Evil assassinations

Charles Moore

Events like the fatal shooting of Buffalo, N.Y. abortionist Barnett Slepian tend to send non-violent pro-life advocates (that would be 99-plus per cent of pro-life advocates) ducking for cover, anticipating a barrage of vitriol certain to be lobbed their way by pro-abortion advocates and the media. Guilt by association, don't you know?

Those obliged to comment assiduously condemn the violent act and affirm that the group or organization they speak for does so as well. Karen Swallow-Prior, formerly of Operation Rescue and now the Right-to-Life Party candidate for New York State lieutenant-governor, condemned the attack on Slepian thus: "For anyone to take it upon himself to be judge, jury and executioner, is nothing but sheer evil."

Agreed. Any decent person is saddened by the violent termination of a man's life, and by the grief and loss suffered by his wife and children. However, that sadness is necessarily attenuated for those of us who believe unborn children are human beings who are as deserving of protection as anyone, and by grief for the thousands of tiny lives snuffed out by Slepian over the past 20 years.

At least one pro-life activist I know proposes an argument along the following lines: "You say you consider the unborn child to be a human being worthy of protection. Now, if you encountered someone intent on murdering a born child, would you countenance the use of deadly force, if necessary, to prevent the murder? If your answer is yes, then why do you not apply the same principle to the murder of an unborn child, whom you affirm as a human being?"

There seems to be logical consistency here, but a crucial distinction not acknowledged is that the hypothetical child murderer is violating the criminal laws of the society we live in, while the abortionist acts with society's legal permission. This is more than hair splitting. We may disagree with immoral laws and rightfully protest them, but we are not at liberty to break society's laws on the strength of private judgment, no matter how strong our conviction that we occupy the moral high ground. To do so is to foment anarchy and a Hobbesian "war of all against all."

True adversary

The true adversary of anti-abortion advocates is the philosophical worldview that resulted in the legalization and social acceptance of abortion, not, primarily, individuals who affirm that worldview, or people who perform abortions.

Shooting abortionists is essentially wrong and criminal, and cannot be otherwise. Any tactical success it achieves towards the desirable outcome (from a pro-life perspective) of stopping abortions, is attributable to terror, not reason and persuasion. Pro-abortion advocates are correct on this point. Intended results may be realized on a limited and temporary basis, but the methodology is morally inadequate. Moral ends don't justify criminal means. Lying in ambush outside a person's home - even that of a person involved in systematically evil activities - then shooting them down in cold blood, is a truly terrible thing.

But so is abortion. Of course, the ethical workaround for many is buying into the sophistry that the unborn child is not really a human being at all, but part of the mother's body until he or she somehow - magically - attains human status and full protection of the law upon emergence from the birth canal. That, gentle reader, is an arbitrary political and ideological notion that cannot withstand even the most modest application of reason and logic.

However, vigilante assassinations are not a legitimate means of ending the abortion holocaust. As with Nazi Germany, a whole society - not just individual abortionists - share the guilt. During the Nazi era, most Germans didn't protest the murder of Jews and other innocent people. After all, such killings were legal and endorsed by the state.

So where do you draw the line? At camp guards? At train crews who transported people to the gas ovens? At clerks who rubber-stamped the death orders? At those who stood back and said nothing? In present-day North America, certain types of killings are also legal; indeed, they are subsidized with public money, protected by law, and sponsored by the government. The majority goes along with this too - even people who feel uncomfortable about it.

I have often remarked to pro-life friends that the only way abortion can ultimately be stopped is from the demand side, for as long as a substantial percentage of the population is inclined to delude itself into accepting that an aborted infant is merely an "unwanted lump of protoplasm" attached to a woman's body, abortion will continue.

It's people's hardened hearts that must be changed, and that can't be done with bullets.