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What Paul Hill accomplished was heightened security for abortion-givers, and a tool for pro-abortion forces to paint the pro-life movement as hypocrites and crazies.

This is the most reasonable thing you've said all thread.

I think you have a point here.

I will point out that others argue that the killing of John Britton makes potential abortionists decide that going into that line of work is just too risky.

How can we call ourselves pro-life, and kill in the name of life?

We can because there is a substantive moral difference between killing a defenseless unborn child and using deadly force to defend that same unborn child.

To equate the two is to equate, say, a police sniper who shoots at a bankrobber about to murder a hostage with the bankrobber himself.

If God wanted to stop abortion, He could do it with an afterthought . . .

This truism does not absolve us of the responsibility to defend the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

but He's given us the gift of free will, and that free will MUST BE the weapon employed to stop abortion, not guns.

The use of weapons to defend the unborn is itself an exercise of free will.

"Free will" and "guns" are not antonyms - one is a faculty of the soul, the other is a manufactured tool.

Your underlying argument seems to imply that abortionists should use their free will to decide not to murder people, or that the young women who decide to murder their children should abstain from intercourse in the first place or choose adoption. That's certainly a noble sentiment and all efforts should be made to encourage a conversion of heart.

One would also hope that if a crack-addled thug breaks into one's home with a knife, one could simply reason with him and persuade him on moral grounds not to cut one's throat or rape one's wife or steal one's DVD player.

But realistically, one knows that the only way such a person can be dissuaded is by the threat or use of overpowering physical force.

While your argument that Paul Hill's actions were in the end unstrategic and counterproductive is a strong one, it does not prove that Paul Hill acted immorally. It means that he acted imprudently.

Getting back to the larger issue raised by Polycarp's original posting, John Britton could not have reasonably expected that he could murder hundreds of children without deeply upsetting some people. Any time one raises a bloody hand against innocents, all bets are off.

And the situation raises a philosophical question for proaborts to ponder: if the lives of innocent children only have value if we subjectively assign them a value, how can they possibly argue that the lives of abortionists have any higher intrinsic value? Why do they operate on the presumption that the John Brittons of the world should be immune from the treatment they mete out daily?

The only counterargument is to adopt a thoroughgoing legal positivism, a viewpoint which no one actually believes in because it necessitates a denial of lived reality.