Anti-abortion vigilantes are killing us too

My good friend Jill Stanek, with whom I seldom disagree on anything, has written an uncharacteristically flawed WND column titled "With Roeder trial, abortion dodges another bullet," Feb. 3, 2010, with which I must take issue.

Regarding the murder of abortionist George Tiller, she argues essentially that Scott Roeder's jury should have been allowed to find that stalking, ambushing and blowing out the doctor's brains wasn't murder because George Tiller was an abortionist. Jill emphasizes that she is personally opposed to vigilante assassinations. She says that she might not have voted to reduce Scott Roeder's offense to manslaughter had she been given that option as his juror. But she then asserts that jurors should be permitted to consider the horror of abortion as a mitigating circumstance when deciding the fates of those who kill abortionists. This chilling, "eye-for-an-eye" ethic is difficult to distinguish from the barbaric apologetic used by the "Army of God" anarchists who cheer on sociopaths such as Scott Roeder. It is a license to kill.

If this becomes the law, will it also be less than murder to gun down nurses who assist in performing abortions? Non-medical abortion clinic staff? Pro-abortion judges? Politicians? If it isn't murder for us to kill them, will it be murder for them to kill us? Where does this end?

Jill also endorses Roeder's failed attempt to establish that killing George Tiller wasn't murder because Tiller was allegedly committing illegal abortions for which he wasn't being brought to justice. George Tiller was never convicted of aborting unlawfully. A very pro-life Kansas prosecutor named Phill Kline couldn't even nail him for what amounted to paperwork violations. And even if bias by other prosecutors protected Tiller from further pursuit, is a lynch mob really the proper antidote for prosecutorial corruption?

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The U.S. Supreme Court cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (which trump all Kansas law to the contrary) ensure that no abortionist is acting unlawfully in performing an abortion if the pregnancy they terminate threatens a mother's "health." Doe ruled explicitly that health includes "all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age –relevant to the well-being of the patient." By that absurd definition, any abortion protects any woman's health if any abortionist says it does. And Tiller colleague Warren Hern, M.D., has argued that every abortion protects the health of every aborting mother. That tautology is the very essence of injustice – but should we really correct it by taking the law into our own hands?

Jill's objection to the judge's refusal to allow Mr. Roeder's trial to become a referendum on abortion is a very dangerous argument. I direct The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform, which displays large abortion photos on the sides and backs of billboard trucks. We also fly abortion photo billboards, which are towed by aircraft. We routinely receive death threats from passersby who angrily accuse us of making post-abortive women suicidal and traumatizing children. We are frequently threatened with arrest and have had to go to trial to avoid prosecution for displaying these terrible photos. We fought one recent case up through the federal appeals courts, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. When we won, our opponents argued that we escaped justice. Should they be permitted to use lethal force to stop us when the law won't?

Just a few months ago one of our volunteers, James Pouillon, was shot and killed by a man who said he was angry that Mr. Pouillon was using our abortion photos to upset students outside a high school. If Scott Roeder had been allowed to argue that killing George Tiller wasn't murder because Tiller was doing something awful, why shouldn't James Pouillon's killer be allowed to argue that killing Pouillon wasn't murder because Pouillon was doing something awful? I am not making that offensive equation, but aggressive defense lawyers will. If Mr. Roeder can turn his trial into a referendum on doing abortion, why can't Mr. Pouillon's killer turn his trial into a referendum on showing abortion?

When George Tiller was murdered, the abortion industry was quick to accuse the pro-life movement of creating a climate that was conducive to attacks on abortionists. That was a lie designed to silence our criticism of abortion. But when we give Scott Roeder even a partial pass for one of those attacks, we lend credence to the allegation that we are all complicit in the killings.

Mr. Roeder is remorseless. He says he has no regrets for killing George Tiller, whose murder he describes as his "mission." Allowing a jury to find him guilty of mere manslaughter could release him to kill again in less than five years. Now that we know Scott Roeder is a relentless assassin, how could unleashing him not make us culpable?

Jill says that these are decisions more properly left to jurors and parole boards, but she couldn't be more wrong. Jurors are empowered to make findings of fact to which they apply the law as a judge instructs. And judges are bound to instruct the law the legislature enacts. The Kansas Legislature has limited the voluntary manslaughter charge to circumstances involving "unreasonable" beliefs that deadly force was justified. That means the defendant had to be "honestly" confused about the facts, not politically opposed to the law.

And parole boards can release a prisoner before he has served his full sentence, but they have no power to extend that sentence. So we had better make certain the charge accurately describes the misconduct or the punishment cannot possibly fit the crime. Doing otherwise invites unfavorable comparison with Middle Eastern countries that say they have banned "honor killings" but with a wink and a nod release homicidal fathers after brief imprisonments for killing daughters of whose behavior they disapproved. George Tiller was no Jordanian rape victim, but Scott Roeder had no more right to kill him than an Arab father has to shoot his violated daughter.

Mr. Roeder said he felt "relief" that he had saved the babies George Tiller would otherwise have killed. But George Tiller's murder will almost certainly cost the lives of far more babies than will be spared. Not only has he dealt the pro-life movement a terrible blow, but Tiller protégé Leroy Carhart is reported to have hired former staff members from Tiller's now closed clinic. He then retrained his own staff to perform even later-term abortions. He has also announced that to further compensate for the dissolution of Tiller's practice, he is expanding his own to kill babies beyond 24 weeks. It is difficult to see cause for relief in these market-driven business decisions.

Jill concludes by lamenting that the babies were denied "their day in court" when the Roeder judge placed abortion off limits as a proper consideration in determining the defendant's guilt. But she has chosen the wrong forum for a fight over rights of personhood for unborn children. There are two issues here. The first is whether Scott Roeder did or did not murder George Tiller. The second is whether abortion should or should not be legal. The first is a criminal-justice issue, and the second is a public-policy matter. If those two questions are not resolved in separate arenas, the rule of law becomes the real victim.

I don't believe that "meat is murder" but others do, and some of them have threatened to assassinate researchers who kills animals. Should they be allowed to argue that those executions aren't murder because torturing animals to death is awful? Should leniency be granted to safety extremists who assassinate corporate CEOs for the negligent manufacture of products that claim the lives of innocent consumers? What about the violence of radical environmentalists? We are nearing a tipping point. Civilization is truly under siege. I once lived in a country in which disputes were commonly resolved with guns, and I know from personal experience that we don't want to become that country. I pray to God that we will break this cycle while we still can.

Gregg Cunningham is the executive director of the pro-life Center For Bio-Ethical Reform. He is a former two-term member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he sponsored legislation that ended public funding for abortion. He was also a prime sponsor of the Abortion Control Act, which was litigated before the U.S. Supreme Court in Thornburgh v. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. During the second Reagan administration, he served in the U.S. Department of Justice (Legislative Affairs) and later as a special assistant U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles.