I've been struggling this last 24 hours over what to say about George Tiller's murder. He was killed less than 200 miles away from me, (allegedly) by a man who was caught less than 20 miles from me and who lived less than 5 miles from me. It's one of those times when violence is brought uncomfortably close to where one lives.
George Tiller was a hero, a real hero. He and his equally heroic staff saved women's lives and preseved their ability to bear children - yes, that's right. George Tiller was in the business of helping women not only live but also have families. After being shot in both arms, under constant threat of violence toward his clinic and his person, the near-constant victim of malicious prosecution, he and his colleagues went into work everyday and did a difficult job. We can only hope and pray that the work of his clinic will continue somehow without him.
What I don't want to do, however, is let Dr. Tiller's extraordinary work have anything to do with the condemnation due not only to his murderer, but to the so-called "pro-life" movement at large. They are terrorists. Most of them use tactics that are legal - barely - such as screaming vile insults at women seeking health care, driving around cities in pickup trucks with billboards supposedly depicting the remains of aborted fetuses. A slightly smaller group will block access to clinic and trap women in their cars, which is illegal but not, for some reason, a terror tactic which is viewed too seriously by this society.
And then there are those who take the hateful, violent rhetoric of the movement's leaders and turn it into action, just like every other terrorist movement on the planet. They take action based on words like this:
Those words are from Timothy Finn, Bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. And as far as rhetoric from this eminently mainstream movement goes, it's pretty tame. Mark Silk has more. Scott Roeder apparently has a criminal record and will be vigorously painted by the anti-choice movement as not really one of them. They'll try to portray him as primarily a criminal, one who happened by random chance to glom onto the fringes of their movement. They'll attempt to marginalize him and his views, and wash their hands of any responsibility for his actions.
But they are responsible for Dr. Tiller's murder. This was exactly the outcome people like Timothy Finn and Randall Terry want to see. They want, simply put, to terrorize, and they don't care what form it takes so long as terror is the result.
