Female In Flames
Ignored
(Christian Gallery News Service, November 11, 2004) A woman burned herself to death in front of an abortion clinic over two weeks ago in Berwyn Heights, Maryland, a bedroom community of Washington, DC, and the American public still does not know her name. The national news media utterly ignored the event. It looks like most people in this nation intend for it to stay that way. The police in Berwyn Heights will not tell this reporter her name; the abortion clinic where she immolated herself will not tell her name; the hospital where she died will not tell her name; neither will any of the abortion protestors I contacted in the Washington, DC area tell her name. But her story will be told.
The student newspaper at the University of Maryland gives us most of the information we have so far: "The woman parked her car at the Metropolitan Family Planning Center and office of A.M. Gohari, located directly across from CVS Pharmacy and Atlanta Bread Company on Greenbelt Road in Berwyn Heights, at about 3:30 in the afternoon. She stepped out, doused her body in gasoline and lit herself on fire, according to a Berwyn Heights Police Department report."
"Witnesses described the scene as horrific and unforgettable, with flames spurting from the human fireball about 10 feet high. Senior psychology major Jonathan Agner said he and three other students were stuck at a red light at the intersection across from the clinic and Xtra Fuel Gas Station gas station when they noticed the fire."
"I see the flames and then I see it moving from one spot to the other," Agner said. "That made me realize it wasn't a car. I saw a person moving, and I sincerely could not believe it was reality. It was one of the most - if not the most - horrifying thing I have ever seen."
"Passengers in bumper-to-bumper traffic, including a school bus full of children, also witnessed the suicide. Employees and passersby congregated outside the strip of shops opposite the clinic to watch the rescue."
"Keena Williams, an employee at Atlanta Bread Company, said she "saw something orange" but thought it was a car fire at first.
"'I was just in shock," she said. "I ain't never seen anything like that before. I was shaking.'"
With the exception of the student newspaper, the local DC media treated the story as little more than an audible fart in a crowded room of polite, business-like adults. WMDT-TV in Salisbury, Md reported, "A woman who set herself on fire in an apparent anti-abortion protest is hospitalized in critical condition. Police in Berwyn Heights say the woman doused herself in gasoline this afternoon outside an abortion clinic..." The Gazette, the local newspaper covering several of the Maryland bedroom communities around Washington, DC, reported: "A 53-year-old College Park woman who was immersed in gasoline and lit on fire in front of a Berwyn Heights abortion clinic died Saturday at 1:20 a.m. Berwyn Heights police believe that the woman, whose name has not been released, was apparently attempting to make a statement about abortion Friday, when she parked her car in the parking lot of the clinic in the 5900 block of Greenbelt Road, and ignited the fire. Berwyn Heights Cpl. Richard Hartnett said an off-duty Maryland state trooper, who was driving by, used a fire extinguisher and blanket to assist the woman. A helicopter transported her to the trauma unit at the Washington Hospital Center, where she died the next day," the story concluded.
The woman lit herself into a huge torch visible from horizon to horizon because she was trying to send people a message. It does not take a genius, or a psychologist, or even an adult to know that. When the woman died the day after her self-immolation, her story died with her. Not one shred of further information has made it to the general public.
That is strange to say the least.
DURING VIETNAM, SELF-IMMOLATION WAS PRIME TIME/FRONT PAGE NEWS ACROSS THE COUNTRY
David Halberstam, a reporter for the New York Times covering the war in Vietnam, had this account published in the Times: "I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think…. As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."
In Vietnam other self-immolations followed. In response Madame Nhu, the wife of a Vietnam leader, was dismissive of the protests and was quoted in the press as calling them nothing but "Buddhist barbecues."
The On November 1, 1963, elements of South Vietnamese military --- with U.S. "encouragement" and promises of support for the new regime --- staged a coup d'etat. Madame Nhu's husband was captured and executed. Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
Somehow, etched within those horrific and world-changing events in 1963, forever resides the images of self-immolation; a haunting, chilling harbinger of the carnage that was to come to Vietnam over the next ten years.
NATIONAL MEDIA NORMALLY COVERS SUCH STORIES
Since the Vietnam era, the media has never shied away from similar stories about people who allegedly killed themselves to make a political statement. As recently as November 8, 2004 a young man killed himself at the World Trade Center. Cnn reported the event like this: "A 25-year-old from Georgia who was distraught over President Bush's re-election apparently killed himself at Ground Zero...Andrew Veal's body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits area of the former World Trade Center site..."
That story was broadcast across the nation with the man's name and interviews with acquaintances, all of whom were convinced the man killed himself to make a political statement.
It turns out they were wrong about the young man's motivation but the point was made anyway: being distraught about "President Bush's reelection" qualified the story for extensive national coverage; being distraught to the point of self-immolation about abortion gets different treatment.
APPARENTLY ATTEMPTING TO MAKE A STATEMENT ABOUT ABORTION
"Berwyn Heights police believe that the woman, whose name has not been released, was apparently attempting to make a statement about abortion," the Gazette reported.
Notice the qualified statement in the newspaper article? The newspaper introduced the qualification "apparently" because nobody, including this reporter, has any material evidence of any type to prove she soaked herself with gasoline and lit a match in front of an abortion clinic because she was trying to say something about abortion. But we can all empathize with the newspaper reporter enough to understand that the writer would have done an obvious disservice to the story if the writer had omitted drawing the obvious implication from the story. Even a mentally retarded person with any language skills at all would have deduced that the choice of location for her self-immolation meant there was an abortion connection of some kind.
Why is this story being ignored? All that is needed to see the obvious answer to that question is to examine the difference between the attitude of the general public to the events in Vietnam in 1963 and the events around the abortion clinics today. In 1963, there was hardly a person in the nation who wanted to ignore the events in Vietnam. Even though people might have vastly different reasons for being focused on Vietnam, they all wanted to know what was happening there. Today, virtually every person in the USA wants to ignore what is happening at, in, and around abortions clinics.
It's not surprising that those who support abortion want to ignore the abortion clinics. No one denies that it's a painful business going on in the abortion industry, one that even the professionals in the field admit is best ignored as much as possible.
But what is surprising is why all those millions of people in this nation who claim to be "pro-life," who claim to be opposed to abortion, are just as willing as those who support abortion to totally blot out information coming from the abortion clinics even when that information is like the absolutely startling and riveting signal event created by the nameless woman who burned herself to death "apparently to make a statement about abortion."
Why wouldn't "pro-lifers" circle around the image of the burning woman in the same way that Vietnam peasants circled around the Buddist monks who sent out a clear and undeniable signal that, under their present circumstances, life in Vietnam was no longer worth living.
The answer is obvious. "Pro-lifers" are nowhere near thinking that life is no longer worth living in the USA. So what if we have legalized the slaughter of thousands of the least of God's children each day! Against that has to be balanced the fact that we are not the ones being slaughtered; it is not our children that are being slaughtered. In fact, we are being treated pretty darn good if you want to know the truth of the matter. So what if some crazy whacko can't stand living in a nation where the people are willing to tolerate the wholesale slaughter of innocent, defenseless human beings! What's that got to do with us?
Neal Horsley