Dr. Tiller – the murderer is murdered

Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed last week while serving as an usher in his church.  Is this a fitting end for the man who performed over 60,000 abortions and arrogantly performed “late term” abortions? 

Even those who support abortion early in pregnancy by arguing that the fetus is not yet a human being would have to agree that the “late term” babies Dr. Tiller murdered were human beings and would have lived had he delivered them on the same day he murdered them.  Can you call this anything but murder?  Can you see any difference between Dr. Tiller’s murders and murdering a baby after he or she is born? 

Maybe the final irony of Dr. Tiller’s life was that he was sent to his God in the House of his God.  Maybe it was time for him to face the Creator of the laws he claimed to follow.  Most of us opposed to abortion cannot understand the logic this man used that allowed him to murder babies during the week, and then attend church on Sunday.  We view this behavior as hypocritical and sacrilegious. 

So, the murderer was finally killed.  Or was he murdered?  Murder is not the same as killing.  According to Webster’s Dictionary, murder is “the crime of killing another person deliberately and not in self-defense or with any other extenuating circumstance recognized by law.” 

But, more than a few people confidently believe Dr. Tiller was killed to defend the unborn, with obvious extenuating circumstances.  Many will want Dr. Tiller’s killer honored, not prosecuted, certain Dr. Tiller was not murdered; instead, he was executed for his “crimes against humanity.” 

Think about it.  This week and every week from now on there are human beings who will live because Dr. Tiller will not be there to murder them.  How many people yet to be born will owe their lives to the killer of Dr. Tiller. 

Do we dare accept the luxury of thanking Dr. Tiller’s murderer?  Do we rejoice that the murderer was killed?  Maybe it would help if we called his death termination, one of the euphemisms Dr. Tiller used to make the murders he committed more palatable. 

And, witnessing the wrongs executed by Dr. Tiller makes it logical to justify another wrong to correct it; in this case the ends obviously justifying the means. 

But, if we condone Dr. Tiller’s murder, can we honestly walk into our own church, at peace with our actions, believing God will be pleased with us?  No, because we cannot accept that the ends justify the means.  If we behave the same way as Dr. Tiller, we are no better than he. 

There is no way around this one.  Even though Dr. Tiller spent his career getting rich by abandoning the Hippocratic Oath and murdering babies, his murder is the wrong solution to the right problem. 

We cannot lower ourselves to the same debased level as the Dr. Tillers of this country without becoming just as immoral as we claim them to be. And, even though we must continually demand society find its way back to its moral foundation, the only route to that morality is to follow the same morality we demand of others. 

Dr. Tiller’s medical practice was not the cause of his death.  Nor were the people who dared to challenge and criticize him.  To blame his detractors is as reckless as claiming that Dr. Tiller brought this on himself.  The only person responsible for the death of Dr. Tiller is the person who murdered him.  And that person needs to face our legal system, answering for his crime. 

Those of us who oppose abortion must also oppose the murder of the murderer, lest we enter our own church, face the same God Dr. Tiller faced, and share the same hypocritical and sacrilegious values we claim were Dr. Tiller’s.  We cannot challenge abortion if we become what we detest. 

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