'Satanic' Bush is on anti-abortion website's hit list By David Wastell in Washington (Filed: 09/09/2001)
THE name of President George W Bush has been added to an internet "hit list" compiled by anti-abortion campaigners after his decision to allow federal funding for limited human embryo stem-cell research.
President Bush: supports stem cell research
The Nuremberg Files website has been accused of inciting violence against doctors and medical staff involved in abortions. The main section, called Baby Butchers and Butchered, lists 421 names - plus addresses, car registration numbers and family details - of abortion practitioners and their "accomplices".
Those who are dead - mostly women who have died as a result of a pregnancy termination - have a line scored through their names. The list of "fatalities" also includes Dr Barnett Slepian, a gynaecologist shot dead at his home near Buffalo, New York, by an anti-abortion protester in 1998.
Mr Bush is a staunch opponent of abortion. His first executive order on entering the White House in January banned international agencies from using American funds to pay for abortion services in developing countries, a move that delighted his conservative supporters.
Despite this clear stand, the Nuremberg Files website, it emerged last week, has targeted him as "a living embodiment of the fact that a Christian might live on Earth in the here and now as an evil collaborator with baby-butchers whose conscience has been totally defiled by the wiles of Satan".
The inclusion of the American leader comes after his decision last month to approve the use of taxpayers' money for limited research involving human embryonic stem cells, which many scientists believe could lead to cures for a range of diseases.
Many anti-abortionists applauded Mr Bush's decision to restrict federally-funded research to 60 "lines" of embryonic stem cells already being grown, so that further embryos are not destroyed for research purposes.
Some were furious, however, that he did not impose the outright ban that he appeared to promise during his election campaign. Neal Horsley, the site's creator, told an anti-abortion news service: "Bush's stem-cell research decision is a covenant with the Devil."
Some influential anti-abortion groups are unhappy about the hit list. Olivia Gans, of the National Right to Life Committee, said some people who looked at the Nuremberg Files were "mentally disturbed".
The site has adopted the name of the German city where Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes. Leading supporters of abortion or those described as "their mouthpieces" are all accused of "crimes against humanity" and anti-abortionists are urged to gather evidence against them for use in a future trial.
Earlier this year, a federal court ruled that closing the website would breach the American constitutional right to free speech.