For those unfamiliar with Tiller, he was an abortionist in Wichita who had become over the years, as the New York Times put it, “a focal point for those around the country who opposed [abortion],” largely because his clinic “is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.” He was shot in his church, where he was serving as an usher.
I’d missed this story earlier today, and I expect I’ll be processing this for a while, but I’ve seen several reactions with which I agree wholeheartedly. Most basically, Princeton’s Robert George was right to say,
Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. . . . By word and deed, let us teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion. Every human life is precious. George Tiller’s life was precious. We do not teach the wrongness of taking human life by wrongfully taking a human life. Let our “weapons” in the fight to defend the lives of abortion’s tiny victims, be chaste weapons of the spirit.
Robert Stacy McCain had some equally wise and true words:
One reason I so despise such criminal idiocy is that, as a student of history, I cannot think of a single instance in which assassination has produced anything good, no matter how evil or misguided the victim, nor how well-intentioned or malevolent the assassin. . . .
Those who slew Caesar did not save the Roman republic. Marat’s death only incited the Jacobins to greater terror. Booth’s pistol conjured up a spirit of vengeance against the South more terrible than war itself. Assassination is an act of nihilism. Whatever the motive of the crime, the horror it evokes always inspires a draconian response, and involves other consequences never intended by the criminal.
He also notes,
Sometimes, when the stubborn wickedness of a people offends God, the Almighty witholds His divine protection, permitting those sinners to have their own way, following the road to destruction so that they are subjected to evil rulers and unjust laws. Never, however, does the wise and faithful Christian resort to the kind of lawlessness practiced with such cruelty today in Kansas.
Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom has some excellent comments as well:
This was an act of terrorism, as well as of murder. It was no more or less an act of political assassination than any of the bombings advocated by Bill Ayers. It was no more or less a violation of civil rights than the New Black Panther polling intimidation that the Obama Justice Department decided to drop ex post facto. There is either one justice for all, or there is justice for none.
Let’s ask ourselves whether there’s been a hate crime committed here. Has there? If so, aren’t Islamists guilty of hate crimes? Should the fact that they commit such crimes largely against minority believers in their own countries be cause for more stringent sanctions and severer punishments? Do the continuous legal assaults on Sarah Palin constitute a hate crime?
Donald Douglas is right to complain about Andrew Sullivan’s selective outrage. . . . This sorry episode should be an example of how absolute is the sanctity of life; unfortunately, that’s not what people will teach, and that’s not what people will learn.
The president, of course, has weighed in with a condemnation of the assassination; that’s part of his job, and it’s unquestionably warranted. That said, I have to agree with the folks at Stop the ACLU about this:
On one hand, Obama is correct. We cannot solve the abortion issue, or others, through murder. We are a Nation of Law, not a Nation of Men. On the other hand, Obama never seems to work up much shock and outrage at the murder of over 2 million babies every year, many of them during the 3rd trimester. I wonder why?
Finally, go read Sister Toldjah’s superb post, which I’m not going to try to excerpt.
I’m not going to try to match these folks for profundity (not at the moment, anyway), or repeat what they’ve written, except to say that I agree with them; what Tiller did was evil, and what his killer did was evil. Those who argue for this sort of violence claim to be agents of justice, but that cannot be—it’s a response to injustice that is itself unjust, and an action that denies its own premises; you cannot kill abortionists without undermining your argument that abortion is wrong. It’s ultimately, inherently, necessarily self-defeating—which is characteristic of nihilism, one reason I think R. S. McCain’s diagnosis is spot-on. It’s also not the way of Christ, who defeated evil by surrendering to it, not by leading a paramilitary team to assassinate Herod.
And so, for whatever it may be worth, I do categorically and unreservedly reject and abhor the assassination of George Tiller; and though as a Protestant I don’t believe in praying for the dead, I do honestly commit myself to hope that God will have mercy on his soul. No, he doesn’t deserve it—but then, neither do any of the rest of us.