Saletan: Why are Pro-Lifers Sorry?
William Saletan at Slate gets to the knife-edge of the line pro-lifers are attempting to straddle in the death of Dr. George Tiller. In a piece called, Is it Wrong to Murder an Abortionist?, Saletan says these folks don’t seem to believe their own rhetoric. If they did, they would be like Tiller’s assassin, killing every abortion doctor they could find. After all, if someone were shooting students on a college campus or old folks at a nursing home, no one would say they regret that things went too far when the gunman was killed.
Tiller’s murder is different from all previous murders of abortion providers. If you kill an ordinary abortionist, somebody else will step in. But if you kill the guy at the end of the line, some of his patients won’t be able to find an alternative. You will have directly prevented abortions.
That seems to be what Tiller’s alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, had in mind…
So is Roeder getting support from the nation’s leading pro-life groups? Not a bit. They have roundly denounced the murder. The National Right to Life Committee says it opposes “any form of violence to fight the violence of abortion,” preferring instead “to work through educational and legislative activities to ensure the right to life for unborn children, people with disabilities and older people.”
…I applaud these statements. They affirm the value of life and nonviolence, two principles that should unite us. But they don’t square with what these organizations purport to espouse…
You think you’re pro-life. You tell yourself that abortion is murder. Maybe you even say that when a pollster calls. But like most of the other people who say such things in polls, you don’t mean it literally.
…If you don’t accept what [Roeder] did, then maybe it’s time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it’s the latter.
Amen. Enough with the Hitler comparisons, the overwrought bombast, the entire “abortion is murder” meme. Murder is murder. Abortion is only a very regrettable solution when all the other options seem worse.
