Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 10:2 (Oct 2012)
Article: Violence Against Abortion Clinics: An Evangelical Or Conservative Catholic Problem? Or: How To Avoid A Rational Discussion By Slandering One’s Opponent And Throwing Him In The Same Pot As Criminals
Author: Thomas P. Schirrmacher

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Violence Against Abortion Clinics: An Evangelical Or Conservative Catholic Problem?
Or: How To Avoid A Rational Discussion By Slandering One’s Opponent And Throwing Him In The Same Pot As Criminals

Thomas Schirrmacher

International Institute for Religious Freedom of the World Evangelical Alliance

Translated from the German by Dr. Richard McClary, Nurmberg

Preface To Second Edition August 2009

After a decade of quiet, the United States has again experienced the murder of a doctor who performed abortions. Scott Roeder shot and killed Dr. George Tiller, perhaps the best known abortion doctor, in Wichita, Kansas in front of his church congregation.

What does this new case do to change the assessment that I prepared in 2008?

Even though I only have access to media reports from the United States, and the public prosecution associated with the investigation has not been completed, for the moment the following can be said:

1. If after a decade a murder again occurs, that still means that millions of Evangelicals and Catholics in the USA and hundreds of millions of Evangelicals and Catholics worldwide who object to abortion advance their view absolutely peacefully! According to the most recent surveys, 51% of Americans oppose abortion. That is to say, 120 million peacefully oppose it, and one does not. Yet this is sufficient for the press to ‘toss’ them all into the same pot.

2. No authority has attempted to link the offender Scott P. Roeder with Evangelical or Catholic camps. Just as with the perpetrators in the 1990s, up until now no one has been able to establish any connection whatsoever with the large anti-abortion organizations. When the atheist blog http://blasphemieblog.wordpress.com wrote: “Assassination: Bible-believing Christian shoots and kills abortion doctor,” this is pure slander.

To be sure, the offender left an entry on the Operation Rescue website. And while the newspapers Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Süddeutsche Zeitung have used this information to go in the backdoor and establish a desired connection, this really says nothing since nowadays anyone can leave an entry in a public blog. Operation Rescue, which has all its staffers sign a declaration renouncing the use of violence, deleted the entry, and has strongly condemned the murder of Dr. Tiller.

3. By all accounts, the culprit, as in the case of earlier offenders from the Ku Klux Klan, is a member of the right-wing extremist scene. After a 16-month jail term, he was classified by a court as mentally ill (“symptoms of schizophrenia”). His ex-wife confirms both pieces of information. In the mid-1990s, Roeder belonged to the so-called Freeman Movement, which, in the place of the highest court in the ...

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