It’s been quite awhile since I’ve posted, but yesterday’s murder of Dr. George Tiller — one of only two or three medical practitioners in the entire country who performed “late term” abortions –caught my attention in a way nothing has for some time.
Dr. Tiller had been the target of violence and threats and heated rhetoric for years. His clinic was bombed in 1985 and he was shot in both arms in 1993. There was a nearly constant campaign of harrassment against him, all with the goal of stopping his legal medical practice, and it all culminated in the unbelievably sacrilegious act of murder in his church yesterday.
I have no doubt that this was a religiously motivated political assassination.
Authorities have arrested (and charged) someone with the crime, and while the official stance at the moment is that they don’t know the motive, Scott Roeder (the alleged shooter), has a track record for nutso fringiness.
But before you breathe a big sigh of relief (just another crazy!), take a gander at some of the reactions to yesterday’s crime. The online world is flat-out bursting with twisted articles and comments (Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has compiled a toxic sample), and I find much of this more disturbing than the shooting itself.
It’s clear that Roeder, however crazy he may be, is not an isolated case at all.
Yes, as Michelle Malkin points out, the mainstream pro-life organizations have unequivocally denounced Dr. Tiller’s murder. That’s exactly what I’d expect of anyone who is actually “pro-life”. But there’s a vast world of difference between someone who legally tries to make changes to the system, and someone who terrorizes or bombs or shoots people who are working within that same law of the land.
Pro-life is not the same thing as anti-abortion, but thanks to years of blurred terminology in the trenches of the abortion battles, Dr. Tiller’s murder presents pro-life people with a serious problem. To avoid being lumped together with the scary numbers of the obviously unhinged, the pro-lifers need to draw some very clear lines in the sand between themselves and those extreme radicals.
Anti-abortionists who threaten and bomb and shoot are part of a wide-spread domestic terrorism movement, as are those who support such actions. They are not pro-life at all. They are anti-law zealots verging on anarchists.
And it looks to me as if there are an awful lot of them.
(Cross-posted from Polimom Too)
Anti-Abortion. Anti-Life. Anti-Law.
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The fact that the unhinged from Westboro “Baptist Church” were present at the memorial service (IIRC) should also give the pro-life but not pro-terror folks something to think about. Though I would *love* to see a crowd of several hundred/thousand bikers surround those nutcases and drown out their voices by revving their engines – with the exhausts aiming right into the “protesters”.
Welcome back, btw. Hope things are going well.
~EdT.
When I heard about this I was heart broken. Not because the man was killed, but that someone would actually go through with a late term abortion. What is wrong with people. I wish feel bad for the child that are aborted in late term. May the children be blessed and I hope that they are in heaven.
I couldn’t agree with Heather more. I was not sad when I heard about this shooting. I do not agree with any kind of violence against another human being, but this man committed a violent act every time he aborted a baby. For those of you who don’t believe abortion is a violent act then look up the procedure for a partial birth abortion and see if you don’t change your mind. The only good thing in this situation is that those poor babies are in Gods arms, never to be hurt by human hands again.
Sigh. I wish some people would do some objective academic research before forming their opinions about such issues. First off, there is no such thing as a ‘partial-birth abortion’. That’s an inflammatory label given by pro-lifers to describe abortions performed after weeks 12. Secondly, Tiller, under Kansas law, only performed abortions on women whose pregnancies put their lives in danger. Please see the following link for more on that: http://mediamatters.org/research/200906010011
Lastly, I don’t understand the religious right at all. If life begins at conception , why are Christians “born again”? Shouldn’t they be ‘”conceived again”? And what if the fetus grows up to be gay? With an anti-homosexual stance, how can we assume that a baby doesn’t grow up to be gay and therefore not ‘innocent’? And what’s with being ‘pro-life’ in the case of an embryo or fetus, but okay with killing doctors or voting for a president who bombs nations where thousands of innocent children and *gasp* pregnant women are killed?
I am sad that someone felt they had to go to this extreme to stop this man, but I feel no sadness at his passing. I just viewed several pictures of babies that were victims of late-term abortion. They were not ‘unformed masses of tissue that proponents of late-term abortion would have you believe. They were completly formed children who were butchered because someone made the decision that they were somehow unworthy of life. Obviously the laws will not protect them. The fact that there has been large protests over decades with no change while thousands more are murdered tells me that. I hope those who disagree will research and view those pictures of murdered children and then maybe someday we will become a nation of ‘compassion’ over politics. Maybe we will be a nation worth saving.
If we can redefine murder once, why not do it again? I think the shooter’s (Scott Roeder) legal defense should be that he performed a ‘late term abortion’ ‘Dr.’ Tiller was in roughly the 92nd Trimester and his life diminished our ability to have the life we wished we could live. Abortion is not murder right? What’s good for the fetus is good for the ‘Dr.’
Hi EdT — I’m okay. Making some changes on this end, tho. I’ll probably say something about them eventually.
polidad — Presumably you think Dr. Tiller dragged pregnant women in off the street, since you don’t advocate “late abortions” for them as well.
Or do you?
polidad – I think the proper term would be “post-partum abortion”. However, I don’t think any state has laws that permit abortion in the 92nd trimester, so that defense likely wouldn’t fly. And just curious, what was it about the Dr’s life that “diminished [our] ability to have the life [we] wished [we] could live” – and what is this “we” **** anyway!?
In the future, please educate yourself on what you are about to say, lest people think you are a http://www.flickr.com/photos/etee/3583683714/in/set-72157618984559665/
~EdT.