2 Sundays ago (May 31st) Dr. George Tiller was murdered while ushering in his Kansas home church (sounds like a Truman Capote book). You all have heard about it. Those of you who watch CNN religiously have heard more than enough about this.
When I first heard the news I had a split second thought of, “was it justified…the murder?” Now I totally recognize how stupid that thought is, and it is probably stupid for me to even say I had the thought…but I did. There it is, I question whether a murder was justified.
Why did I think that? Well, Dr. Tiller has been involved in killing thousands of unborn children, and while he was never convicted it has been widely speculated that he has performed many late-term abortions for women who made last minute decisions to not give birth to their child. What he did not do was ever break a law.
How can we weigh or measure this? We have the value of one life, which was used to end many others, and we have the value of thousands of lives which were never able to be lived. That is a moral conundrum.
As I’ve thought about it one thing has stayed embedded in my brain: To kill a person because he is killing others is the most illogical thing possible.
I understand the anger with abortion and the anger of killing innocent lives, but there has to be another answer.
Frank Schaeffer said:
The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as “murderers.” And today once again the “pro-life” leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I’d like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I — and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church — all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.
How do you answer this moral conundrum?
