Each year, The Malachi Award is given by Operation Rescue to recognize those whose sacrificial work has significantly advanced the cause of protecting the preborn. Usually, this award is given to an individual, however, the political environment of the last four years has prompted Operation Rescue to do something a little out of the box.
For the year of 2024, Operation Rescue is dedicating The Malachi Award to the long list of pro-lifers who have been persecuted and stripped of their own liberties for the sake of unborn children in recent years.
“We have not seen this many pro-lifers prosecuted and imprisoned for peaceful action on behalf of the preborn since the days of the first rescue movement,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue.
Springing up in 1986, Operation Rescue led the largest movement of peaceful civil disobedience in American history. During those early years, thousands of men and women willingly sat in front of the doors to abortion clinics to prevent the killing of innocent children. Rescuers often paid the penalty in arrest and prosecution on misdemeanor trespassing charges. However, when the FACE Act was passed in 1993, misdemeanors became felonies, and the movement was forced to adapt with new strategies for closing down clinics.
Please follow LifeNews.com on Gab for the latest pro-life news and info, free from social media censorship.
In the last few years, led by devoted long-time rescuers like Monica Miller, rescues have made a resurgence. The strategy is different and the groups of rescuers smaller, but the quiet heart of this sacrificial act remains the same.
“Like so many of us in those early years after Roe,” Newman said, “these courageous citizens have willingly and peacefully placed their own bodies between a preborn child and the people scheduled to murder that child. That is an act of kindness and compassion.
“Under the current Biden-Harris administration, however, those who have engaged in peaceful acts of civil disobedience, of which our nation has a rich and heroic history, have been treated like violent criminals, called terrorists, and made examples of. For many of them, the law has been manipulated by the DOJ to secure outrageous and unjust prison sentences, to separate them from their families, and to create fear in the rest of us who dare to stand against the abortion cartel. But it won’t work, Biden. Unlike those who radically support abortion, these ‘prisoners of Christ’ are inspiring in their humility and quiet suffering. The Biden administration has only succeeded in galvanizing the pro-life movement to stand even stronger.”
Right now, nearly a dozen pro-lifers are serving unjust sentences in prisons across the nation, with a dozen more convicted and hit with heavy fines, probation, or house arrest. Some of these prisoners have experienced severe medical complications, including multiple strokes.
“The treatment of these citizens has been horrendous,” Newman added. “Operation Rescue and the entire pro-life movement are united in calling for each of these brave advocates to be pardoned on day one of Donald Trump’s presidency. These men and women are not hardened criminals – they are political prisoners of the Biden administration, which is deeply and darkly devoted to eliminating any and all efforts to save preborn children from the brutal violence of abortion.”
On its website, Operation Rescue keeps a running list of all those included in the dedication of this award, those currently or recently imprisoned for participating in peaceful rescues. This list includes addresses for the prisoners who can receive letters and visitors.
Newman stated, “We at Operation Rescue commend these rescuers and their willingness to forfeit their own freedom so that one more child might be given the chance to live. We gladly award this lionhearted contingency of pro-lifers our 2023 Malachi Award. As it says in John 15:13, ‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.’ We pray that the love of God wins the day for those being persecuted, and that pardons for these deserving men and women come, and come quickly.”
LifeNews Note: This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America. The author, Sarah Neely, is Project Coordinator for Operation Rescue.
The post Pro-Life Group Honors Americans Who Biden Put in Prison for Protesting Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.
