From the National Post
A Kansas doctor who was a controversial provider of so-called “late-term” abortions was shot and killed at his church on Sunday, local media reported.
The Wichita Eagle newspaper reported that 67-year-old George Tiller, a longtime target of anti-abortion activists, was shot to death as he walked into services at at Reformation Lutheran Church.
Police are searching for a white male who fled the scene after shooting Tiller with a handgun, local media reported.
Local television station KAKE said on its website that sources close to the investigation and the doctor confirmed that Tiller was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after emergency crews arrived.
Police Captain Brent Allred did not name the victim, but he classified the case as high-profile and said the victim has been the target of violence in the past, the station said.
Tiller’s clinic in Wichita has been the site of mass protests by anti-abortion groups and was bombed in 1985. Tiller was shot and wounded by an abortion opponent in 1993.
Abortions are generally considered late-term when they are performed after the 20th week of gestation on fetuses potentially old enough to survive outside the womb.
Since I believe life starts at conception, I also believe that abortion is the killing of an innocent human and is, therefore, wrong; a late term abortion is the most grisly and evil variety of abortion, since the baby is sometimes born alive and then killed or left to die and – even for those who do not believe that life starts at conception – is very clearly a baby.
So when a supposed doctor who performs late term abortions is murdered, how should Christians react?
From the perspective of executing temporal justice it is necessary to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s: it seems clear that only the state should mete out justice – particularly lethal justice. So the killer of George Tiller will have to face the penalty for doing what he probably believed the state should have done for him.
From a Christian perspective, even though Tiller’s killer will have to face state justice, could his action still be ethically justified? Some Christian pro-life advocates would claim that no life can legitimately be taken so their answer would be “no”; they see this as a mark of consistency. First, I think this view is faulty in that it fails to acknowledge the state’s legitimate role in punishing the guilty – a role that has biblical support (Rom 13:3 ff) – in order to restrain evil and maintain order. Even though countries like Canada do not have the death penalty, all countries at the very least incarcerate criminals and are prepared to use lethal force to protect their citizens: a person with a pro-life view that refuses to take a life ever would not be able to live in any earthly society without hypocrisy.
Second, if it is legitimate for the state to take a life in some circumstances, can it ever be for an individual? A convincing case was made by a Christian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for murdering Hitler on the grounds that it would ultimately save lives and be a lesser evil than allowing him to live. Could the same argument be used here for George Tiller? The murderer might have thought so, but I think not for the simple reason that others will take Tiller’s place to continue his gruesome work; were that not the case, the lesser evil argument might apply.
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