The Murder of Dr. George Tiller and the Manichaean Worldview
(reposted from earlier this evening)
If the Christian Right’s leaders are telling their followers that abortion is like the Holocaust, and that those who perform abortions are the equivalent of Nazi concentration camp wardens, it shouldn’t be any surprise when one of the followers decides that killing an abortion doctor is a good and wholesome act. And given that there’s a history of violence in the extreme sectors of the movement to criminalize abortion - a history of violence that advocates of legal abortion have for years been linking to violent, demonizing rhetoric - it’s even less of a surprise. We shouldn’t forget that Dr. Tiller himself had been shot in the past by anti-abortion extremists; we also shouldn’t forget that terrorist Eric Rudolph, who set off the bomb during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, also bombed two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar. The assassination of Dr. Tiller is clearly far from an isolated incident.
So what’s the way forward?