As you all know, George Tiller, a prominent doctor and abortion provider in Kansas, was shot and killed by an anti-abortion activist yesterday. By all sane accounts he was a wonderful man.
President Obama’s reaction:
I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.
United States Attorney General Eric Holder has called Tiller’s killing "an abhorrent act of violence." I agree. But Obama's and Holder's statements also reflect a disastrous failure to appreciate the fervent anti-abortion position, to our continued peril.
Obama's and Holder's responses, and the reactions of the progressive blogosphere that I have seen, fail to appreciate the psychological and, yes, intellectual underpinnings of the fervent anti-abortion position.
To use Obama's phrase, anti-abortion adherents believe abortion, no matter the stage of the pregnancy, is itself a "heinous act of violence." Not illogically given their premise that "abortion is murder," they therefore believe that Tiller’s death has revenged and prevented thousands of other "murders." If their premise were true, Tiller’s death would seem quite justifiable -- and in their minds, there is no doubt that the premise is true.
Hence such believers will read Obama’s and Holder’s statements and be galvanized to further action. While it is bad enough when your leaders do not agree with you, it is even worse when your leaders appear to grossly misunderstand your position. This breeds a hopelessness that will lead to further violent acts. After all, when you cannot depend on your leaders to properly understand your position, much less take action on it, you are left with no option but to take matters into your own hands -- particularly regarding what you perceive to be matters of life and death.
Prominent anti-abortion activist Randall Terry’s reaction to news of Tiller’s death perfectly captures what I'm talking about:
George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder. Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.
Even if Mr. Terry is not just giving lipservice when he advocates "peaceful" protests, "peacefully" here does not mean what you think it does. Remember: to him and other anti-abortion activists, the peaceful thing to do is to stop abortion providers. with whatever tactics are necessary.
Until we engage the intellectual, moral stance of the anti-abortion crowd, it is reasonable to expect more of the same.
Cross-posted with contextual differences at HERE.am.