A pro-life bookstore owner and preacher called on town officials in upstate New York to make their community a “sanctuary city for the unborn” and is encouraging other pro-life advocates to do the same through their local governments.

Last month, Jon Speed made national headlines when he closed his store “The Book Scout in Syracuse,” to protest Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signing legislation which allows babies to be aborted up to the moment of birth.

The new law also took away legal protections for unborn children in instances that their deaths in the womb were due to violence against the mother. No longer will such crimes be classified as homicide.

“The book store is closed today. It is a day of mourning in New York. In honor of the thousands of babies that will die in the years to come, we shall not be collecting sales tax for this tyrannical government today. We will on other days, under duress, but not today,” Speed wrote on Facebook the day after Cuomo signed the bill.

Speed told The Western Journal in an email that a friend invited him to speak to the city council in Batavia, New York, last week. The pastor grew up and led a church in the Batavia area — located about 40 miles east of Buffalo — and still has family there.

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Speed — who co-produced the anti-abortion documentary, “Babies Are Murdered Here” — argued before the council that abortion, no matter what form it takes, is the murder of unborn children, Faithwire reported.

“What is the best way to kill a baby?” he asked the government leaders. “Is it using an abortifacient? Is it saline abortion — where the baby is burned alive in the mother’s womb? Is it a surgical abortion in the second trimester when the baby is cut into pieces and then reassembled in a dish? Perhaps it’s to deliver the baby in the third trimester and then stick a pair of scissors in the base of his or her neck?”

“That’s what we are talking about here,” Speed continued, “Which way is the best way to kill a baby?”

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He went on to argue that the answer is “obvious to anyone with a conscience. There is no good way to kill a baby: ‘Thou shalt not kill.'”

Speed said that just because New York law (and federal law through the controversial Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973) makes abortion legal does not make it right in the eyes of God and His divine law.

“Everything that Hitler did in Germany was legal, by German law,” he said in a reference to the Holocaust, which resulted in the death of millions of Jewish men, women and children.

“Babies are murdered in Batavia, New York, every day that Planned Parenthood is open,” Speed told the council members.

“Please lead the way in upstate New York, and make Batavia a sanctuary city for the unborn,” he concluded.

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Speed wants to see multiple communities in the Empire State make such a stand for life, he told The Western Journal.

“I hope that conservative upstate cities and counties will consider using the sanctuary city precedent given by Governor Cuomo to create sanctuary cities and counties for the unborn,” he said.

“In such places, abortion would be made illegal. Abortifacients, Planned Parenthood, abortion clinics and all abortions at hospitals and OBGYN’s would be outlawed.”

Speed said he has received encouraging feedback from his remarks, and other pastors and concerned Christians are planning to address their own local governments on the issue.

The preacher says he will return to address the Batavia council again at the end of the month.

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