by Mick Hunt

If you’re quiet and listen, you might hear their voices.

When I looked across the arena at the Roman Coliseum during a torrid August afternoon in 2009, I tried to imagine the scenes of death from so many centuries ago. I tried to hear the echoes of blades on shields and the mobs cheering as blood flowed into the sand.

I imagine people feel the same somber wonder and horror when they visit other certain historical sites around the world, death camp sites such as Dachau, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen, and the transport camp, Terezin.

At least two such tragic historical sites are located within Asheville, and the city is about to add another to its recommended tours.

One: The corner of 900 Hendersonville Road is now only a parking lot for a spiffy office building, but during the ‘80’s and into the early ‘90s, they aborted pre-natal children there in a low, squat building. Thousands of pre-natal children died in this sleazy, sordid place. The state of North Carolina tore it down to widen the road, and the business moved to the edge of Biltmore Village.

“Birds sang, the sun shone, flowers grew, and prayers rose up, but the laws of nature were not violated.”

Two: Train tracks surrounded the new building that was located in an industrial zoned area. It featured a narrow waiting room on steel girders spanning a dirty, limpid creek. Weeds grew up the walls of the building, and on one side, old roofing material made the siding. Steel bars guarded broken window. The abortionists drove in from Tennessee and South Carolina. It was a back alley abortion mill with a sign hanging in the front alley.

On a Saturday afternoon in November, 1998, I showed up as usual with my “Let Your Baby Live. We Will Help!” sign, but no one else came. No other pro-life people, no abortion workers, and no victims. I was alone. A sheet of white paper had been taped to the front window. For the first time ever, I walked onto the property and to the front porch. The note said the place had closed permanently.

I remember months later seeing a monster garbage truck parked in front, rocking back and forth. An industrial shredder on wheels. A few years later another business moved into the building, a non-profit called Save the Children. That’s right. I stopped once just to look around inside, and I asked the people there a few questions. I wanted to, but didn’t ask if they ever heard the echoes of screaming children. Sometime later, the owner tore the building down, leaving rubble, and piles of weed-covered earth, now in view of nearby spiffy office buildings.

Three: Apparently, the abortion center on Asheville’s Orange Street is closing now. A volunteer escort recently said so in an article titled “The Last Shift” that appeared June 15 in an online publication called The Asheville Blade. So, by the end of this month we’ll have another historical site of sorrow and death to add to the itinerary. Maybe “Save the Children” will buy the building and move in. Maybe someday this terrible place will end up like all the others, in rubble and fading memories.

My late acquaintance, Kentucky poet laureate James Still and I once ate lunch together nearly every day. I could never find his source, and I may not have the quote down perfectly, but he one day he said, “Birds sang, the sun shone, flowers grew, and prayers rose up, but the laws of nature were not violated.” He was talking about Dachau, which I know he visited. Maybe the quote was his own, a fragment of an incomplete poem.

My friends and I spent many, many hours on the sidewalk in front of Femcare–when thousands of people ignored, dismissed, ridiculed, or cursed our offers of help and appeals to moms and dads to let their babies live. Thousands of mothers carried their children passed us into the doors to be killed.

An independent observer watching the passers-by might suppose the middle finger to be an international sign for “choice.” But many people expressed support, too, as they walked or drove by. Our presence was always, usually, more a quiet vigil than a protest. I’ve watched and listened to starlings, crows, doves, pigeons, and hawks. Last Saturday, a noisy mocking bird entertained and annoyed us with his crazy song list, more of cacophony than symphony.

Prayers rose up. But not enough prayer and not enough people praying. On occasion a mother changed her mind and left with her baby alive.

Femcare is closing. A better name for it is Femkill. Though, what you call it is irrelevant now because it’s closing. What’s important is the killing probably is moving to another place—to a building on McDowell Street owned and operated by Planned Parenthood.

North Carolina law says it’s a felony to “destroy” “unborn children” unless the act is done by a licensed physician “in a hospital or clinic certified by the Department of Health and Human Services to be a suitable facility for the performance of abortions.” We often bring posters to the sidewalk depicting a 10 week child who was destroyed by abortion. This is what Planned Parenthood intends to do in its new building. It’s bloody, violent, and evil. There is no suitable facility for this.

So, are we nostalgic about our upcoming last shift at Femcare? Are we jubilant? No. Just feeling sadness and resignation. We’ll be shifting to McDowell Street, if necessary. Unique human beings, persons in embryonic or fetal form, will be destroyed in that place. And someday even it will be a ruined historical site where, if you’re quiet and listen, you might hear their voices.

Echoing in your conscience.

Mick Hunt is an FAB contributor.  He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the southeast and elsewhere.  This article is a response to “The Last Shift,” which was written by an abortion escort. Read the story here.

FemKill Fundraiser

Abortion industry fundraising events are a great venues for pro-life activism.  Here is a story from Mick Hunt of Life Advocates in Asheville, NC, describing his work at a Femcare (abortion clinic) fundraiser.  You can read the complete story and see more photos on his blog (Part 1 here and Part 2 here).  Mick is a faithful CBR volunteer and uses CBR Choice signs in his work in North Carolina, as seen in the photo at right.

FemKill Fundraiser
by Meredith Hunt, Life Advocates

Yesterday evening, fourteen of us stood in front of the entrance of the Millroom to greet financial donors of the Asheville business that aborts prenatal children on Orange Street.

Amy Renigar, Executive Director of Girls on the Run of WNC (GOTR) attended the fundraiser.  The GOTR website says, “Amy Renigar joined the GOTR team in June 2012 because of her interest public health and passion for creating a world where all girls (and women) are empowered to become their best selves.”  Ann Pfaff, an outspoken abortion supporter, is on their Board of Directors.  This organization runs programs in elementary schools all over the region, including at Veritas Christian Academy.  Go to it’s website to learn of its numerous local sponsors, many of whom would not wish to be connected with the violent deaths of prenatal children.  Groups such as Rotary Club of Asheville, Earth Fare, Diamond Brand Outdoors, and so on.

City Councilman Gordon Smith passed by me with an acknowledgement, “How are you, Meredith?”  I nodded.  Then he turned back and said with a grin, “You have raised so much money for them in there.”  Something like that …  Money.  This got me thinking.  The people at this event were pretty committed and not likely to be influenced.

But not everyone is this way.  Many people still have a functioning conscience when it comes to abortion.  Or at least they can have a normal reaction.  When we were winding down, I took Eric and Starla with me around the block to the other side of the building, which is the front of Asheville Pizza and Brewing, the business that owns the Millroom, which was either rented or donated for the Femcare fundraiser.  Asheville Pizza has an outdoor dining patio that is right next to the sidewalk and last night it was full of people eating.

We had faced the large posters of a mangled, bloody 10 week pre-born child toward the customers no more than two or three seconds before we had a diner in our face, confronting us.   None of the Femcare supporters acted like this.  People are more upset over an impediment to their appetite then they are about children being slaughtered and about a fundraiser for such atrocities in the same building in which they are filling their stomachs.  They demand that we behave decently when this horrible outrage goes on day after day, year after year (out of sight, out of mind).  But at least they react.  One of the managers called the police and when an officer came we chatted a few minutes.  I wonder how much money we could raise for Asheville Pizza and Brewing.  It would be a new twist to “Brew and View.”

Notorious celebrity Cecil Bothwell’s contribution to dialog was to practically shout that one of the protestors should “repent of your self righteousness!”  I wonder if he can explain “self-righteous” in a way that doesn’t include his own attitude?  This accusation dodges talking about what’s really right or wrong.