Today, Jill Stanek stood up for life, for justice and for civil disagreement in our political discourse.  I have longstanding and deep differences with Stanek on a range of issues, tactics and strategies, and we critique her here often.  But I feel she must receive credit when due.

And today she deserves it.

Today, she called on Flip Benham of Operation Save America to discard those “Wanted” posters he has been circulating of doctors who provide abortion care.

She writes:

My friends at Operation Save America have been distributing “Wanted” posters for 3 North Carolina [doctors]. I can’t find any on the web to read, but a screen shot of one posted by CBS says, “Wanted… by Christ to Stop Killing Babies.”

These posters are getting attention in the news, first by Rachel Maddow on October 20…[and]…by Katie Couric at CBS News on October 26…

Benham, notes Stanek, feigns innocence:

It is a blatant attempt to color abortionists as innocent victims of Christian violence and hate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Abortionists victims? Please. Has the thought ever crossed the hardened heart of an abortionist that this is his self chosen way. He invades the neighborhoods of little children safe in their mother’s wombs and seeks them out to kill them. Talk about violence – my Lord!

How does the mainstream media miss this elephant in the room? It is totally blind to the value of a child’s life. It has become the sworn enemy of God, His precious preborn children, and all who follow hard after Christ.

This [CBS story] is a blatant attempt to use the violence of a very few, to silence the voice of many heralding the Gospel of Christ.

The fact is, Stanek said: “a “Wanted” poster, no matter how innocently drawn, immediately calls to mind the old Wild West adage, “dead or alive.””

I ask Pastor Flip and OSA to step back and recognize these sorts of posters can’t help. I believe wholeheartedly in free speech, but these come close to yelling “Fire!” in a theater.

[W]e do need to exercise some common sense and avoid purposefully feeding the frenzy, which I think Pastor Flip knows in his heart of hearts he is doing, even by the font he chose.

I applaud Jill for taking this step.

I also must say I wish she had gone further, by also stating that she would stop posting screen shots of the offices and clinics of physicians like Dr. Carhart, a photo of whose clinic she featured on her site shortly after Dr. Tiller was murdered. This is not, as she claims, just a way of encouraging “assertive activism and picketing.”  We’ve gotten to the point where truly disturbed people are influenced by both the rhetoric and the imagery–of Glenn Beck, of the Tea Party, of the anti-choice movement–to take the law into their own hands.

I wish Jill could take that next step, and see in her own heart of hearts that her own  rhetoric and “imagery”  can only too easily lead to violence.