A Leading Abortion Foe on the Movement's Anxieties Over Tiller's Murder (Jill Stanek)

I spoke this morning with Jill Stanek, a leading antiabortion activist and blogger (and active Twitterer), about what the murder of George Tiller, who was director of a Kansas clinic that performed abortions, means for her movement. The conversation provides a window into the anxieties antiabortion activists are feeling today:

Do you worry that Tiller's murder will tarnish the antiabortion movement at a time when more Americans than ever are calling themselves "pro-life"?

It's a personal tragedy that a vigilante killed a guy who has, I think, four kids and 10 grandchildren. As a pro-life movement, our whole reason for existence is to try to stop the killing of human beings. The other side [the pro-abortion rights movement], whose very core is violence and which promotes and profits from violence, has tried for years to peg us as the violent ones. And then something like this happens.

The timing is so bad. [Tiller] was due to retire soon. He was under investigation for his license from the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts. And for him to be killed in his church—it's not good.

Already we've seen the pro-abortion movement try to exploit this, which is not a surprise. [President Obama's chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel is famous for saying, "Never let a crisis go wasted" and already we're seeing talk of the Justice Department and [Attorney General] Eric Holder calling in forces to protect the abortion forces and clinics, and we're going to see moves to attempt to stifle free speech. It now falls to the pro-life movement to protect the First Amendment.

The pro-life movement is the most peaceful social justice movement in American history. There are a thousand abortion clinics and small groups of protesters outside many of them and nothing ever happens, except that some pro-lifers get run over by pro-aborts [pro-abortion rights activists]. So this is so ironic. There has never been a social justice movement that has been totally focused on saving human lives, as opposed to expanding voting rights or other rights, like the pro-life movement is.

The killer was not part of our movement. No one knows who he was. He was a crackpot, just like the killer of Martin Luther King was a crackpot. The civil rights movement wasn't blamed for the heightened tension that led to the death of Martin Luther King. And what we're seeing is the corollary.

Has there been a concerted strategizing effort on the part of antiabortion groups to respond to the Tiller murder?

I can't say anything about that.... But I have never seen so many immediate responses from pro-life groups, basically all saying the same thing: We condemn the killing of innocent human beings, including George Tiller. I have never seen anything like this, such an outpouring of one voice.

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry has made a pretty unapologetic statement about the killing. Where does Terry fit into the antiabortion movement?

The pro-life groups in general don't consider him part of their network. He would not be included on conference calls, for instance. He's got a history. Some of the thing he says are pretty brilliant, but then he goes off.

IMHO, Tiller was not innocent in the least.

Pardon the length of this, and some of its directness...but, IMHO, it needs saying and contemplating.

We live in an era where the most violent, brutal, sick, depraved atrocity is being accepted by far too many in our society as "ok" and common place, because they have been protected by corrupt law.

Sooner or later, the scales of history, nature, and nature's God will be balanced and corrected on this matter.

God in Heaven will not stand forever by and allow the unmitigatd slaughter and genocide of his most innocent children to go unanswered.

We MUST continue to do all in our power to turn this around...but every day we are not successful in so doing, another approximately 3,300 living souls are butchered...and I mean butchered in the most littoral sense.

Most of us are not acquanited with the extent or graphic nature of the butchery that is going on in American, protected by corrupt law. Most do not want to be acquainted with it. Pardon the graphic nature of the following photo...but this is what is going on every day, thousands of time a day, across this nation:

That is the gruesome truth of what is occuring. App. 3,300 a day, app. 1.2 million per year. Over 50 million to date.

Dr. Tiller trafficed in that type of gruesome death and profited from it. He was worse than Dr. Mengle or Goebbles of Germany. He advertised for it, he revelled in it.

Some people say that there are only perhaps three valid reasons to commit violence against others:

1) In a justified war.
2) To protect your own life and liberty, or that of those dear to you.
3) To protect your property.

For years the Islamic Jihadists were at war with us and we did not treat it as such. It took a dastardly major attack to swing the pendulm...and then only for a short while.

I fear greatly for our nation when I realize that not even the gruesome death of 50 million has produced in ourselves as a society the will to FORCE this to stop. Perhaps we should realize that the culture of death has been at war with us for over 45 years...and the death toll has been staggering.

When will be the proper time to respond with force? After 65 million? After 100 millon?

Or perhaps it will be after they open live-abortion centers all across this land where people can bring in their unwanted children who are mentally challeged, physically challenged, or just too inconvienent up to 24 months to be "disposed of". Will that be the right time?

Don't kid yourself, there are forces and voices in this country pushing towards that type of thing.

We should all ask ourslves these questions because it is the stark reality of what is going on...and then seriously think about and pray about the answers.

Clearly, in Nazi Germany, in the 1930s, the time to stop what that culture of death produced there was long before the concentration and death camps wer created.

Well, we have death clinics already in place all over this land, and have had for decades

And do not try and say it is not the same. What we are seeing done here under color of law, IMHO, is even worse. Slaughtering the most defenseless souls amongst us, those with no choice, and no ability to avoid it. Can't run, can't hide...can only utter a silent scream within the very wound of their mother as they are literally ripped asunder.

I pray we can halt this genocide and slaughter in the court of public opinion and at the ballot box.

But our forefather's hoped the same thing over slavery (on both sides) until the bloodletting came. I fear God in Heaven will already hold us all, our entire society, reponsible for the magnitude of this evil.

I know this...if it ever does come to a war over this topic, I know excatly what side I will be on.

If, God forid, it does come to that...and with the evil depravity that has gotten ahold of so many hearts amongst on this issue (like, "I don't want my children punished with a baby"), I fear it may well.

Then like John Brown, we may find that this individual, who "went to war" at a time when it was clerly illegal to do so (though it is legal for the butchers to rip those children apart for profit), was on the right side of history after all.

This picture is extremely offensive

The picture is just bytes in a file on a server somewhere. How can bytes be offensive?

No, what's offensive is the reality depicted by the picture.

We should look at it.

We should all look at it.

We should remember that that's what "I'm pro-choice" means.

We should remember that "personally against, but" means tolerating *this*.

We should remember what God says and does about nations that sacrifice little children to false gods.

Because He's doing it to us, right now.

Don't think that we don't deserve Obama. Don't think that we don't deserve to watch our economy tank. Don't think that we don't deserve to watch our freedoms and our Constitution go down the toilet. Don't think that we don't deserve to have our country invaded by foreigners who don't share our values. Don't think that we don't deserve to be attacked by terrorists who claim to be doing God's will.

We do. We've earned it, by tolerating this.

Look at him or her. Look long and hard. He is America's condemnation, the place where he died is our Auschwitz, and Roe v. Wade is our epitaph as a free nation.

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