What Radical Abortion Opponents Really Think

Yesterday's The Indianapolis Star included the article "Late-term abortion doctor fatally shot in church". The article included a statement from the president of Operation Rescue, one of the leading, radical, anti-abortion groups (note that Operation Rescue's website is presently down...):

"We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down," Troy Newman, Operation Rescue's president, said in a statement. "Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning."

Of course Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, had a much less, um ... careful response:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

A few more points worth mentioning. First, remember that report by the Department of Homeland Security about rightwing extremism that the right was so upset about? Here is one of the points made in that report (emphasis added):

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to asingle issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

Finally, watch the following video of FAUX News' resident hate-monger Bill O'Reilly (from DailyKosTV) and see if you think that speech like his might have been an inducement to violence for someone like Dr. Tiller's murderer.

For a more detailed examination of O'Reilly's campaign against Dr. Tiller, take a look at the Salon.com article "O'Reilly's campaign against murdered doctor" by Gabriel Winant.

It is one thing to advocate for a change in the law or to argue that people should not support a particular business. But it becomes something else to suggest that those who won't stop someone from doing something that is legal have culpability or are "bloodstained". At some point, people like O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others, have to recognize that their speech has consequences and that those consequences aren't just found at the ballot box or in the halls of Congress. Those consequences also manifest at gunpoint.

And just for the record, I'm not suggesting that the media be censored; I'm merely suggesting that the media act responsibly.

(By the way, I actually wrote this yesterday but didn't get a chance to finish until today; and even then I didn't get a chance to add some additional news that I've read in the interim. If I have time, I may return to the subject later this week.)