The Tuscaloosa News publishes a Letter to the Editor from a “pro-lifer” who insists that his movement had nothing to do with Dr. Tiller’s murder:
Babies’ lives saved when Tiller was shot
Published: Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, June 5, 2009 at 9:52 p.m.
Dear Editor: It should come as no surprise that the director of Tuscaloosa’s own abortion clinic, Gloria Gray, admired her murdered colleague, Dr. George Tiller. What a role model he must have been to those who are in the business of taking innocent lives. With tens of thousands of confirmed kills, he made ordinary serial killers look like rank amatures.
I have to disagree with her statement that the anti-abortion groups were directly responsible for his death, though. The only person directly responsible would be the individual who shot him, as well as Dr. Tiller himself, for choosing to engage in an activity that stirs compassionate people to react like Mr. Roeder did.
I don’t think that one murder (or approximately 60,000, for that matter) should be answered by another one, but I also wonder how many babies lives have been saved by this action. “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.”
Larry Jones
Tuscaloosa
Yes, you got that right: The man who shot Tiller was actually “compassionate,” and it’s Tiller’s own fault he was killed — because he provided a legal medical service to women.
At least anti-choicers like this guy are consistent. It’s kind of funny to me to see anti-choice groups claiming to denounce Tiller’s murder and in the same breath call him a baby-killer. To borrow an example from the anti-choice playbook, if there were a man who was open-firing on a pre-school once a week and someone finally killed him, would anyone cast it as a tragedy? If there were a man open-firing on a preschool and the authorities refused to intervene, would “pro-life” groups really promote a policy of non-intervention?
I’m not suggesting that Scott Roeder was a “true” pro-lifer or anything like that; I am suggesting that the vast majority of people recognize that there is a moral difference between a fetus and a born human being, and act accordingly. Most “pro-lifers” don’t hold fertilized eggs or even developing fetuses in the same regard as they hold born children. There’s no massive “pro-life” effort to save all the fertilized eggs that naturally don’t implant and then die. When you point that out, their response is to argue that there’s a difference between intentional killing (i.e., abortion) and natural death (i.e., a fertilized egg not implanting) — which is all fine and good, except that surely they can chew gum and walk at the same time, no? If there were a disease that was wiping out a solid half of five-year-olds, I suspect we would be looking into a cure instead of just shrugging our shoulders and focusing only on child death by homicide. I don’t doubt that fetal life is a concern for most pro-lifers; I don’t think they’re motivated solely out of a desire to control women’s bodies. But I do think that social control, and control of women in particular, is a major factor. Why else oppose birth control and comprehensive sex ed? Why else oppose basic gender equality measures?
Bottom line: Mainstream “pro-life” groups are more about social control than preserving “life.” And they are acutely aware of the fact that their “baby-killer” rhetoric might actually be taken seriously, by people like Larry Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama who think murder is justified if it’s aimed at someone they don’t like, and also by people like Scott Roeder, who are willing to actually carry it out.
Oh, and now Roeder has announced that more “pro-life” violence is forthcoming. But sure, it has nothing to do with the anti-choice movement.
Thanks to Heather for the link.