THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 1, 1994 TAG: 9411010306
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 126 lines
The author of an article arguing a legal defense for the killers of abortion doctors says he withdrew it from publication this summer because he was threatened with losing his job at Pat Robertson's law center.
But the author, Michael R. Hirsh, was fired anyway on Oct. 24, months after the article was deleted from the Regent University Law Review and he and his family of 10 were transferred to a small-town office in Kentucky.
Hirsh said he received a letter from Keith A. Fournier, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, informing him that he was being ``separated'' from the ACLJ due to ``philosophical differences.''
``The `philosophical differences,' as I understand them, was I wrote the article,'' Hirsh said in a telephone interview from his rented home in New Hope, Ky. ``Which, incidentally, I wrote before being employed by them, and which everyone knew about.''
Fournier declined to be interviewed. The ACLJ, founded by Robertson at his CBN complex in Virginia Beach, said through spokesman Gene Kapp that Hirsh no longer worked for it as of Oct. 24 and that ``the center has fundamental and vitally important philosophical differences with Hirsh.''
Asked to explain, Kapp said: ``I think if you look at the content of the article, that's an indication.''
Hirsh spent his 15 months with the ACLJ defending abortion protesters - including Paul J. Hill, accused of killing a doctor at a Florida abortion clinic.
Hirsh said his article's argument - that justifiable homicide could be used as a defense for killing abortion doctors - was widely known around Regent University and the ACLJ before its scheduled release. But a few days earlier, on July 29, a doctor and his escort had been gunned down at a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic. The man arrested was anti-abortion activist Hill, whom Hirsh and the ACLJ already were representing on misdemeanor charges associated with his protests.
The ACLJ also unsuccessfully asked a judge to allow it to withdraw from representing Hill on the lesser charges after he was charged with the killings.
``Keith Fournier told me I should pull the article,'' Hirsh said. ``I was given some motivation that if I didn't pull it, I would be terminated.
``I decided at that point to pull the article, to try and protect Keith from charges of censorship. . . . Then a week or two after that, I was told I was going to be moving to Kentucky or face unemployment. So I did that. At one point, I even told Keith: `Well, you're probably going to terminate me anyway.' He said: `I don't work like that. I have more integrity than that.' ''
Barbara J. Weiler, editor-in-chief of the law review, said her staff knew of the threat and agreed in August to recall and reprint the edition without Hirsh's article because ``we didn't want anybody to lose their job.''
Only a few copies of Hirsh's 60-page article reached the public, but it received national notice. Articles and commentary on it appeared in The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, The New York Times and The National Law Journal, among other publications.
``Obviously, I was disappointed,'' Hirsh said.
``I had worked on it a long time. I thought it could pass academic and scholarly rigor.''
Hirsh said he began the article as his master's thesis, working on it for about three years as he earned a master's and a law degree from Regent University in July 1993. Immediately after graduation, he began working for the ACLJ, representing mostly abortion protesters on First Amendment grounds.
Before coming to Regent, Hirsh, a 35-year-old Miami native, earned an accounting degree at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., ran a business selling commercial cooking equipment and started a family. He and his wife have nine children, ranging in age from 3 months to 15 years.
Hirsh also served as director of the Atlanta chapter of the militant anti-abortion Operation Rescue, which gained notoriety by fighting an anti-protesting ordinance up to the Supreme Court.
Hirsh dedicated his article to Michael D. Bray, convicted in the 1984 pipe-bombing of the Hillcrest Clinic in Norfolk, South Hampton Roads' only abortion clinic. Bray was paroled in 1989 after serving three years of a six-year federal prison sentence.
As it turns out, Hirsh's article - or at least parts of it - will be printed after all. Weiler said the winter edition of the law review, coming out in February, plans to use some of Hirsh's writing that was filed as a legal brief in Hill's murder case.
It will be coupled with a ``different perspective'' on the issue from a University of Notre Dame law professor and an ACLJ lawyer, and a 50-state survey of laws concerning how far a person can go to defend others.
Hirsh said he didn't discuss the article with Hill before or after the July clinic shootings and hasn't been asked to represent him. But Hirsh said he was ``quite honored'' that his work was being used apparently by Hill himself, although the judge in the case denied Hill's request to argue justifiable homicide.
Hirsh said he planned to go to Pensacola this week to watch Hill's trial, which began Monday.
Then he'll study for the Kentucky bar exam and look for a way to support his large family.
Hirsh also said he forgives Fournier for firing him.
``Although I forgive him,'' Hirsh said, ``I've got the obvious human concerns of feeding my family.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
THE LAW REVIEW ARTICLE SAID:
Killers of abortion doctors should be allowed to argue that it was
justifiable homicide because it protected innocent unborn children
from imminent death.
Micheal R. Hirsh cited a combination of secular and Biblical law.
He used as his example the March 1993 shooting death of Dr. David
Gunn outside a Florida abortion clinic. Anti-abortion activist
Michael Griffin was convicted of Gunn's murder and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
KEYWORDS: AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE
by CNB