Death of an Abortionist

We must speak out both about the violence of abortion and about violence directed at abortionists (or at pro-life demonstrators).

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RICHMOND, VA (Catholic Online) - George Tiller is dead. This late-term abortionist, who operates in Kansas, has recently been in the news because of the thousands of dollars he has given to Kathleen Sebelius, the pro-abortion former Governor of Kansas, who is now President Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Sebelius acknowledges that he contributed $12,450 between 1994 and 2001, and the AP says he gave at least another $23,000 to a PAC she established.

Tiller was a doctor who specialized in late-term abortions. He was the medical director of an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, "Women's Health Care Services", which is one of only three clinics in the U.S. that provides these contentious procedures. He is no stranger to violence, apart from what goes on daily in his clinic. He was shot in both arms by a pro-life activist Shelley Shannon in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985.

Late term abortions are permissible because of a loophole in the Roe v. Wade decision. Normally, "viability" is used as the standard for the time after which abortions are no longer permissible, but an exception is made for the "health" of the mother. This loophole has been used to permit abortions up to the time of delivery, which is why partial birth abortions are permitted in some jurisdictions. In Kansas, a second opinion is required before a late-term abortion can be performed, and in March of this year, Tiller went to trial because the prosecution alleged that he performed 19 such abortions with the second opinion coming from another doctor who was essentially an employee. He was, however, cleared of the charges.

There was also the issue of Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old woman with Down Syndrome who died in January of 2005 from an abortion performed over several days at Tiller's clinic. Gilbert, who was 28 weeks pregnant, died of sepsis following the abortion. Interestingly, reports conflicted as to whether it was Tiller who performed the abortion, or another doctor, LeRoy Carhart, who is an abortionist in Nebraska. He was cleared by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, which in this case may seem like an oxymoron to some.

Carhart actually filed suit against the Nebraska Attorney General because Nebraska law prohibited partial birth abortion, which ultimately resulted in the US Supreme Court striking down the Nebraska law because it didn't allow for the procedure to be used when another type of abortion would be more dangerous (a truly implausible scenario). He then filed suit against the U.S. Attorney General seeking to strike down the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The Supreme Court did not reverse the Nebraska decision in Stenberg v. Carhart, but they did uphold the Federal ban.

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Following Tiller's killing, pro-life groups everywhere are rushing to denounce the action, as they should. Life is a gift from God and is not ours as individuals to take. The problem in the Tiller case is that we have a doctor apparently operating within the law, because he has been investigated for his abortion practices and exonerated of any criminal activity. The fact is that Kansas law allows him to perform late term abortions with impunity. What we have is a case of man's law going against Natural Law. In 1995, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (62) , Pope John Paul II said that abortion "willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church's tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church."

Yet, we have a law that purports to make this intrinsically illicit act licit. What is our duty as Christian men and women in the face of this conflict? It is not to judge the souls or even the motivation of men and women who are involved with abortions. That we leave to God. Our duty is to pray and offer sacrifice for their conversion, and for forgiveness of our nation.

But it doesn't end there. Our job is to cry from the rooftops that the law is an abomination, that it is intrinsically wrong, and that it must change. We must not let the huge numbers of abortions performed every day in this country, estimates of which are generally in the range of 3500 - 4000 PER DAY, dull our senses. We must not become complacent because it seems that evil is all around us, and that there is nothing we can do to combat it. Indeed, perhaps a worse evil is our apathy and complacency. We know what is going on behind those clinic doors, and we know that politicians who support idiotic contentions such as the supposed "right to choose" have not made decisions based on this right, but rather have created the right by their decisions. We must keep up the good fight until we educate our fellow countrymen and our elected representatives that every abortion that is performed is a life full of potential that is snuffed out. These same hypocrites speak of the "potential" of embryonic stem cells - what about the potential of the embryo itself? Could it not become the next Albert Einstein, or Louis Pasteur, or President Obama's hero, Abe Lincoln?

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Abortion is always and everywhere wrong. When a government legalizes and enshrines evil, it loses its legitimacy. Once that happens, people lose sight of right and wrong in their personal decisions, because their government has lost its way. We live in a culture of violence, and our society increasingly looks to violence to solve social problems - abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty. Tiller's killer looked to violence to solve the problem of a man who is operating with the approval of the State entirely outside of what could be morally condoned.

Nevertheless, we must realize that we cannot reduce killing by killing ourselves. Two wrongs never make a right. We must speak out both about the violence of abortion and about violence directed at abortionists (or at pro-life demonstrators). We must relearn the value of each and every human life, respecting and protecting it from conception to natural death. Only then will the vicious cycle of violence come to an end.

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Frederick R. Liewehr DDS, MS, FICD is a Medical professional who is highly respected in his field. He is also a faithful Catholic and a member of St. Benedict Catholic Church in Richmond, Virginia.

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