Dr. George Tiller was murdered this weekend at Church. I feel bad for his family and his church, and I hate that this terrible thing happened. Dr. Tiller is best known as one of only a few doctors in the United States who perform late term abortions. He had performed more than 60,000 of these procedures in his career. Here's what Dr. Albert Mohler (President of Southern Seminary) said about Dr. Tiller:
"Violence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause. Now, the premeditated murder of Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church is the headline scandal — not the abortions he performed and the cause he represented.
We have no right to take the law into our own hands in an act of criminal violence. We are not given the right to take this power into our own hands, for God has granted this power to governing authorities. The horror of abortion cannot be rightly confronted, much less corrected, by means of violence and acts outside the law and lawful means of remedy. This is not merely a legal technicality — it is a vital test of the morality of the pro-life movement.
Murder is murder. The law rightly affirms that the killing of Dr. George Tiller is murder. In this we must agree. We cannot rest until the law also recognizes the killing of the unborn as murder. The killing of Dr. George Tiller makes that challenge all the more difficult."
I agree with Dr. Mohler's assessment. It's sad to me that this has already become ammunition for certain pro-abortion activists who claim that Dr. Tiller's murder is a sign of the violent and hypocritical nature of the pro-life movement and mentality. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this situation sheds light on a stunning pro-abortion contradiction.
I've heard from many people over the years who think abortion should be legal , and one of their main arguments for abortion is that they claim that making it illegal would cause thousands of pregnant women to rush into back alley's and perform their own abortions. They think this would cause a "black market" abortion industry that would be unhealthy and would eventually cause more harm than good. While I appreciate the compassion that leads to this argument, I think it is completely wrong. Here's why:
What if pro-life activists made this same argument in relation to the murder of Dr. Tiller? What if we said that abortions should be made illegal because, if they're not, the potential exists for people to murder more abortion doctors? We can't continue to allow abortions because a "black market" industry of abortion doctor assassins (ADA's) will flood to dark alley's to hatch murderous plots and purchase weapons to kill those who carry out abortions.
The problem here is that we don't make laws against bad things because the potential of collateral bad things might happen. We don't tell everyone it's ok to speed on the highways because if they don't, they might be late to work and get fired. We say it's not ok to speed because speeding is a threat to society and is therefore immoral. In the same way, we shouldn't legislate for or against abortion because it might make people do illegal and immoral things. We should legislate for or against it because of it's threat or benefit to society.
I find it very difficult (if not impossible) to find an argument that proves that abortion is a benefit to society. On the other hand, it's quite easy for me to find many arguments that prove that abortion is the termination of a viable, LIVING human, and in the society I live in, that is never tolerable.
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