It's a hell of a home page. Literally. Blood drips from blades superimposed with images of the limbs of aborted foetuses - all courtesy of a website called the Christian Gallery. Click through and you'll find more grisly images of terminated pregnancies. The Christian Gallery is run by Neal Horsley, 57-year-old leader of the Creator's Rights Party and developer of the notorious Nuremburg Files website that has been causing a furore across the US for the past three years. The site lists the names, work addresses and other information of people who work at family planning and abortion clinics. Some of the names have a line through them signifying they have been killed by anti-abortion extremists or have died as a result of having an abortion. The names of those injured in the attacks appear in grey.
Another of Horsley's sites, Abortioncams, shows live pictures and stills of people entering and leaving clinics across the US. It has been alleged that the name of Dr Bernard Slepian, an abortion surgeon who was shot dead outside his home in Buffalo, New York, in 1988 was on the Nuremburg Files before the killing. Horsley denies this - and is suing Gloria Feldt of the pro-choice group, Planned Parenthood, and US chat-show host Geraldo Rivera for making the allegation - though he confirms that 24 hours after the killing, Dr Slepian's name appeared with a line through it.
Last year, a US Circuit Court of Appeal over-ruled a Federal Court in Oregon which awarded $109 million damages to workers and activists in Planned Parenthood, the Portland Feminist Women's Health Centre and several doctors whose details appear on The Nuremburg Files site (Horsley was not named in the suit). The appeal court ruled that the possibility of someone being harmed as a result of information obtained from the site should not supercede the publisher's right to freedom of political expression.
However, in August, Internet Service Provider (ISP), Mindspring, won a court battle allowing it to refuse to host Horsley's sites. Horsley has used around fifty different ISPs in an effort to stay online. He has been shut down so many times he now uses providers outside the US. He now has a complex web of a dozen or so ISPs hosting mirror version of his sites (he has quite a few), and as a fall-back, he has his own server.
"We've been bouncing around all over the world just to keep the websites up. That's the beauty of the Internet, they can try to shut us up but they can't do it," says Horsley. He regards Christian Gallery as a news gathering service that is being censored by government and commercial interests in the US.
Horsley operates the sites on a full-time basis while providing "computer and web services" to others. He says he makes a comfortable living, though the quality of design on his own sites is poor, leading one to wonder who his clients are. He won't say.
Among Horsley's many sites are Free Church Movement, Abolish Abortion, Baby Murderers, Baby Butchers, the Abortion Abolitionist Press and a site for his Creator's Rights Party - which includes a link to the Army of God.
Members of the Army of God have provided information to the Nuremburg Files. The Reverend Michael Bray is one of those named in the law suit in Oregon. Bray, a father of seven, and author of "A Time to Kill" - on sale on the Army of God website - was jailed for four years for attacking seven abortion clinics in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. The site also features a handbook on how to attack clinics.
Part of the Abortioncams site has a section reserved for "Irish Blood Flunkies" as part of Horsley's plan to go international. Already a doctor working in a Scottish clinic is featured with a large picture and her work address. He says he has received information from a number of Irish people and is deciding on his strategy for Ireland at the moment. When asked whether he has had contact with Irish anti-abortion group, Youth Defence - who in the past have used graphic pictures as part of their campaign - he says: "I have no real way to talk about that".
Justin Barrett of Youth Defence believes the "name-and-shame" precept behind Horsley's sites is "quite legitimate" but says their potentially inciteful nature would prevent his organisation from providing information. "Supplying names is not something we would do. If we knew anyone was doing it they would probably be expelled," he says.
When Horseley is asked if he has had contact with James Kopp, who spent time in Ireland before moving to France where he was arrested for the killing of Dr Slepian? Or how about Clayton Lee Waagner, who escaped De Witt County Jail and was sentenced to 15 years to life in his absence for firearms offences and is purported to have sent a letter to the Army of God threatening the lives of abortion clinic workers? Probably, he says. "I get a lot of messages and there have been many times when people have been very vague and, you know, cryptic in their comments".
What anyone in Ireland who has supplied information to the Nuremburg Files may be surprised to know, is that Horsley, in fact, approves of abortion in the circumstances currently permitted in Ireland. The Irish Supreme Court has ruled that abortion is permissible if continuing with a pregnancy constitutes a threat to the woman's life, or if the woman is in danger of taking her own life as a result of the pregnancy. "It has to be granted that human beings have the right to self-defence otherwise the right of the unborn's right to life is negated," he says. "I wouldn't call that legalised abortion".