Posted on 08/29/2003 6:51:30 PM PDT by yonif
Barring the unlikely possibility of a stay, a Presbyterian minister who gunned down an abortion doctor will next week become the first American executed for anti-abortion violence.
To a loyal core of admirers, Paul Hill is a martyr-to-be whose actions were justified by the Bible. To others, on both sides of the abortion debate, he is a zealot undeserving of respect or pity.
"In a very significant way, it's a sad day," said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's sad that people like Paul Hill would murder in the name of life."
Hill, a 49-year-old father of three, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Wednesday in Florida for the 1994 shotgun slayings of Dr. John Britton and his volunteer escort, retired Air Force officer James Barrett, outside the Pensacola, Fla., clinic where Britton performed abortions. Hill wants to die and is not pursuing an appeal.
Abortion-rights groups worry that Hill's execution will trigger a backlash by those who share his steadfast belief that violence in defense of unborn children is justified. Several Florida officials connected to the case received threatening letters last week, accompanied by rifle bullets.
"We need to take these threats seriously," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation.
Though Hill still has supporters -- they have maintained a Web site in his honor, with snapshots and ballads -- most major anti-abortion groups have repudiated him.
"We and other pro-life organizations are against violence, period," said Erik Whittington of the American Life League. "What he did is definitely not anything that anyone I know of supports."
Tom Glessner, director of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, said Hill deserves the death penalty.
"He's not a pro-lifer, as far as I'm concerned," Glessner said. "Osama bin Laden acted out of conviction, too."
However, the Rev. Michael Bray of Bowie, Md., the author of a book that justifies the killing of abortion doctors, said Hill "will be recognized after the fact as the honorable man that he is."
Organizations opposed to capital punishment have urged Gov. Jeb Bush to spare Hill.
"The death penalty gives this individual the opportunity for martyrdom," said Diana Rust-Tierney, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Capital Punishment Project. "Far from deterring the kind of violence we deplore, it may be an encouragement."
The governor is unswayed: "No threats, no free advice from others will be change my obligation to do what I think is right."
The murders of Britton and Barrett came during a bloody surge of anti-abortion violence a decade ago.
David Gunn, an abortion doctor, was killed in Pensacola in 1993 by Michael Griffin, who is serving a life sentence, and two receptionists were killed at Boston-area abortion clinics in 1994 by John Salvi, who committed suicide in prison two years later.
Earlier this year, James Kopp was convicted of killing an Buffalo, N.Y., abortion doctor in 1998, while fugitive Eric Rudolph was captured and charged with a 1998 bombing that killed an off-duty police officer at an Alabama abortion clinic.
As arson, bombings and vandalism at abortion clinics spread during the 1980s and early '90s, abortion-rights groups complained that law enforcement agencies did not always take such incidents seriously.
"There really has been a change in their attitude," Saporta said. "The law enforcement response has been critical to the de-escalation of violence against abortion providers."
However, Feldt said most abortion clinics report continuing harassment and intimidation.
Some of Hill's backers liken him to John Brown, the abolitionist hanged for his crimes. One militant anti-abortion group, Missionaries to the Unborn, likens Hill to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor from Germany who was executed after joining the plot to assassinate Hitler.
"The Nazi Holocaust and the American murder of 45 million unborn children did not conquer the spirit of these men," wrote Joe Pavone. "Bonhoeffer and Hill laid down their lives gladly for what they believed."
There is much truth in that statement.
I believe Florida is right to execute him.
Exactly Right!
As for me and my House .....
You're right on target with the 'persuasion' notion, but I would point out additionally that laws against murder are on the books and prosecutions occur after the fact, thus these laws do not prevent all murder. Would you characterize the laws against murder as 'unenforceable' since they do not prevent all murders from occurring? AND, it is obtuse to state so flatly that 'anyone who wants an abortion will get one.'
Think of the abortionists as a serial killers because that's what they are and that's what they do for their income. As the law now stands, this particular class of serial killers is protected by the sick legal system. But when law is passed to make abortion illegal, except in the rare case of self-defense for the woman (as in a life threatening pregnancy or a case of rape), the 'want to' will be demonstrably effected as women will not find serial killers so easily. Will some killings still occur? Definitely, but the numbers will be more than halved. Will women die from botched 'back-alley- abortions? Definitely, that was occurring before the Roe and Doe SCOTUS fiat rulings, but a physician could use pregnancy termination legally to save his patient prior to 1973 ... thus the place your heart is has so much to do with how you view abortion in America. [Pregnancy terminations will always be with us as a medically necessary procedure, but to end a pregnancy ought not have an auto-guarantee of a dead baby. See what I mean by the place one's heart is?]
But you point to the notion of persuasion quite correctly ... killing alive fellow human beings who are completely innocent of any crime has become acceptable in America, and to alter that evil reality definitely requires persuasion, persuasion that educates the people to the truth of the alive prenatal fellow human beings (and near relatives, if the abortion is contemplated in your family--the serial killer will be killing a near relative). Presently, the liars have the floor and the media, and are spewing their lies far and wide, denying the humanity of the prenatal and presenting this specious right to hire a serial killer as an 'enlightened empowerment for women'. Persuasion, of the education variety, can change and is changing that horrific reality.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to call them 'contract killers'.
Historically, I believe, the use of deadly force has been condoned in the prevention of murder.
If abortion is murder, and I think it is, than what degree of force is justified in the prevention of those murders?
We can't have it both ways. Not logically anyhow. Either abortion is murder and needs to be prevented, or it's not and we have no business calling it baby-killing.
I'll help you out. While it might be murder in the moral sense, it's not murder in the legal sense. Quite simply, law recognizes that right and wrong cannot be left to individual conscience. Individual conscience varies too much. An individual might believe he is entittled to kill his fellow man (or woman) for his own gratification (ala Bundy), but the individual will always know that society has said "No, that is illegal and this is the punishment."
In the case of the abortion doctor, if upon review of the circumstance, the physician finds nothing in the moral compass to contraindicate abortion, he/she then looks to the laws that his/her society has laid out, and again finds no prohibition, then the doctor has a green light. The doctor has searched his/her own conscience and THEN ASKED FOR PERMISSION VIA THE LAWS THAT GOVERN.
This a gulf a mile wide between a doctor would perform an abortion with the permission of his civilization, and the one who would do it without.
We'll all be judged. But Christ will take the punishment for some.
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