After serving four years in prison for clinic bombings in the 1980s, the Rev. Michael Bray, author of the antiabortion manifesto "A Time to Kill," emerged as an ACLA [American Coalition of Life Activists] leader in the 1990s, and was involved in the launch of ACLA's "Deadly Dozen" wanted posters campaign in 1995 and the Nuremberg Files project in 1996. In "A Time to Kill," Bray advocates "the principle of revolution and the goal of establishing or preserving a Christian government," and declares that "Revolution may well be justified in our time of legalized sodomy, national apostasy (in the name of separation of church and state) and taxation to support child slaughter." ...

Bray and his accomplices also bombed the Washington offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Federation in 1984. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, headed the Washington office of the ACLU at the time of the bombing, and recalls how bomb fragments ripped a poster promoting the Bill of Rights that hung in his office. "These threats need to be taken seriously by anyone whose ideas run counter to these extremist groups."

The Army of God calls him a "Hero of the Faith", along with convicted murderers and arsonists and Clayton Waagner. I wrote for Salon:  

Only a couple of years ago, Clayton Waagner was one of three extreme-right American terrorists on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, a self-styled avenging angel of the unborn. In the autumn of 2001, at the apex of national fear about terrorist strikes and deadly anthrax attacks, he mailed hundreds of envelopes stuffed with white powder and threatening letters to abortion clinics and reproductive rights organizations -- all in the name of the antiabortion Army of God. Doctors, staffers, clients and their families were terrified, and hundreds of clinics were shut down. That made Clayton Waagner a celebrity, of sorts, and to some, a hero.

The Kansas blog What the Judge Ate for Breakfast has an excellent run down on the Shannon situation.  

Rev. Michael Bray of Maryland has an online petition to ask Bush to pardon Shelley Shannon, who shot Tiller at his clinic on Aug. 19, 1993.

Shannon finished serving her Kansas prison time for attempted murder and aggravated assault in April 2005. But she's now serving a federal sentence in Dublin, Calif., in connection with the shooting. She also was convicted of fire and bombing attacks on other abortion clinics, including those in Oregon, California and Nevada, which authorities learned about through letters she wrote from jail following Tiller's shooting.

Bray said in a statement on his Web site, defending Shannon:

"Unfortunately, as with all anti-abortion cases where the defenders of the innocents are charged with crimes and brought before the judges in this land, there is no consideration given to the `defense of necessity' -- that these interventions were necessary because a true human being is murdered in every intentional abortion."

 

"The suggestion of pardoning a violent criminal for the attempted murder of Dr. Tiller and attacks on abortion clinics highlights the twisted notion of life held by these domestic right-to-life terrorists, " said Dan Monnat, a Wichita lawyer who represents Tiller. "Her letters, which you can find on the Internet, say `don't insult me by saying I've repented.'"

Bray goes on to say in his statement that:

There is a name for a kind of government which punishes excessively for ideological or political crimes. It is called a tyranny. We who know that Shelley's deeds were noble and just and that she acted in good conscience... We who say that Rachelle Shannon ought never to have gone to jail but to have been rewarded with honor and a U.S. pension greater than any Congressman, Judge, or President for her service say now that her sentence ought to be commuted.

We request that Rachelle Shannon be released from prison immediately.