This is a very challenging post, mainly because the issue of abortion is both a very emotional and very complex subject. With the heinous assassination of an abortion doctor yesterday as he attended church (previous posts here and here) it is definitely time to have a discussion about this issue and bring it back down to reality and out of the realm of naive and overheated rhetoric.

While we have been focused on the abortions for convenience – which is in the opinion of many a crime against our moral fiber, it is important to remember that these abortions (which still tragically represent the majority of abortions) are not all abortions. Some abortions are medically and morally necessary and needed.

People who think all abortions are murder are clearly wrong. Moreover, people like Scott Roeder, who took the law into his own hands and killed a fellow human being, are more likely than not to lack the expertise and education to make a determination as to the guilt or innocence surrounding any abortion. They react from a depth of knowledge captured from a few chapters of High School biology, and then ordain themselves the all knowing, all righteous arbiters of morality.

Passion cannot trump knowledge and experience. I know more care to listen to someone ranting about abortion with a High School level understanding of biology than I would ask that same person to determine the best surgical procedure or the safe launch of a complex rocket. They do not have what it takes to understand the details and know what they are doing.

If I was forced to prioritize the most concerning right to life issue today it would not be the individual decisions of mothers and their pregnancies. It would be to stop the concept of for-profit factories that grow vast numbers of human beings so they can be harvested for their spare parts. I am, of course, talking about Embryonic Stem Cell Research, which would be legally sanctioned concentration camps of young humans, killed en masse. This is the subject that moves us from the slippery slope of abortion into the abyss of hell. 

As for the individual choice aspect of the pro life cause I can easily say murder is not the way forward. It is as hypocritical as it grotesque. And it makes it impossible to make the sane case for curtailing the abortion for convenience (verses the medically required abortions which must still be allowed). There is no way to violently end abortions of convenience. And there is no legal way to insert governments into the hard decisions about abortions. At least not until the culture changes.

In my mind the best solution to abortions of convenience is counseling by those who know best. When a woman is so frightened of the pending birth she feels compelled to abort her own child the best solution is not laws or violence – it is support. Women who have had abortions and had children are usually the best to explain to someone contemplating an abortion of convenience that it is not the right answer.

Every woman I know who has had this unfortunate mix of experiences forever regrets the abortion decision. They have ‘survived’ their children coming into their life and realized much of their pre-birth fears were unfounded. They realize that the challenge of raising children is one of the most worthy in human experience. They could and will change the culture, they alone have the experience and authority to make it happen.

Not only can these women convey this to a woman who is contemplating abortions of convenience, they can (and would) garner support groups to assist her through the challenge. I have seen it happen with mother’s of multiples (twins, triplets, etc). There is great challenge in having one kid, this is even more daunting when faced with multiples. But we as a community, and women as a team, pull through this every day of every year. They find a way.

We will not assassinate abortion away. We will not legislate it away. We can only educate and support it into the last option available in rare and tough circumstances. There will always be the tragic and rare need for abortions. But we can work on the abortions of convenience.

That is what I believe the center, the heart and soul, of this country believes is the best path forward. Abortion on demand, and murdering abortion doctors are for the nutcase fringes.

Update: The more we learn about Roeder, the more one wonders why the pro-life movement did not make an effort to change his heart or turn him in as a dangerous person:

Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.

“I know that he believed in justifiable homicide,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. “I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn.”

…

Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.

The pro-life movement can be held accountable for not nipping these violent vigilantes in the bud and making sure their causes are not tainted or allow this kind of criminal thinking. Sadly, as I know from first hand experience, these thoughts are whispered quite often among the pro-lifers. Which is why I have never been able to give them any support. Their views are just too radical.