there should be a total abortion ban.
Wellspring will offer both surgical and medication abortions, making it the only surgical abortion provider in the state. It will also provide women’s healthcare, OB-GYN services, family planning, and gender-affirming healthcare.
The clinic is a godsend to women in central and eastern Wyoming. Its relative proximity to Wyoming’s population centers means women will be able to access care without the days of travel, lodging and time away from work and family that are often currently required.
Knell isn’t the only Wyoming politician who can’t stand the idea of Wellspring finally opening. It’s been especially galling for legislators who spearheaded the 2022 “trigger law” that banned abortion in Wyoming as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
That ban was halted by litigation immediately filed by the Jackson and Wellspring clinics and four other plaintiffs. More than nine months before that case went to trial, though, the Legislature decided to pass a different, even more restrictive, abortion ban, the “Life Is a Human Right Act,” along with the nation’s first ban specific to medication abortions.
The near total new ban came partly from grandstanding lawmakers trying to establish their right-of-Ghengis-Khan pedigree and partly from a recognition that the original ban probably wasn’t going to pass the constitution sniff test. Trying to sidestep the 2012 constitutional amendment and make the new ban more legally defensible, its authors included language declaring “abortion isn’t healthcare.”
Ninth District Court Judge Melissa Owens has already made short work of that shoddy bit of lawmaking. “The Court cannot find that a procedure that requires medical expertise, the prescription of medications and drugs, the use of reasonable medical judgment, which must also include medical opinions on the health of the pregnant woman and the fetus, is not a health care procedure,” she wrote in explaining her decision to grant a restraining order against the ban.
The new law also declares that “life begins at conception,” a scientifically refuted belief which plaintiffs note is distinct to certain Christian denominations, but not shared by many Christians, Jews or Muslims.
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe was not based on any view about if and when a fetus is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth.
Knell said he doesn’t plan to run for re-election after his city council term expires in 2025. His elected position is irrelevant anyway, he naively maintains. He may be mayor, the argument goes, but he’s also a private citizen, and as such he need not consider the consequences of exercising his First Amendment right to free speech.
That’s a dangerous and increasingly popular position in far-right circles.
When public officials like Knell call pro-choice advocates murderers or baby killers and condemn them to hell they are stoking rage and implicitly condoning vigilantism. That rage can be transformed into crimes like arson and murder.
Burkhart knows first-hand how community leaders’ attitudes can shape public opinion. “I’ve lived and experienced the real-world costs of this kind of anti-abortion rhetoric,” Burkhart wrote in a statement. “Fourteen years ago, after years of harassment, my former boss, Dr. George Tiller, was assassinated in church.”
Burkhart picked up Tiller’s mantle as an abortion provider, and led the effort to reopen Tiller’s Wichita, Kansas clinic and build new ones in Oklahoma, Washington state, and most recently in Wyoming.
In a 2019 article in The Guardian, Burkhart noted how the anti-abortion movement changed when former President Donald Trump took up the attack. “Anti-choice folks don’t have to march in the streets any more and blockade clinics,” she said. “They have worked their way into our state legislatures, Congress, courtrooms, and our White House.”
Burkhart told the British publication Trump lacks “the religious zeal” that drives many extremists. “[But] Trump could definitely trigger the person who thinks, ‘I’ve got to take matters into my own hands,’” she said. “Language has meaning. Words are important.”
Last Saturday, Trump lied to an Iowa evangelical group, claiming Democratic politicians support the practice of “even executing babies after birth.”
Some far-right politicians are guilty of not choosing their words about abortion wisely. Others deliberately employ rhetoric designed to outrage.
I don’t know which camp Knell belongs to, but I do know he’s playing with fire.
There are some really good things written in the embellished oral history of the Jewish People (aka bible) and one of them is Judge not, lest ye be judged. One sin, like judging others is just as bad as another, but alas Knell is a typical hypocrite even as he says he loves all others.
The Founders knew that letting hypocrites that recite the bible when justifying legislation was a path toward societal destruction as has so often happened in the past. Those expressing the belief the Constitution gives them the right to manage your womb have clearly not read it correctly and are allowing their sinful judgement to control others. If I have my knowledge of Jesus correctly he called people like Knell Pharisees and had no use for those whom were so obtuse.
Keeping stone age beliefs away from our Constitution should be the priority of all elected officials but our electorate seems to like pharisees like Knell.
All of this discussion of when it is acceptable to end an innocent human life is irrelevant, it either is or it isn’t. Ultimately the final repercussion of good or bad will not be made on this earth. It would be interesting to be able to see what the mother’s situation was for Columbus, Jonas Salk, etc. prior to their births. We know Mary and Joseph were “betrothed”.
Thanks Kerry for your report. The mayor’s behavior is deplorable. Thank God that women still have reproductive health options in Wyoming, and my prayers go out to the Wellspring staff for their courage .
Good column, Kerry Drake. I wonder if the Mayor knows about Wyoming Statute § 6-1-201 which, in pertinent part, reads: “(a) A person who knowingly … encourages … a felony to be committed, is an accessory before the fact … (b) An accessory before the fact: … (iii) upon conviction, is subject to the same punishment and penalties as are prescribed by law for the punishment of the principal.”
Hmmm. Maggie Mullen’s column “Lawmakers to examine legislative ethics, misconduct rules” is a great segue to this incident involving Mayor Bruce Knell and his own “conduct” on social media. Was Knell’s post incendiary and encouraging illegal behavior. Knell says no. Perhaps he is correct, but his explanation to the Star-Tribune suggests a very dark undercurrent which could appeal to the apocalyptic and eschatological (folks living and believing in the most dire interpretations of the Book of Revelations which include Armageddon, Rapture, and the necessity to “cleanse” the earth of sin and evil in preparation for the Second Coming) wing of the alt-right evangelical movement. In short, what Knell has said, in his post and his interview could easily invite an individual to cause harm in the name of … .
Knell represents Ward 1 in Casper, not WY – which probably has even a higher pro-choice percentage among its residents than the over-all state. I think he realized that this time no amount of cash thrown at a bunch of billboards through the Ward was gonna get him reelected.
The orthodox Jewish belief, not refuted by Jesus, is that you do not have a human being until after birth. The sperm and egg are forms of human life. Their uniting creates another form of human life but not a human being. The misnamed parable of the pro-human life Samaritan and Jesus’ teaching about the rescue of the mule from the water fountain to keep the life supporting water from pollution are examples of focusing on the well being of human beings. It was a mid-19th Century Papal ruling that claimed conception created a human being which teaching was adopted mid-20th Century by conservative Evangelicals and gradually by many others.
Terry – Read Exodus 21:22-25. Regardless of what some orthodox Jews believe, the Bible clearly conveys that a human life is present within the womb, and the penalty for causing the death of the child is clearly stated. Jesus stood firmly on scripture, he was the author.
The passage of “eye for an eye” does not reference the miscarriage but “if she is seriously injured” that follows a reference to “if SHE isn’t badly hurt”
Terry Tim Solon
The passage references a woman with CHILD. If any harm beyond premature birth results, the punishment matches the injury, up to a life for life. The Word of God is clear for those with the desire to read and understand.
Psalms 139:13 makes it clear God knew us in our mother’s womb.
The topic of children, born or unborn, and their full worth equal to that of you and I is not a grey area. This is an issue of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong
When it comes to interpreting the Jewish scriptures, I think the practitioners of the religion are the ones best equipped to do so, not a Christian.
“Jesus stood firmly on scripture, he was the author.”
No he wasn’t. It doesn’t matter what your “faith” tells you. Your bible was written hundreds of years after a guy named jesus died.
You are free to believe what you like, but you can’t expect everyone else to be as gullible as you and the rest of the religious minority.
Chuck – Scripture is God breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Jesus was God in the flesh, on this planet to offer redemption to anyone who is willing to receive it.
Gullible is rejecting the truth when you have the intellect and intelligence to know it. Reasoning and consciousness that we possess are clearly not an accident, but some falsely claim they are.
Right and wrong are completely independent of whether you represent the majority or minority
There are thousands of religions on this planet. Why do the self proclaimed “christians” claim their religion is the correct one?
Freedom of religion is also freedom FROM religion. Not everyone subscribes to your version of fairy tales. It’s selfish to think otherwise.
Carson, Jesus was most certainly NOT the author of the Bible.
I find it note worthy that Knell seems more concerned about his own well being, possibly going to hell, than about the well being of the baby.