CARNAL NATION

The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue has been the bane of pro-choice activists since Randall Terry founded it in 1986. But if a recent announcement by the group's president, Troy Newman, is true then that history may soon come to an end. Newman wrote an email to Operation Rescue's supporters on Monday claiming that the group is in such dire economic straits that it may soon close its doors without emergency help.

According to Newman, Operation Rescue's donations have been down 30 to 40 percent this year, their paid staff has been cut from 9 people down to 4,  and Newman himself hasn't received a paycheck for two months. The financial problems may have to do with a combination of the country's general economic sluggishness and the murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller this summer. Although Operation Rescue immediately issued a condemnation of Tiller's murder, critics of the organization have blamed them for creating the conditions for the killing through years of violent and hostile rhetoric against abortion providers in general and Tiller in particular. Troy Newman moved Operation Rescue's national headquarters to Kansas from California specifically because Tiller's clinic was located there. In addition, there are allegations of very direct connections between Operation Rescue and Scott Roeder, Tiller's alleged killer. The phone number of of Cheryl Sullenger, a senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue, was found in Roeder's car. Sullenger, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb a California abortion clinic, gave Roeder the times and locations of Tiller's court dates when he was being tried for providing late-term abortions earlier this year. She says however, that she's renounced violent action and had no contact with Roeder except for when he called her to ask about Tiller's court dates.

In that context, it should be no surprise that there's a financial backlash against Operation Rescue: in the eyes of the mainstream, they've become tainted with violent extremism, but at the same time, many anti-abortion activists have started to see them as too moderate. And in 2006, they lost one of the most useful fundraising tools any organization can have: their tax-exempt status. The IRS revoked Operation Rescue's 501(c)(3) status because of activities during the 2004 elections, meaning that donors can no longer write off contributions on their taxes. Newman has denied that the loss of tax-exempt status has had a noticeable affect on donations. However, if Operation Rescue is really as deep in the hole as his email claimed, they would have to have been losing money for much longer than since the Tiller murder.

Is Operation Rescue really on the brink of financial oblivion? Time will tell. It wouldn't be the first time that an organization over-emphasized its woes in order to get the faithful to dig deeper into their pocketbooks. If the nation's foremost anti-abortion group really goes belly-up, though, there will be a lot of people ready to dance on its grave.