Unsurprisingly, on this blog's comboxes and elsewhere, some are blaming the entire pro-life movement for Tiller's murder, and blaming specifically pro-life rhetoric for supposedly inciting the abortion doc's murderer. There's not much point in objecting to this at this point; the people who say such things are looking for an excuse to despise the pro-life cause, and this lawless vigilante has now given them one.
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.
But we can't let ourselves off that easily. Our words are not spoken in a vacuum. In our media today, they are amplified to a degree previously unimaginable. It seems to me that this puts a special obligation on all of us, whatever our cause or political stance, to choose carefully what we say, and how we say it. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules here, but the virtue of prudence in speech really is important to observe. We live in a time when red-hot rhetoric, on both the right and the left, sells; I saw a TV producer friend over the weekend here, a guy who used to work for cable news back in the US, and told him how frustrated I was that there is no place on broadcast media for nuanced or moderate voices. They don't want light, they want heat, and the only way to get heat is to have intense friction. So our media culture valorizes intense emotion, and we are acculturated to embracing our passions, especially our anger, as a matter of justice and authenticity.
This will not end well for us. It never has.
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Nobody expects you to be quiet or go away. What I expect is that most people will begin to see you for the brutish, hateful thugs you are.
You are trully beside the point, because nobody, by my knowledge condamn
the pro-life activists for beeing pro-life, but for supporting, backing and praising Roeder! For comparing him with Rosa Parks. What now? Gandhi, Parks and Roeder! Since when civil disobedience equates murder?
And after all, why are these people so assumptious that they must extent their power on other people's bodies? As some "Jill" said on a blogg: MY body, MY choice.
I live in a country where all my youth and early adulthood were bullied and humiliated and plagued by people like these out spoken pro-life activists, only they called themselves Communists.
Pro-life is good, animal rights are OK, ecology is all right too; but when murders are done in their name, of course they have nothing to do with that, but the perpetrators are murderers and not heroes. (Still today there is people saying that communism is not bad either!)
Dear Rod,
I'm a faithful Christian who has had to help support a young sister, age 12 at the time, through her late-term abortion with Dr. Tiller. I want to let you know that the doctor was not a violent man and you shouldn't characterize him as such. My sister was raped by my father since the age of six, and eventually she became pregnant. She hid the pregnancy out of shame until the family inevitably put things together, and our family hid this out of shame.
We didn't visit doctors or give her proper pre-natal care for fear that they would put our father in jail and bring further shame upon the family. She began having health issues at a late stage, and it became apparent she was physically too small and too young to carry the pregnancy full term. She cried and cried every night telling me how she wanted to kill herself, how this was all her fault and I had to reassure her it wasn't so. I eventually snuck her to an emergency room, where we found something horrible had gone wrong with the pregnancy. My sister was basically being torn apart from the inside.
After seeing a high-risk specialist at the hospital, we were referred to Dr. Tiller because he was the only one with expertise to understand the later pregnancies, what would be best for the woman and baby. After an examination and long discussion of all of the options, we decided the risk of losing both mom and child was too high if the pregnancy continued. Dr. Tiller prayed with my sister and I a lot about the decision, giving us every opportunity to go a different path. He was a very religious, peaceful and thoughtful man. I know this is difficult for many of us Christians to comprehend, but this is the truth. Calling him violent, a Nazi even, that is not the truth. I think one of the Christian's highest orders is to try and find the truth. You just don't know what a Godsend this man was to us. I can't begin to describe.
I fear for other young girls and women who might find themselves in my sister's position, but no longer have anywhere to turn.
Rest in Peace, Dr. Tiller.
Eleanor
Obviously, it can appear to be nothing but the worst sort of callousness that would dare to comment after a heart-rending story such as Eleanor's, but I have to admit it raises some questions for me. Why could not the baby have been delivered by C-section when the problem was discovered "at a late stage" in the pregnancy? Also, to be clear, Tiller was not a specialist in high-risk pregnancies, in terms of saving both mother and child. Eleanor does not say how long ago this took place, but for the past several years, possibly even decades, Tiller did not deliver babies. Women went to Tiller to ensure that their babies were NOT born. Again, he was not a specialist in helping women in high-risk pregnancy situations. He was a specialist in providing "safe" late-term abortions.
Right-to-lifers will never cooperate on preventing terror until right-to-lifers SUFFER terror, regularly.
In other words, it's PAYBACK TIME.
After Sunday, right-to-lifism is murder and ALL right-to-lifers are murderers. This information comes directly from God and it cannot be contradicted nor even questioned.
Professor Robert P. George of Princeton is a MURDERER (i. e. a right-to-lifer). He murders every day and he will go on doing so UNLESS SOMEONE STOPS HIM.
Shooting Professor George in the head would be a sin and a crime and a tragedy and vewy vewy sad and I hope no one will ever do it, but it would be NO WORSE than the murders (right-to-life activities) Professor George commits every day.
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