The recent killing of Dr.Tiller, the Kansass physician who performed late-term abortions, has provided an occasion for public insinuations that pro-life rhetoric prompted the homicide. However, many pro-life leaders have stepped forward to condemn the murder and underscore the fundamental principals that guide the vast majority of individuals seeking to overturn Roe v Wade, and, in the meantime, save the lives of unborn children through sidewalk counseling, public argument, and education.
"One tactic is to accuse the pro-life movement of inciting people to violence by its “rhetoric” about abortion. When pro-lifers say abortion is a form of violence or even murder, it is said, this invites others to attack those who perform abortions.
"But to get upset about something being called murder, one first has to be revolted by murder. To any misguided soul who decides murder is sometimes okay, the repugnant force of that word has pretty much been lost.
"Abortion advocates themselves, when not using “rhetoric” but simply being candid, have used the same words to describe abortion as pro-life people do. Before Planned Parenthood became a huge network of abortion providers, its educational materials said: “Abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.” Dr. Warren Hern, now among those condemning pro-lifers’ “violent rhetoric,” has said of a late-term abortion method used by himself and Dr. Tiller that his associates “are having strong personal reservations about participating in an operation which they view as destructive and violent... We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator.” Facts are facts."
Robert George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton posted this statement on National Review: "The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. No private individual had the right to execute judgment against him. We are a nation of laws. Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence. Rightly or wrongly, George Tilller was acquitted by a jury of his peers. "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord."
On Crunchy Con, Rod Dreher argues that pro-lifers must always be mindful of the increased power of technology to intensify the reach and potency of political and moral rhetoric. But that fact should not spur the pro-life movement into retreat. Dreher contends:
"It is worth reflecting on, though, to what extent our words are seeds for violent deeds. It cannot be true, however much some pro-choicers may want it to be, that pro-lifers are obliged to shut up and go away because one violent kook killed an abortion doctor. Think about the harsh criticism of the US torture policy under Bush. If, God forbid, someone infuriated by that committed murder against one of the Bush officials who devised the policy, it would be a heinous crime, but most people would understand that torture critics could not be blamed for it. Nor would the severity of their moral indictment of torture be at issue. If torture -- or abortion, or war, or discrimination, or any other morally consequential issue -- is wrong, then we are obliged to speak out against it, no matter what. George Tiller was a violent man, and the fact that he died violently, at the hands of a criminal, does not change who he was and what he did for a living."
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