Anti-Abortion Extremist Neal Horsley Dies

Never met him to my knowledge.  Saw him hundreds of times.  A normal looking fella.

However, he circulated images of aborted fetuses.  Did those images make me nauseous?  Yep.

Did those images make me want to slug the man responsible for putting them in my face?  Nope.

I am a lifelong resident of Carrollton, Carroll County, Georgia.  Both of my parents were raised here.  The guy holding up signs of aborted fetuses, Neal Horsley, sometimes did so near the very window where my grandfather’s office sat in the Peoples’ Bank.  The pictures were horrific.  Shock and awe comes to mind.

Neal Horsley was a national figure in the fight against abortion.  His website (FYI: Look at your OWN risk) was the bookmark for anti-abortion extremism. It listed no fewer than 200 medical providers performing abortions in the United States.  When I say listed, I mean it gave you their names, phone numbers, home addresses, and pictures.  The website also included some of those grisly images of aborted fetuses that I mentioned earlier.  Neal Horsley was also from Carroll County, Georgia.

The words most synonymous with abortion are bomb and Rudolph.  Did Horsley’s website fuel anything to do with those words?  I don’t know, but it is likely.  After all, his website celebrated the deaths of abortion providers and arguably pushed for more to be exterminated.

Neal Horsley, a man from a small Southern town, caused an abortion stir nationwide,  Enough so that a group of Plaintiffs from Oregon sued him and argued that his website was not protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.  After hearing the case, a jury awarded the defendant abortion providers and others $109 million.  The case was appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which let the verdict stand.  Again, a regular guy from a small town caused this fight.

Neal Horsley died on April 13.  He never did rid the world of abortions.  Unfortunately, his website lives on as does the presence of thousands of anti-abortion extremists.

Our country has arguably been stuck in neutral for much of the 2000’s.  Since 9/11, this great Nation has been increasingly divided along party lines, racial lines, and socioeconomic lines.  It seems that everything revolves around Democrat/Republican, Black/White, Rich/Poor, Muslim/Christian, etc.  It begs the question, “Is America becoming a nation of extremists?”

With the availability of endless information online (both reputable and disreputable), there is fuel to fan any fire. I don’t agree with any of Neal Horsley’s views.  Yet, I can’t help but wonder whether Neal Horsley was a trendsetter in online drama manufacturing.  His website was created in 1997, which was the toddler years of the internet.  It still exists today.  I am no internet historian, but that site has to be one of the first.

Did Neal Horsley notice what award-winning business author, Rohit Bhargava, calls the “Non-Obvious?”  Maybe it is not best to remember him as a staunch opponent of abortion.  Rather, maybe he was a godfather of internet opinion publishing.  Maybe his goal was to create a nation of extreme views outside of abortion.  His opinion was controversial.  But his opinion reached across the United States.  All from the small town of Carrollton, Georgia.