Lutheran Pastor Jailed in Germany for Opposing Abortion
Erlangen (Germany), SVM news, June 26, 2007: A German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor in jail on June 14 for opposing abortion (Volksverhetzung, which means incitement of the people).
Pastor Johannas Lerle
Pastor Johannes Lerle was sentenced to prison for an year by Erlangen court in Germany for compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust.
Without legalized abortion the number of German children would increase annually by at least 150,000, which is the number of legal abortions in birth dearth Germany. Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the killing of the unborn as the Jews were killed in Auschwitz during the Second World War.
On 14 June, the court in Erlangen ruled that, in doing so, the pastor had "incited the people" because his statement was a denial of the holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-Germany.
"Previously also he had been jailed for eight months for calling abortionists "professional killers." An allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because the court says the unborn are not humans," a woman Pro-life activist in Germany who does not want her name to be published told to Rev. Paul Ciniraj, the Director of Salem Voice Ministries and SVM News Service by telephone.
Another German courts convicted pro-lifers by saying, "in abortion clinics, life unworthy of living is being killed.
Günter Annen, a German pro-lifer, was sentenced to 50 days in jail in 2005 for asking to stop 'unjust [rechtswidrige] abortions in medical practice'. According to the court in Germany, the expression "unjust" is understood by laymen as meaning illegal, which abortions are not.
Volksverhetzung is a crime which the Nazis often invoked against their enemies and which contemporary Germany also uses to intimidate homeschoolers. Soon, the German authorities will be able to use the same charge against people who question Darwin's evolution theory.
SALEM VOICE MINISTRIES NEWS SERVICE (SVM NEWS)
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