In response to a viral campaign ad showing police arresting a woman who obtained an abortion, Christian hate-preacher Joe Jones said he hoped that hypothetical situation became a reality, adding that he wanted abortion doctors to be mutilated and executed.
The ad in question comes from Rep. Eric Swalwell of California. He depicted a future in which MAGA Republicans continue their attacks on abortion rights to the point where law enforcement officials come to a woman’s home and arrest her in front of her family. The video has over 3.7 million views on Twitter.
The most damning thing about that ad is that it’s not outlandish at all. While most states where the procedure is now illegal have focused on arresting the doctors, there’s no shortage of conservatives who want the pregnant women punished, too. As medical abortions (via pills) become more popular than surgical abortions, you can expect Republicans to go after the women who take mifepristone and misoprostol.
Enter Joe Jones, the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher at Shield of Faith Baptist Church in Boise, Idaho, who referenced the video in a recent sermon demonizing abortion.
… [A friend] sent me a commercial—and forgive me if somebody else in here sent me this as well—but it was some politicians in California, of course, that made this commercial where these policemen show up to this house, right? And they arrest a mom, you know, having dinner with her family because she had an abortion…
Basically, the commercial was, This is what’s going to happen in America if we don’t vote the Republicans out… And I’m not big on these Republicans. If you don’t hate the sodomites, I don’t support you at all, okay? That’s how far I take it. But anyways, that’s another topic for another day.
But going back to this commercial, it’s like, we look at that, right? You hear about that, it’s like, “Amen! That’s how it should be! A woman should… get arrested!”
Look, these abortion doctors should be put to death. The government should take them and slice them up! Not with pizza, okay? Actually put them to death! I mean, seriously, [mocking critics] Oh, you’re [going back] on the news. I’m not going back on the news. They don’t want none of this.
These people are sick! Absolutely sick!
It’s not the doctors who are sick.
In that word salad, Jones made clear he wants women who get abortions to be arrested and the doctors who facilitate them to be tortured and murdered by the government. All in the name of Jesus.
None of this is a shock from New IFB leaders. Just last week, Jones’ colleague Jonathan Shelley delivered an antisemitic rant in which he said we’d be “lucky” if six million Jews really perished in the Holocaust, implying that didn’t actually happen.
Jones himself has called for the government to “drop the entire nuclear arsenal” on gay people, demanded that parents who take their kids to a Drag Queen Story Hour “have their head chopped off,” and casually fantasized about the president’s son being shot. He dreams of violence in the name of Christianity.
And if Republicans get even more power, his dreams will become that much closer to reality.
His sermon, by the way, remains up on his church’s YouTube channel, which has existed since 2009. It’s unclear why YouTube has permitted this kind of hate speech to remain on the site.