Published by In light of the recent murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller, I would like to comment on what should be next for the pro-life movement. I have listened to and read the denouncements of this act by every pro-life group in the country, perhaps the world. That is the right thing to do. This act should be condemned in the sternest manner. However, it is a sad thing that we in the pro-life movement would even have to make statements of condemnation of the murder of Dr. Tiller. It seems to me that we have fallen victim to two forces of coercion here. One is the coercion from the msm, which seems to demand that we denounce the killing of Dr. Tiller. But, of course they are not content with that. They want pro-lifers to state that their own ‘rhetoric’ has served to cause this heinous act. In fact, some go as far as stating that any opposing of the so-called ‘right’ to an abortion triggers this kind of reaction. Besides being patently false and stupid, it does serve their purpose of silencing the opposition.
The second form of coercion is that from our own ranks. It is the influence of those who would say that because of this act, we should ‘go underground’ for awhile, as if what we were doing was wrong. These kind of people may mean well, but they are misguided at best. Simply because one person took matters into his own hands and decided to act violently does not negate the inherent good of the message. What it does is show us that how we object to this evil of abortion is as important as objecting to it at all. Our motivation and our methods will determine the meaningfulness of standing for life. Unless these things are right, we will end up inflicting wrong and strengthening evil instead of stopping it.
Our motivation might at first seem to be simple. We believe in the preservation and protection of all human life from conception to natural death. Why? Because human life has an inherent value, more so than any other life. It is a “sacred” value that society has recognized in many ways, legal and moral. While this is a correct motivation, I think that we in the pro-life movement have been very inconsistent with the message we give out because of this motivation. First of all, we have leaned far too heavily on only one aspect of the anti-life culture, the problem of abortion. Until very recently, whenever anyone heard the words “pro-life” being against abortion was all they thought about. That is why it is so easy to taint the entire pro-life community when one abortion doctor is murdered. We need to make sure that “pro-life” means protecting human life at the other end of the scale, that euthanasia and the “forced exit” type of strategies are prominently fought against with the same fervor as abortion is.
Second, within the opposition to abortion the pro-life movement has focused it’s efforts and rhetoric, again until recently, far too much on the unborn child to the almost complete disregard of the mother. Here is where our methods of getting out the pro-life message must change. I am truly dismayed that among all the articles and news items I read concerning Tiller’s murder, not one mention was given to the fact that besides killing 60,000 babies with abortion, he dealt out physical and psychological and spiritual damage to tens of thousands of women. These were women who had life literally ripped out of them. Women that we are just beginning to understand are truly wounded, some almost beyond repair. I believe firmly that perhaps our greatest failure in the pro-life movement is to act as though there is no woman involved, being hurt and injured and wounded with every single abortion. I thank God that campaigns such as “Silent No More” and organizations such as Rachel’s Vineyard are addressing this very real problem. But we cannot let such an important factor rest there. Until we determine that each and every time we mention abortion as the murder of an innocent human being, we also state that the mother is a wounded casualty, we will continue to fight an uphill battle needlessly. I mean this quite literally. We must not allow ourselves to give any statements, do any interviews, write any articles or papers or letters where we do not connect the plight and dismal prospects of the abortive mother with the death of the aborted child. We have more than enough data to support this. We should be trumpeting a slogan such as “save the life of the mother by NOT having an abortion!” What we have often condemned organizations such as Planned Parenthood for doing, i.e. pitting the life of the mother against the life of the child, we have unwittingly been doing ourselves by leaving the mother’s situation out of our consideration. What seems so obvious before an abortion, that the life of the mother and child are vitally connected, we have too often disregarded after an abortion has taken place, and even while we are trying to argue against the abortion before it happens! I have been a part of groups of sidewalk counselors who will tell the women that are headed for the clinic door “please don’t kill your baby, I’ll take care of it!” What about taking care of the baby and the mother. Yes, we have pregnancy care centers (I sit on the board of one) that do just that, but we rarely talk as if the fate of the mother is a huge concern along with the life of the baby. That is slowly changing, and I believe we who are strident in defense of innocent human life need to embrace the mother as well as the child as much and often as possible in every way we can and with every word we utter. If we can reach for that kind of a future, the pro-life movement may soon look forward to seeing human life treated as sacred and protected from birth to natural death. May that day come very soon, with God’s help.
