It is the policy of Publius’ Forum to decry the heinous murder of George Tiller, infamous abortionist from Kansas. There is no justification whatever for this act of barbarism.
The policy of this site is that abortion is always wrong in all but 1% of the cases (life of the mother only) and should be made illegal in ALL others. But, since we stand for protection of innocent life, we also cannot condone violence against abortion doctors anymore than we can against a fetus in the womb.
However, the law of the land holds that abortion is legal under certain circumstances. While we will work to change that, the fact is George Tiller was not “guilty” of any violation o the law. Further, it is generally not the duty of citizens to take the law into their own hands to mete out punishment. So, this killing of Tiller does NOT meet any standard of justification.
As Christians, we feel that punishment is the duty of the state and God, not individuals.
We do nominally support the death penalty, but this is a punishment for wrong doing and we feel it does not equate to abortion in the least. However, it is also the policy of these pages that the death penalty has been woefully misapplied in the U.S. and needs a major overhaul, so no automatic agreement with said punishment is assumed.
Finally, we will point out that Tiller’s murderer is NOT affiliated with any legitimate pro-life organization, so he is no more indicative of the pro-life movement than say Charles Manson was of the 60s Counter Culture movement.
We grieve for Dr. Tiller’s family and hope that his killer is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.