Did zealots contribute to Tiller’s killing?

There is a painfully obvious, and sadly inevitable, logic to the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

If indeed, as some anti-abortion zealots said, Tiller was a “baby killer,” if indeed, he was a “murderer,” of innocents, a cog in the “holocaust” machine of the “abortion industry,” then why shouldn’t he be killed before he could do more damage?

This if-then syllogism is the logic of that vociferous brand of anti-abortion zealots who are now quickly “condemning” Tiller’s killer without acknowledging their own role in it. It is a particularly cowardly stance to take now that it’s too late for Dr. Tiller or his family or his patients. And it leaves the angel of revenge hung out to dry in a Kansas jail while his moral supporters solemnly shake their heads and say they wish it hadn’t happened.

But how could it not?

Who among us, watching old film of the Auschwitz liberation, or a Nazi beating a Jew in the street, or the horror of the mass graves has not said to himself “Where were the neighbors of these Jews, of these homosexuals and Gypsies and mentally retarded? If I were there, I would have done something. I would have picked up a gun.”

This is the logic of the morally upright. The killing of one, or even a few of those who are engaged in mass killing — it seems right and just if we could stop some of the innocents from dying, no? We have no choice. We must act lest we be thought later, by some future PBS-watching history buff, of being complicit by our silence.

I know some thoughtful people who strongly oppose abortion. They use reason and moral suasion to argue their points. I am not referring to these people. I am referring to those TV pundits, those fiery preachers, those attorneys general who crusade with the sword of Jesus run through the books of law, those hate-filled shouters on the Internet who called Tiller a “killer” and who did their level best to inflame passions and to leave no logical alternative to their followers but to commit murder, because if abortion is a new “holocaust,” shouldn’t all of us be killing abortion doctors?

“No, no!” say the mob leaders of radical anti-abortion groups. “Of course not!” say the TV personalities, the bishops, the priests, the preachers.

Of course, these people have the right to say what they wish and as long as people are willing to pay them — whether through donations, through votes, or by watching or sponsoring their television shows — to say what they do, they will, of course, keep saying it. They will continue to call those doctors who choose to perform abortions “murderers,” “killers,” and to equate them with Mengele.

But please, spare us your feigned horror, your sad shock, your phony condolences to the survivors, when a Dr. Slepian, or a Dr. Tiller is killed, or when rescue workers arriving at a bombed clinic are injured by a second bomb. If you wish to have the right to your words, own the consequences.

Embrace the logic.

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