Anti-abortion vigilantes are killing us too

Anti-abortion vigilantes are killing us too

Posted: February 08, 2010
1:00 am Eastern

By Gregg Cunningham
© 2010

My good friend Jill Stanek, with whom I seldom disagree on anything, has written an uncharacteristically flawed WND column titled "With Roeder trial, abortion dodges another bullet," Feb. 3, 2010, with which I must take issue.

Regarding the murder of abortionist George Tiller, she argues essentially that Scott Roeder's jury should have been allowed to find that stalking, ambushing and blowing out the doctor's brains wasn't murder because George Tiller was an abortionist. Jill emphasizes that she is personally opposed to vigilante assassinations. She says that she might not have voted to reduce Scott Roeder's offense to manslaughter had she been given that option as his juror. But she then asserts that jurors should be permitted to consider the horror of abortion as a mitigating circumstance when deciding the fates of those who kill abortionists. This chilling, "eye-for-an-eye" ethic is difficult to distinguish from the barbaric apologetic used by the "Army of God" anarchists who cheer on sociopaths such as Scott Roeder. It is a license to kill.

If this becomes the law, will it also be less than murder to gun down nurses who assist in performing abortions? Non-medical abortion clinic staff? Pro-abortion judges? Politicians? If it isn't murder for us to kill them, will it be murder for them to kill us? Where does this end?

Jill also endorses Roeder's failed attempt to establish that killing George Tiller wasn't murder because Tiller was allegedly committing illegal abortions for which he wasn't being brought to justice. George Tiller was never convicted of aborting unlawfully. A very pro-life Kansas prosecutor named Phill Kline couldn't even nail him for what amounted to paperwork violations. And even if bias by other prosecutors protected Tiller from further pursuit, is a lynch mob really the proper antidote for prosecutorial corruption?

Open your eyes to the ugliness inside the abortion industry with "Lime 5: Exploited by Choice"

The U.S. Supreme Court cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (which trump all Kansas law to the contrary) ensure that no abortionist is acting unlawfully in performing an abortion if the pregnancy they terminate threatens a mother's "health." Doe ruled explicitly that health includes "all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age –relevant to the well-being of the patient." By that absurd definition, any abortion protects any woman's health if any abortionist says it does. And Tiller colleague Warren Hern, M.D., has argued that every abortion protects the health of every aborting mother. That tautology is the very essence of injustice – but should we really correct it by taking the law into our own hands?

Jill's objection to the judge's refusal to allow Mr. Roeder's trial to become a referendum on abortion is a very dangerous argument. I direct The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform, which displays large abortion photos on the sides and backs of billboard trucks. We also fly abortion photo billboards, which are towed by aircraft. We routinely receive death threats from passersby who angrily accuse us of making post-abortive women suicidal and traumatizing children. We are frequently threatened with arrest and have had to go to trial to avoid prosecution for displaying these terrible photos. We fought one recent case up through the federal appeals courts, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. When we won, our opponents argued that we escaped justice. Should they be permitted to use lethal force to stop us when the law won't?

Just a few months ago one of our volunteers, James Pouillon, was shot and killed by a man who said he was angry that Mr. Pouillon was using our abortion photos to upset students outside a high school. If Scott Roeder had been allowed to argue that killing George Tiller wasn't murder because Tiller was doing something awful, why shouldn't James Pouillon's killer be allowed to argue that killing Pouillon wasn't murder because Pouillon was doing something awful? I am not making that offensive equation, but aggressive defense lawyers will. If Mr. Roeder can turn his trial into a referendum on doing abortion, why can't Mr. Pouillon's killer turn his trial into a referendum on showing abortion?

When George Tiller was murdered, the abortion industry was quick to accuse the pro-life movement of creating a climate that was conducive to attacks on abortionists. That was a lie designed to silence our criticism of abortion. But when we give Scott Roeder even a partial pass for one of those attacks, we lend credence to the allegation that we are all complicit in the killings.

Mr. Roeder is remorseless. He says he has no regrets for killing George Tiller, whose murder he describes as his "mission." Allowing a jury to find him guilty of mere manslaughter could release him to kill again in less than five years. Now that we know Scott Roeder is a relentless assassin, how could unleashing him not make us culpable?

Jill says that these are decisions more properly left to jurors and parole boards, but she couldn't be more wrong. Jurors are empowered to make findings of fact to which they apply the law as a judge instructs. And judges are bound to instruct the law the legislature enacts. The Kansas Legislature has limited the voluntary manslaughter charge to circumstances involving "unreasonable" beliefs that deadly force was justified. That means the defendant had to be "honestly" confused about the facts, not politically opposed to the law.

And parole boards can release a prisoner before he has served his full sentence, but they have no power to extend that sentence. So we had better make certain the charge accurately describes the misconduct or the punishment cannot possibly fit the crime. Doing otherwise invites unfavorable comparison with Middle Eastern countries that say they have banned "honor killings" but with a wink and a nod release homicidal fathers after brief imprisonments for killing daughters of whose behavior they disapproved. George Tiller was no Jordanian rape victim, but Scott Roeder had no more right to kill him than an Arab father has to shoot his violated daughter.

Mr. Roeder said he felt "relief" that he had saved the babies George Tiller would otherwise have killed. But George Tiller's murder will almost certainly cost the lives of far more babies than will be spared. Not only has he dealt the pro-life movement a terrible blow, but Tiller protégé Leroy Carhart is reported to have hired former staff members from Tiller's now closed clinic. He then retrained his own staff to perform even later-term abortions. He has also announced that to further compensate for the dissolution of Tiller's practice, he is expanding his own to kill babies beyond 24 weeks. It is difficult to see cause for relief in these market-driven business decisions.

Jill concludes by lamenting that the babies were denied "their day in court" when the Roeder judge placed abortion off limits as a proper consideration in determining the defendant's guilt. But she has chosen the wrong forum for a fight over rights of personhood for unborn children. There are two issues here. The first is whether Scott Roeder did or did not murder George Tiller. The second is whether abortion should or should not be legal. The first is a criminal-justice issue, and the second is a public-policy matter. If those two questions are not resolved in separate arenas, the rule of law becomes the real victim.

I don't believe that "meat is murder" but others do, and some of them have threatened to assassinate researchers who kills animals. Should they be allowed to argue that those executions aren't murder because torturing animals to death is awful? Should leniency be granted to safety extremists who assassinate corporate CEOs for the negligent manufacture of products that claim the lives of innocent consumers? What about the violence of radical environmentalists? We are nearing a tipping point. Civilization is truly under siege. I once lived in a country in which disputes were commonly resolved with guns, and I know from personal experience that we don't want to become that country. I pray to God that we will break this cycle while we still can.

Gregg Cunningham is the executive director of the pro-life Center For Bio-Ethical Reform. He is a former two-term member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he sponsored legislation that ended public funding for abortion. He was also a prime sponsor of the Abortion Control Act, which was litigated before the U.S. Supreme Court in Thornburgh v. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. During the second Reagan administration, he served in the U.S. Department of Justice (Legislative Affairs) and later as a special assistant U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles.




With Roeder trial, abortion dodges another bullet

Jill Stanek

Posted: February 03, 2010
1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

The actual translation of Exodus 20:13 from the Hebrew is, "Thou shalt not murder," indicating a premeditated, uncivil act.

The Bible considers murder the ultimate violation of the sanctity of human life, requiring the ultimate punishment. So Exodus 21:14 makes perfect sense to state, "If anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately," that person shall be "put to death."

I would have had no problem with late-term abortionist George Tiller being sentenced to death by a jury of his peers for committing thousands of murders of preborn children. In recent days both President Obama and his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, have endorsed the execution of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. KSM's actions were no more heinous than GT's.

But I did have a problem with Scott Roeder murdering Tiller. It was a premeditated, uncivil act.

A pocket of pro-lifers think killing abortionists is just because it stops them from murdering preborn babies when unjust laws or public officials won't. If one believes in the full humanity of the preborn, they say, use of force is as justified to save their lives as it would be to save a classroom of kindergartners from being murdered.

Scott Roeder was obviously a member of that camp.

Roeder's defense team wanted to show that Roeder "reasonably believe[d] … deadly force [was] necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to … a third person," according to Kansas law, the "third person[s]" being preborn children.

This "necessity" defense is anathema to both pro-aborts and the U.S. legal system thanks to abortion. Because abortion is legal, they say, preborn babies can't be legally harmed by abortion, so one cannot justify breaking the law to stop it.

Judge Warren Wilbert immediately squashed Roeder's "necessity" defense, as have American courts since 1973. They contort legal proceedings in every way possible to keep such a defense from ever getting off the ground. Had Roeder proven his case, a jury would have found him not guilty.

However, pro-aborts were horrified when Wilbert did allow Roeder's defense team a pre-trial attempt to show Roeder committed voluntary manslaughter, not first-degree murder.

Kansas law provides that voluntary manslaughter is the intentional killing of another human being committed "upon an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justify deadly force."

This defense rode on Roeder's state of mind. Even if Roeder were being "unreasonable," if it could be proven it was his "honest belief that circumstances existed that justify deadly force," he would receive a much lighter sentence, as little as 55 months in prison.

Pro-aborts went ballistic. Slate's Emily Bazelon called Wilbert's decision "a truly terrible interpretation of the criminal law," and that was one of the gentler complaints.

Wilbert's decision allowed additional evidence to be presented outside of the jury's earshot.

When the defense called former Kansas Attorney General and Johnson County State Attorney Phill Kline to the stand, Wilbert must have realized his folly.

Kline had attempted to prosecute Tiller for committing illegal abortions.

So if Kline could submit evidence in Roeder's case that Tiller had indeed committed illegal abortions, not legal abortions, then Roeder's force could have been seen as "reasonable" – and legal.

Or if Kline could show the jury that a massive amount of legal and political corruption had shielded Tiller from justice, Roeder's force could have been seen as "unreasonable but honest." Years and years of watching Tiller evade the law sent Roeder over the edge, so his defense would say.

But Wilbert apparently foresaw these scenarios unfolding and clamped down. He dismissed Kline without the jury ever hearing him.

And he told attorneys this case was not to be about abortion, saying, "I want to re-emphasize, we are not going to make this a referendum on abortion."

But of course this case was all about abortion. And a particular reason Roeder obsessed about Tiller was that he saw him evading justice. Here are three never released e-mails Roeder sent to ChargeTiller.com, an online petition campaign to pressure the Kansas legal system to prosecute Tiller:

Scott Roeder
Kansas City, Missouri
Mon March 12, 2007, 18:12:36
PUT TILLER BEHIND BARS WHERE HE MIGHT STOP, THINK AND REPENT OF ALL HIS SHEDDING OF INNOCENT BLOOD THAT CRIES OUT FROM THE GROUND! MAY THIS MURDERER BE BROUGHT DOWN BEFORE HIS CRIMES BRING DOWN THE JUDGMENT OF THE ALMIGHTY ON THIS NATION! ...

Scott Roeder
Kansas City, Missouri
Tue March 13, 2007, 20:26:48
PUT THIS MONSTER TILLER BEHIND BARS WHERE HE CAN'T MURDER ANY MORE OF OUR MOST INNOCENT UNBORN BABIES, WHO HAVE NO VOICE!!! ... PUT THIS HEINOUS BUTCHER BEHIND PRISON WALLS IN HOPES THAT THIS NATIONS' JUDGMENT WILL [BE] STAVED OFF. ONE OF THE SEVEN THINGS OUR HEAVENLY FATHER HATES IS THE SHEDDING OF INNOCENT BLOOD !!! HEAVEN HELP US !!! US !!!

Scott Roeder
Kansas City, Missouri
Mon September 03, 2007, 09:49:40
It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the "lawlessness" which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp "Mengele" of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation.

Clearly Roeder had a problem with Tiller's continued avoidance of justice.

Wilbert's final blow came after Roeder had taken the stand and confessed to everything, even though he could have pleaded the Fifth, thinking he was going to be allowed the voluntary manslaughter defense.

Wilbert went on to instruct the jury that its only options were to find Roeder guilty of first-degree murder or not guilty.

It took the jury only 37 minutes to determine Roeder was guilty. The sentence is life imprisonment.

And Judge Wilbert got his wish. Although Roeder had killed Tiller solely on the issue of abortion, the jury foreman told the Wichita Eagle:

"[Abortion] was never spoken of," said the 54-year-old. …

He said the jury discussed only the question of whether Roeder was guilty of first-degree murder for shooting Tiller while Tiller served as an usher in his Wichita church, and whether Roeder was guilty of aggravated assault for pointing a handgun at two people who tried to block his escape.

Once again, success. The other side has encased abortion in a protective, bulletproof container, where no one or nothing can touch it. Not facts. Not science. Not even the right to due process.

Regardless of how we feel about the actions of Scott Roeder, this is still America.

And Roeder's trial once again shows that the only class of people who do not get their fair day in court are those who believe in the personhood of the preborn.

Jill Stanek fought to stop "live-birth abortion" after witnessing one as a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. In 2002, President Bush asked Jill to attend his signing of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. In January 2003, World Magazine named Jill one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders of the past 30 years. To learn more, visit Jill's blog, Pro-life Pulse.