Defending Life Requires Law

Jun 3, 2009
R.R. Reno

My heart sank when I read the headline: "Abortion Provider Is Shot Dead." It sank still further as I read the story. Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas was one of the few doctors willing to perform late-term abortion, even some, the newspaper reported, in the ninth month. Kansas records show that Tiller aborted-killed hundreds of fetuses old enough to live outside the womb. Regardless of one's views on the beginning of life, the thought of all those fully formed infant bodies cut and crushed is surely heartbreaking. Now we must add the image of a man rushing into a church on a Sunday morning and gunning Tiller down. Sigh.

Tiller's murder was immediately and widely denounced by the various leaders of the pro-life movement. Speaking on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia went a bit overboard. "Our bishops' conference and all its members have repeatedly and publicly denounced all forms of violence in our society," he wrote, "including abortion as well as the misguided resort to violence by anyone opposed to abortion." The blanket condemnation of "violence" seems unhelpfully expansive. But you get what he means. What the killer did was wrong. Very wrong.

But why? On this point we need to be reminded, because the reasons are not as simple as they seem. the rest

Late Term Abortions Provided More Widely Than Media Reporting

Women at US Catholic schools more likely to abort, survey shows