As a pro-lifer, it's difficult for me to have any sympathy or mercy for George Tiller. While I regard all abortion on demand as murder, I can see, though disagree, with how many Americans regard abortion in the first or part of the second trimester as something other than murder. It's sufficiently gray that reasonable people on the pro-life side can see how pro-choicers could be deluded into holding that position, and that accordingly they are not apologizing murder.
Partial birth abortion is qualitatively different from first and second trimester abortions in the same way that hiring a hitman to deal with a spouse during a divorce is different from hiring a private investigator to find every last possible damaging detail. A three month old fetus could not, short of a miracle, survive outside of a womb without the very best medical technology. That does not justify dehumanizing it, but it is not difficult to see how pro-choicers might mistake it for a non-person. A seven month old fetus almost always can. It is almost always so close to being the same stage of development as an infant, that there is no appreciable distinction between sticking a blade into its head to remove the brain, and taking a scalpel to an infant in a cradle in order to stop its brain from functioning.
It's no small coincidence that partial birth abortion is the one area where a significant portion of the pro-choice side agrees with the pro-life side. Instinctively they know that this act is so close to murdering an infant that they cannot justify it as "a woman's right to choose." That's especially true in light of the fact that at that stage, any "ticking time bomb" scenario that would justify a partial birth abortion over a cesarean section is about as likely as a federal agent using torture a la Jack Bauer to stop an act of nuclear terrorism. It may work on TV, it may seem reasonable as a hypothetical exercise, but it doesn't happen in any frequency that would lend a reasonable person to ever consider it worth considering for how things are actually to be done.
George Tiller made himself a target not by providing abortions, but by providing partial birth abortions. Pro-choicers need to face up to the fact that even if abortion is generally reduced down to a "woman's right to choose," Tiller provided a service which the vast majority of those in his medical specialization would not touch with a ten foot pole. There's a reason why most abortionists simply won't go there, and it's not just fear of getting shot by vigilantes, but rather they cannot bring themselves to hack up fetus that are so developed that they could just as easily be surgically removed and placed up for adoption with a loving family. By any reasonable standard, most people could at least concede that Tiller committed murder for money, since he specialized in terminating viable fetuses.
When I first heard that Tiller was murdered, I felt a good deal of schadenfreude because I felt that there was a certain cosmic justice in a man like him falling on the sword he wielded against so many unborn children that no reasonable person could regard as less than human beings. There is a certain elegance in cosmic justice and causality that a government's justice often lacks. It allows us the momentary perception that we live in a just world, when in fact we do not. The history of people terminating human life because they deem it to be not human is sufficient to categorically disprove that fantasy. There was, sadly, no meaningful justice in Tiller's death, and now I'll try to explain why.
Tiller's death will not bring back those that he was hired to kill. His death will also, most likely, have no positive impact on the efforts to outlaw abortion. As  a move aimed at stopping abortion it was nothing more than an isolated act of violence in a cold war between two factions. It is more likely to bring the issue to a head in a manner reminiscent of how the raid on Harper's Ferry laid the foundation for the Civil War, than to make people change their views to support the pro-life cause as a matter of new conscience. In the sense of advancing the pro-life cause, it will do nothing to slow down the rate of abortions.
Comparisons can be made between Tiller and a concentration camp worker, but if pro-lifers want to make that sort of comparison, they need to take it all the way. An isolated attack on a doctor like Tiller no more constitutes a legitimate rebellion than catching a concentration camp guard by an ally and beating him to death in an isolated incident. In both cases it is nothing more than a murder with an ideological sugarcoating. The attacker feels justified because he has smashed a cog in the machine, but in reality all they have done is committed a murder. If violent pro-lifers like Roeder wish to wage war, especially in the name of the Christian Church, then they have no choice but to educate themselves in and abide by Just War Theory, and for Christians, random homicide can never be considered a legitimate way of using force.
For pro-lifers, there may be some silver lining in that Tiller will not carry out any more infanticides ("abortions" is too weak to describe his acts). However, that does not change the moral aspect of this act from something less than a cold-blooded murder. We need not harbor any particular sympathy toward him, but consistency requires us to take the high road and defend the right to life from those who would take it without a fair hearing in a public court for a capital crime. Let us condemn this act not as a statement about the sort of man and victim that Tiller was, or anything about him as a person, but rather as an affirmation of our principles regarding the inalienable right to life.
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