Will Tiller´s Murder Be Used to Undermine Free Speech?

The recent murder of Dr. George Tiller by pro-life wacko Scott Roeder was a great tragedy. Obviously, Tiller was murdered because he was one of the few doctors in this country who performed late-term abortions. However, this did not give Reoder or anyone else the right to take his life.

Reoder should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He is a murderer, plain and simple – with no legitimate excuse for the heinous crime he committed. Roeder's murderous act should be strongly condemned by pro-lifers everywhere. Shame on anyone who even implicitly excuses it!

With that being said, I hope the extreme pro-choice lobby will not be so brazen as to attempt use this tragedy for political purposes. If they do, they will have created a whole new tragedy from it. But I fear that many of them will use it as clarion call to begin eroding the First Amendment.

These people will claim that the routine rhetoric of pro-life activists – including the assertion that abortion is tantamount to murder – drove Reoder to kill Dr. Tiller. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reoder is solely responsible for Dr. Tiller´s death. If anything drove him to it, it was nothing more than his own twisted fanaticism.

However, some in the pro-choice camp have responded in typical knee-jerk form, claiming that pro-lifers were essentially accessories to Roeder´s crime. For years, many have wanted to silence dissent on the abortion issue and now they see this as a golden opportunity to do so. If they had their way, it would soon be against the law to speak out against abortion.

Hopefully, though, cooler heads will prevail. Otherwise, free speech may ultimately turn out to be the second casualty of this crime.