“I Did What I Thought Needed to be Done”: How Army of God Crafts Anti-Abortion Justified Homicide Arguments on YouTube

Barrett-Fox, Rebecca

doi:10.5840/jrv2025922101

Journal of Religion and Violence

ONLINE FIRST

published on September 24, 2025

Rebecca Barrett-Fox

https://doi.org/10.5840/jrv2025922101

“I Did What I Thought Needed to be Done”
How Army of God Crafts Anti-Abortion Justified Homicide Arguments on YouTube

Identified as a terrorist group by both the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, the Army of God is a loose affiliation of anti-abortion activists whose leaderless strategies include lethal violence against abortion providers and clinic bombings and arson. An analysis of approximately ten hours of unique YouTube postings about abortion by Don Spitz, the group’s self-appointed “chaplain” and spokesperson, reveals four themes: the blurring of the distinction between fetus and baby, the invocation of Scriptures describing justified bloodshed, explicit calls to legitimate political action and implicit calls to illegal action, and the veneration of those who commit anti-abortion terrorism. These themes work together to build an argument for justifiable homicide that could not be made explicitly on YouTube without violating that platform’s policies about violence but that may be invoked, before or after the fact, in defenses of anti-abortion violence.

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