Fox News hosts have been heavily playing down the racial hate crime aspect of the shooting at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, last night, instead suggesting that the shooting was just another case of anti-Christian persecution in America, a recurring theme on the network.

Law enforcement has labeled the shooting a hate crime, and the white shooter reportedly told his black victims: “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

Fox News contributor Alveda King, a conservative activist with the group Priests for Life, appeared on “Fox & Friends” this morning, where she linked the shooting to abortion rights: “You kill babies in the womb, kill people in their beds, shoot people on the streets so now you go into the church when people are praying.”