A Win for Terrorism

The family of Kansas Doctor George Tiller told CNN on Tuesday that the clinic operated by the physician would now be permanently closed, as would any other clinics in which the doctor had any sort of ownership or management involvement. Scott Roeder, the man accused of shooting and killing George Tiller while he was attending church on May 31st, declared that the closing of the clinic amounted to "a victory for all the unborn children". Tiller performed late term, partial birth abortions, but he limited his use of the procedure to cases where women were facing life threatening complications, where children were very likely to be born dead or dying, and on women who had been raped (some of these "women" being as young as 10 years old). Critics of Tiller claimed that he was actually performing partial birth abortions in other cases that didn't match his proclaimed justifications, but their evidence seems questionable.
In any case, Tiller's actions aren't very relevant anymore. What's clear is that Scott Roeder took it upon himself to put a stop to Tiller's actions and his life by shooting the man dead in a church on May 31st.
There are a lot of issues in this country that could inspire an emotionally invested person to kill. Some people believe that abortion doctors are killing unborn babies. Other people believe that the U.S. military has needlessly killed countless foreign people during conflicts that we should never have been involved in. Others protest the state-sponsored death of criminals on death row. There are folks out there who believe that people within the federal government are involved in an ongoing consipracy against the American people (e.g., Timothy McVeigh), and some who believe that our government orchestrated the events and deaths of September 11th.
Many of these ideas require further, serious discussion and political discourse. None of them provide justification for an act of terrorism.
Terrorism is, by definition, "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes."
Killing people in order to further a political agenda is terrorism, plain and simple. It doesn't matter how strongly people feel about their agenda or what the specific complaints a person might have. The use of lethal (or nearly lethal) force against another person in order to express a political viewpoint is terrorism, and it is very, very wrong.
It just made me sad today to hear that this clinic was closing. I don't really like the idea of partial birth abortions (although I tend to understand how they could be a necessity under the sort of conditions that Tiller described), but that really didn't have anything to do with my feelings. I'm depressed about the whole thing because it's almost never a good thing when someone manages to successfully (or semi-successfully) express their viewpoint by killing another person.
There are lots of ways to oppose people who are doing things you don't like. Political means, protests, lawsuits, persuasion in the mass media, and even non-violent civil disobedience (some of which might not exactly be legal). I'm for most all of those things. I encourage them. Why? Because even the most obnoxious, disruptive protest or harrassing activity is preferable to the sort of violence we got from Scott Roeder. Democracy and the voicing of opinion can be annoying to the point of seeming almost intolerable, but these things are also the safety valve, releasing the pressure so that things like this shooting don't occur.
It's just a big country that we live in with a ton of different people in it with a billion different viewpoints, and when we start killing people in order to make ourselves heard, that really is the sort of thing that can just tear the fabric of a society apart.
Anyway, I guess I didn't have much that was new to say here, but I just felt the need to say something.
It's my form of protest and it keeps me from going crazy.
Maybe Roeder should have gotten himself a blog.