WATERLOO, Iowa, August 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A roving pro-life display of 1,600 small white crosses, placed in churchyards to symbolize unborn lives eliminated by abortion, has been vandalized twice in a week. A man, caught in the act of mowing the crosses down with his van, is believed to be the same person who destroyed several hundred of the knee-high crosses on display at the Ascension Lutheran Church last week.
Police charged 29-year-old Justin Haes with criminal mischief, reckless driving and drunken driving after he was caught in the act of destroying crosses at the Concordia Lutheran Church on Thursday.
Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, issued a statement in response to the vandalism. “This incident combines two common trends. For one, abortion supporters have no valid arguments, and so the only thing they can do it try to silence our message. The other trend, found even among some pro-life people, is to somehow imagine that it is illegal to proclaim the pro-life message, even when it seems political. We at Priests for Life will continue to defend vigorously those Churches, and anyone else, who announce the pro-life message without exception or apology.”
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