"Abortion providers are some of my personal heroes and modern-day saints," says Episcopal priest and longtime abortion activist Katherine Ragsdale.
With statements like that it is not hard to see why Ragsdale has recently been appointed to serve as the CEO and President of the National Abortion Federation.
Ragsdale had served as the dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 2009 to 2015, and was a priest at St. David's Episcopal Church in Pepperell until taking the position at the seminary. She was a member of the board of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice for 17 years, and currently sits on the board of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
In addition to her abortion advocacy, Ragsdale is openly lesbian, "marrying" another female Episcopal priest, Mally Lloyd, in 2011 at Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston. The service was officiated by M. Thomas Shaw, the highest-ranking Episcopal leader in Massachusetts.
"God always rejoices when two people who love each other make a lifelong commitment in marriage to go deeper into the heart of God through each other," he claimed, according to a report at the time from LGBTQ Nation. "It's a profound pleasure for me to celebrate with God and my friends Katherine and Mally their marriage today."
In an April 2019 speech at a Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Fund fundraiser, Ragsdale claimed that the Bible says nothing about abortion and that it's dishonest and manipulative to call the human in the womb a "baby."
Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and president of the National Pro-Life Religious Council had this to say in response to Ragsdale's appointment:
"For decades, Katherine Ragsdale, a false prophet, has been trying to put religious vestments on child-killing," Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and president of the National Pro-Life Religious Council, told LifeSiteNews. "She led the 'Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights' (now the 'Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice'), which actually provides rites of blessing for parents about to kill their children, and for the facilities in which the blood is shed."
That group also provides "Scripture studies that attempt to say exactly the opposite of what Scripture says about what God thinks of the shedding of innocent blood," explained Pavone.
Fr. Pavone said it's not surprising that NAF chose Ragsdale to lead it.
"It actually reveals one of the greatest weaknesses of the abortion industry: science is not on their side, logic is not on their side, and history is not on their side," he explained. "They ran out of arguments a long time ago to try to justify abortion. So now, all they have left is to disguise it in 'spirituality.'"
"They try in vain to take the stigma out of abortion -- but that effort continues, and that is what this new development represents," he said.
Fr. Pavone has for decades helped former abortionists and their staff "deal with the wounds abortion inflicts on them."
"A big part of their healing is to dig themselves out of the many layers of lies that they told themselves to justify the killing they carried out," he said.
"Those lies take many forms: rationalization; intellectualization; and here, in the example of False Prophet Ragsdale's leadership, 'spiritualization.' And the lies by which spiritual and biblical language attempt to justify murder are among the most damaging to those who fall captive to them."