Jason Storms, an extremist anti-choice activist who says that a woman who has an abortion is “guilty as a murderer in the eyes of the law,” has gotten a job as a substitute teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools and is boasting of his success in preaching to students on the state's dime, according to the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
FFRF called attention last week to a Facebook post in which Storms said that his first day in the classroom “reaffirmed” his “disgust with the public education system” but that he also “got to share [his] testimony and preach boldly to hundreds of students for hours, while the state paid me.”
Storms responded on Facebook that he “did not engage in proselytizing,” but also claimed that the “men who penned the First Amendment encouraged” the preaching of Christianity in public schools:
Here are the facts. I have taught at two public charter schools in Milwaukee. I did not engage in proselytizing. I never attempted to get any child to join my church or convert to my particular denomination. I did not break the law. There is nothing illegal or unconstitutional with a teacher sharing their personal story or discussing their faith with students in a non-coercive manner. (In fact, public schools explicitly taught the precepts of Christianity for 150 years, and then men who penned the First Amendment encouraged this.)
Storms is the son-in-law of Matt Trewhella, a Wisconsin-based anti-choice activist who was one of a few dozen activists in the 1990s to sign on to a statement calling the murder of abortion providers “justifiable.” Trewhella and Storms both now travel in the circles of Operation Save America, a radical anti-choice group that argues that government officials should simply ignore Roe v. Wade and start treating abortion as murder. For Storms, the murderers include women who have abortions. While protesting in Louisville with OSA last summer, Storms told CBS: "A mother who has knowingly, willingly, chosen to kill her own child out of pure selfish motives, she's guilty as a murderer in the eyes of the law." In his Facebook profile photo, Storms wears a t-shirt that says “Ignore Roe.”
Last month, Storms was named the assistant director of OSA. He has also been serving as the director of Personhood USA, which promotes fetal “personhood” bills to ban all abortion.
