Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism? Abortion Doctor Murdered

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Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita abortion doctor, was murdered inside the lobby of his Wichita church.

Tiller is better known to Fox News' viewers under the neutral moniker 'Tiller the Baby Killer', courtesy of Bill O'Reilly, who has covered him extensively. It is more than conceivable that O'Reilly's negative coverage helped making him a target even more so than he already was.

Dr. Tiller was the fourth doctor in the United States who performed abortions to be assassinated. Dr. Tiller has a history of having been targeted by abortion opponents. He had once seen his clinic bombed; in 1993, an abortion opponent shot him in both arms. He was also the defendant in a series of legal challenges intended to shut down his operations, including two grand juries that were convened after citizen-led petition drives.

The weirdest interpretation from the right I have read so far was that the murder was a false flag operation by liberals to allow them to crack down on the Christian pro-life movement ... Riiight. That is way more plausible than that some religious vigilante decided to take things in his own hands

 

I don't think I've mentioned this on these boards before, but: anyone who thinks that a fetus is a child should be emulating the unnamed gunman. I mean, really. Anyone who thinks America alone murders approximately one million infants year in and year out and is content to just hope that a conservative justice is appointed to the Supreme Court and overturns Roe v Wade? Is...hell, I don't even know how to describe such a person.

 

Well, many of the people who do think abortion is a crime probably do prefer taking legal recourse over domestic terrorism? The principle of the rule of law is well-ingrained in most Western societies, after all. I think most of the people who are against abortion do not think killing doctors is the right way to go either.

 

Right. They prefer taking legal recourse over domestic terrorism when there're a million infants being murdered each and every year. That seems to me to be a very odd arranging of priorities; any moral schema in which social stability and the rule of law are more important than halting an ongoing atrocity on a scale that beggars the imagination is a moral schema in need of a reworking.

 

Putting aside the abortion matter, the guy is dead. Don't pick him over like he was a piece of meat. People agree or don't agree with what he did for a living, that's not important, he was just a man doing his job and helping people

 

Silvery,
absolutely, we better don't forget that this is indeed about murder, tragic for the person and for his family. The problem is that for his opponents he was not just a man doing his job and helping people, but a wicked killer who ran a 'death mill' and who was murdering babies en masse, for money, and who kept cheating justice. The man was constantly demonised by the pro-lifers in the US. He has been harassed and attacked for more than three decades.

Operation Rescue has put down their 'Tiller Watch' segment of their web page, but the Google cache is still there. And here's one of Bill O'Reilly's verdicts on Dr. Tiller:

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Just as disturbing as the murder itself is the motivation and world view of the killer. AMaster makes the correct observation that a person who sees a million babies murdered every year is unlikely to rely on legal recourse to stop abortion. The view in itself and the suggested injustice is sufficiently aggravating to suggest them to have little qualms about killing one 'baby killer' in response to all that presumable carnage. That means they are so firm in their views as to not accept countervailing court verdicts and laws.

There is a good explanation for the murders presumable motive, that supports AMaster's view. The murder might have been a reaction to a recent legal victory for Tiller. He was accused of performing late-term abortions without adequate oversight. After the jury exonerated him, anti-abortion activists might have felt he "got off the hook", and apparently at least one of them took matters into his own hands.

The comments on the murders coming from the pro life camp say more or less that the murder was bad tactically because it puts the movement in a bad light. They will perhaps even say it was the wrong thing to do and a crime. You are unlikely to hear that this murder was morally unjustified, at least not without blaming the victim.

 

Well, I'm doing some research on this Tiller guy, and while he was performing late term abortions, it states that he would only perform these abortions in the cases where there was severe birth defects or abnormalities in the baby that would make it unlikely that it could survive, or where carrying the baby to term would cause permantent physical injury to the woman. That's why he's won all of the times when he's been taken to court. Even his late term abortions were considered justifiable under law. Even if you disagree with Tiller's actions on moral grounds, you cannot condone this type of vigilante justice. It also seems to me that if you're pro-life, murdering an abortion doctor would be anathema to your moral philosophy.

 

My sentiments exactly. It seems that just about every pro-life organization out there has come out and forcefully condemned this, for which they deserve merit. But I also don't see that they had any other choice. PR101: you can't not come out against the murdering of someone. I'm also sure there is a less-than-realistic minority within the pro-life movement who were pleased with this outcome, considering it long-delayed justice. But all movements have their unreasonable/fanatical fringe, unfortunately.

I also would have chosen a slightly-less inflammatory title* for this topic had I started it (and I almost did, but Rags beat me to it), but that's me.

* EDIT: having said that, however, there really is no other word better to describe this than terrorism, is there.

 

Aldeth has the right of it. This murder was a terrible thing that should never have happened. Dr. Tiller may have been everything the right extremists painted him as, but this action was still murder, unjudtifiable, and wrong.

I will pray for both Dr. Tiller (I know, it's too late, but never mind that) and the murderer.

 

DR,
granted, but, when people murder for political reasons, that's terrorism. When others murder for religious reasons, what's the difference? The FBI defines terrorism as:

Banning abortion and punish abortionists is as much a political as a social objective.

 

I agree, Rags (see the addendum to my last post). I just think the terms "christianist" and "terrorism" are extremely loaded and, as such, should be used with caution. They're both appropriate in this instance, however. So we're essentially in agreement.

 

The activists working against him were relentless. It shudders me which (potentially ruinous) costs they imposed on Dr. Tiller and the legal system:

The whole campaign of trials against Tiller was political from the onset. One nuisance trial after another... That last attempt was a frivolous lawsuit, if I ever saw one. Considering all the energy and money they spend on their protracted campaign against Tiller - and a site feature titled 'Tiller Watch' suggests nothing less - the anti-abortionists either wanted to see Tiller in jail or financially ruined. One way or another, they were out to get him. Scary.

 

I've heard quite the opposite, that at least some of them have commended the killer as a "hero," which I iunderstand is fairly typical of those organizations.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/31053506#31053506

 

I oppose abortion on demand whole heartedly, and I also see it as murder. But I would never in a million years shoot, injure or physically assault an abortion provider. Two wrongs don't make a right, to use a cliche. I know that the people who did this identify themselves as Christians, and I would go so far as to say that they are fundamentalists, but I would remind you all that not all Christians are in agreement with the fundamentalists, and you will find that most Christian organizations will condemn this sort of cold-blooded murder whole-heartedly. I can't see many churches trying to paint the shooter as a hero. I know for a fact mine wouldn't.

 

Why? It is entirely possible to both oppose the murder of babies and support, say, the execution of convicted serial murderers and rapists. What distinguishes the two is innocence and the lack thereof.

What's interesting about that point of view is that it only holds true so long as such incidents remain isolated acts. There are tens of millions of Americans who believe that life begins at conception. If even a small fraction of them acted accordingly, we would see a paradigm shift. What the new paradigm would be, well, who knows; but we do know that the current paradigm is supposedly unacceptable to them.

Why not? I realize I may very well be coming across, mm, a bit strong, but why would you never in a million years physically assault someone who regularly murders infants and yet enjoys the protection of the law?

It's a serious question, believe it or not, and open to any of the board's resident pro-lifers.

 

That's not the case at hand, AMaster, and it is quite the strawman you have constructed there. Dr. Tiller is not a convict. He has been to court numerous times, and has been found not guilty. Dr. Tiller is as innocent as (presumably you and) I am. If pro-life supporters view it to be morally wrong to kill those innocent, then killing Dr. Tiller would be anathema to their moral philosophy. This wasn't a state-sanctioned execution of a convict. It was extreme vigilante justice at best, and domestic terrorism at worst.

I agree. About the best I've heard from these organizations are things like, "While we don't condone this action, we don't condemn it either," which sounds a lot like tacit approval. Or much worse, "Dr. Tiller has reaped what he has sown."

 

I don't think so. I find it interesting that LKD pointed out how he'd applaud a father who'd torture in order to save his daughter from rape or possibly worse in the torture thread. If this is about murdering infants then why is not beating up and torturing an abortion doctor applauded? I mean he is guilty of murdering all these infants in the eyes of the pro-life movement. Did not killing him remove a great evil from this planet? Just like the death of a murderous dictator?

 

I do not know of any Christian church that advocates killing those that the church deems evil. I was very active in church the first 20 years of my life, and I never heard this stated once. Maybe it's because of the "Thou shall not kill" Commandment.

 

I'm sure the Churches themselves don't do it. I think if they did they'd be in the courts quite quickly. It's not them I'm talking about it's more about the individual Christians. I doubt the Church teaches that it's wrong to intervene when they see someone raped or murdered on the street and such people are normally considered heroes allthough they achieve it by kicking the asses of the rapists/murderers. Should not the same measures apply towards doctors that are murdering dozens of infants yearly? I'm just wondering what the difference between these two scenarios really is? Or is murdering an infant somehow less severe than murdering adults?

 

Um. Yes, you think Tiller was innocent, I think Tiller was innocent. LKD thinks Tiller was a murderer. From that perspective, Tiller's not exactly innocent. That his behavior wasn't criminal doesn't matter in the slightest. Why is this hard to understand?

Now you do.