Every time a pro-lifer says that abortion is murder, every time a pro-lifer claims that someone who is pro-choice is pro-abortion, every time there is a crowd trying to intimidate a woman who is going into a clinic that offers abortions, every time a condemnation of violence is followed by a justification for that violence there is reason to conclude that there are people in the pro-life movement who believe they have the right to use violence to get what could not be achieved by politics and legislation.
If you don’t want anyone to think that you agree with those who do advocate intimidation and violence, then you need to condemn the inflammatory language before it leads to murder. You need to condemn those who choose to help the murderers of doctors avoid capture. You need to help turn the rhetoric down.

Michele, I commend you. You are perhaps the only pro-life blogger here on Beliefnet that has roundly condemned this murder without taking a slap at the pro-choice side. Thank you for that.
However, I would take issue with you on the following statement: “No one in our community could ever get the impression that we would support or condone such actions.” When vocal members of the pro-life community such as Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, and yes, even pro-life bloggers, constantly refer to abortion providers as murderers, and compare their actions to those of the Nazi exterminators, sooner or later someone on the pro-life side is going to take those remarks seriously and try to do something about it.

I think Dr. Tiller should have shot back. I will!

[also 8:56]
I agree with RJohnson about your willingness not to undermine your condemnation of murder.
My comment above was primarily directed at those who have been pushing anti-abortion rhetoric to the edge of incitement and then acting surprised that one of their own would act on the implications of their rhetoric.

During the Clinton administration, while policies to both ensure a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion and policies that greatly reduced the need for one were enacted, violence toward reproductive health services across the board were increased. These “pro-life” groups are willing to protect the unborn and unwilling to engage in any dialogue that serves to reduce the number of intentioned pregnancies through education, sending out the Bristol Palins of the world to close the barn door after the horse has escaped.
These people are terrorists. It’s that simple. They terrorized women for going to these clinics without knowing anything about the history or background of any of these patients. They terrorize doctors and nurses who perform constitutionally protected services and have killed and maimed these workers many times.
It’s time to start treating them like the terrorists that they are. Perhaps when the “pro-life” community becomes as afraid of these groups as, say, a black minister on Chicago’s south side, or as the pro-choice groups are,(and can we please stop calling anyone “pro abortion?)we can have some meaningful discourse about reducing the need and the number of abortions in a civilized manner.

My own mother was advised to abort me for medical reasons–and I have a lifelong gratitude she did not. But I don’t think Dr. Tiller was necessarily evil in the ways he has been made out to be. As I noted elsewhere:
We may disagree, completely with the admission criteria to Dr. Tiller’s care, but it would help the discussion if someone posted what they were:
” Admission Criteria
In order to offer you an appointment, we require that a physician refer you to our center. In addition, we need your genetic counselor or doctor to provide us with gestational and diagnostic information regarding your pregnancy. Over the past twenty-five years, we have had experience with pregnancy terminations in such situations as anencephaly, Trisomy 13, 18, and 21, polycystic kidney disease, spina bifida, hydrocephalus, Potter’s syndrome, lethal dwarfism, holoprosencephaly, anterior and posterior encephalocele, non-immune hydrops, and a variety of other very significant abnormalities.”
Many who post here would say that these children should be allowed to live with their illnesses. I almost always would, myself. But a simple provider of infanticide the doctor was not.

I think the Commonweal article I linked to at the end of the previous thread makes RJohnson’s point: language matters.
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=3231

Interesting link, Moonshadow. There actually was one person who went to the gates of Auschwitz and successfully demanded the release of 411 of his fellow countrymen, the aptly named King Christian X of Denmark. We don’t know the real effect simply witnessing at abortion clinics has. Of course there are negatives, but if the objective is saving an unborn child, maybe, just maybe, the Christian protestors at abortion clinics accomplished something.
That they won’t be able to accomplish now. Still, providing for one mother’s needs is better than picketing 10 abortion clinics, IMHO.

Interesting post. After I’ve fully absorbed what you’ve written – I’ll give a more informed opinion.

I agree that anyone using the term pro-abortion fans the flames of hate in some people.
O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, and others have blown hard on the flames of hate toward Dr Tiller.
O’Reilly has discussed Dr. Tiller in 29 shows.
Steven Waldman has several interesting blogs on the subject.
Waldman admitted he did not know that some of the babies were already dead. Other examples, were babies that had no way of surving after birth.
The abortions Dr. Tiller performed are not black and white for everyone.
The killer’s associations:
http://www.kansas.com/news/tiller/story/834448.html
The killer was associated with ant-government groups, which is the subject of one of Waldman’s blogs. He points out how the right attacked the Obama admin. for issuing statements against the “really” far right groups.
The killer has a history going back to at least 1996.
He once walked into an abortion clinic and asked to speak with the doctor. After starring at him, he said “now I know what you look like.”

I believe that the act of elective late term abortion as performed by George Tiller is disgusting and evil.
And the act of killing Tiller in a church is just as disgusting and evil.
I will not attempt to justify the killing with how reprehensible the killing of an unborn at nearly full term is.
Nor will I lessen the evil that Tiller advocated for and did because he is dead.

Perhaps many of these tragedies (abortions and murders) could be prevented of both sides would stop denouncing the other long enough to agree that they both want to prevent unwanted pregnancies for a whole range of excellent reasons and agreed to work toegther to create programs that would be effective in doing so.
This would require elements of the anti-abortion community to work out differences over the use of artificial birth control.
This would also require the pro-abortion community to deal with the idea that demanding unlimited access to abortion may not be the most humane policy.

Dr. Tiller’s cases were not unwanted pregnancies. It is easy to be self-righteous. No matter what decision a woman makes, the decision has terrible results.
http://tinyurl.com/mwabje
“My brother and his wife received a diagnosis at the beginning of the second trimester’s ultrasound that their child had anencephaly – a condition where the fetus’ skull does not completely close and the brain forms partially outside the skull. It is a neural tube defect, similar to spina bifida, but it happens higher up on the body. They were told the child would die before, or shortly after, birth. There was no doubt about the diagnosis. My brother and his wife were encouraged by their doctor to go to Kansas for an abortion, the closest place where they could obtain one in the second trimester.
It was an agonizing decision, but they chose not to have the abortion for religious reasons. The pregnancy went to term and the baby lived for several weeks. She was surrounded by love for the brief time she was here.
I wish I could say unequivocally that they made the right decision, but the long-term effects on my sister-in-law’s mental well-being have been serious. She is very much changed from the person that she was before.
Imagine what it is like to walk around in your third trimester, obviously pregnant, while well-meaning people ask you about this baby that you don’t expect to be taking home from the hospital. Innocuous comments become incredibly hurtful in this context. Then imagine the baby survives and days later you take home this child who will die. In case you might relax and pretend for a little while that everything is okay, a hospice nurse comes to your house every couple of days and reminds you the signs and symptoms of death. Every time you open the refrigerator you see the narcotics you’ve been given to ease the baby’s suffering once things get really bad.
Eventually, this baby dies a grueling death in your arms and you go home to an empty house. You want another baby, but are paralyzed by the thought of having another child with the same condition, yet you desperately want a child that is related to the child you lost. You find yourself unable to conceive and resentful of those who have many healthy children so easily. The infertility takes its toll on your marriage. The suffering and injustice takes its toll on your faith.
I often wonder what would have happened if they had the abortion. I’m not sure my sister-in-law could have lived with that decision, but at least she was given the gift of making a deliberate choice and this did make a difference in how my brother and his wife perceived their circumstances. How do people respond when they feel trapped?
I agree with those who believe abortion is a selfish choice, but in some cases the cost to the self is too high and the benefit to the other is too hard to determine. I’m afraid that the murder of Dr. Tiller will hasten the decline in doctors willing to do this work and deny desperate people of options.

The pro-choicers have their martyr now. They don’t have to compromise, they merely have to persecute.

Charles Cosimano feeling quite the victim of the justice system:
they merely have to persecute.
The word is prosecute.
Don’t you think it’s enough that the anti-abortion crowd has managed to get the supposedly liberal press to buy the “pro-life” frame that they have been selling?

That’s one example, Julie. I have a friend that was in that circumstance. She terminated in a hospital, not an abortion clinic.
I disagree with you on the sweetness and light in the late term abortion clinic of Tiller. That doesn’t make me “self righteous”, that accusation merely gives a hint in your ability to fling accusations.

…the pro-life community would condemn the killing of anyone, that’s the whole point of our movement. We value human life because it’s been made in the image of God and it is not our place to end it.
That is certainly NOT a true statement since that is exactly who killed Dr. Tiller and as most pro-lifers are for capital punishment and are accepting of colateral damage of innocents in war, and are supporters of hand guns which kill thousands each year.
I am pro-life. Instead of concentrating on abortiion and the politics of the movement, I rather would we seek methods for encouraging women to carry their child to term and assisting her with adoption, or care after the birth. We help the woman, we save the child. The pro-life movement has been a joke for the last 36 years. All it is, is a colossal fund raising mechanism for the far right that guible Christians got caught up in. It is interesting with all money they have raised in all these years, and all the power they have had in that time, nothing has changed. Perhaps the money could have been used to help those women, rather than lining the pockets of the “pro-life” candidates.

Your Name – June 1, 2009 9:58 PM
“…the pro-life community would condemn the killing of anyone, that’s the whole point of our movement. We value human life because it’s been made in the image of God and it is not our place to end it.”
That is not a true statement because many individuals that identify as pro-life are not against the death penalty.

She sounds like CAIR

” I can’t even begin to fathom the thinking behind it.”
Babbling Chick, there’s rarely any “thinking” that goes into radical right-wing ‘religious’ extremist nutjobs and their actions. It’s all predicated by and informed by hate and not much else.
Hatred of the ‘other’, the ‘different’. And guess who is a major facilitator? If you can’t guess correctly, I’ll give you a clue and lend you a mirror.

“No one in our community could ever get the impression that we would support or condone such actions.”
Thus proving irony is not dead.

“That doesn’t make me “self righteous”
Correct, MzEllen. What makes you self-righteous is your statement:
“Nor will I lessen the evil that Tiller advocated for and did because he is dead.”
For the women that needed the services of Dr. Tiller, I doubt very much they considered his services “evil”. A necessity is probably far closer to the truth.
Self-righteousness is determining choices for other people. I’m so glad you’re not the boss of me.

Self-righteousness is determining choices for other people? So a late-term abortion would be pretty darned self-righteous, wouldn’t it?

Although I condemn the murder of Dr. Tiller, I still see capital punishment or taking up the sword to protect human life or even to liberate slaves as lawful for Christians, even though Christ said “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Although I do not justify murder, I would also argue that abortions diminish respect for human life generally, and so Tiller is in some ways responsible for his own death. The main thing is for all of us creatures to be ready to face our Maker whenever He chooses that our mortal life on earth is over.

What choice did I make for anybody? Zero.
Tiller wasn’t ashamed of anything he did – he was proud. I have an opinion about what he was proud of.

Lots of specialists state that mortgage loans aid people to live the way they want, just because they are able to feel free to buy necessary goods. Moreover, various banks offer bank loan for young and old people.