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The Murder of George Tiller
5 June 2009
The murder of US late term abortion doctor George Tiller last Sunday, has sparked the debate again between the pro-choice and pro-life camps on both sides of the Atlantic. The murder suspect, Scott Roeder, was a member of a Christian group, albeit an extreme right wing militia group, prompting a Guardian headline, "Terror in the name of Jesus."
Sadly, this is not the first violent incident in the
While researching this article, I read some stories of women who have had late term abortions. As I read, I felt overwhelming compassion. Most of these are stories of women who have to make agonizing decisions, stories of foetuses with horrendous disabilities, unlikely to live more than a few days, stories of women who longed for a baby. Pro-life arguments against the decision to abort would include that to abort the foetus is to pre-judge God and that only God has the right to give life and take it away. Yet these women have found themselves in harrowing situations that I would not wish on anyone.
Jesus' actions towards people though were not based on whether or not he endorsed their decisions and behaviour, yet sometimes we seem to think that ours can be. Jesus told us very clearly not to judge people, to examine carefully our own conduct, (Matthew 7:1) and equally clearly, he tells us that we are to love our neighbour (Matthew 22:39). Yet often we rush to make judgments and treat people depending on whether we think they're right or wrong. In this case, such disagreement has led to violence, murder, abuse and hatred: at both Tiller and women attending his clinic. Such acts have no regard for their common humanity, as people made in the image of God. We may not carry out murder and violence, but how do we treat people whose actions or points of view we disagree with?
Jesus wasn't afraid to tell people he disagreed with them and he did so out of love, to show them a better way. Sometimes they didn't respond, but it didn't mean he ceased to love them. He comforted the hurting, healed the broken, bound up the broken hearted, loved those who felt alone and abandoned, wept with those who were suffering and offered them hope and life. If we believe in a God of love, compassion and mercy, let's be the first to demonstrate that to people: no matter what they've done, or what situation they are facing.
Susannah Clark, Public Theology Researcher
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(The views below are the authors', and not necessarily those of the Evangelical Alliance.)
| Written by Jethro on 11 June 2009 at 18.39 |
| Hi Janet. Welcome to FNT, one of the few Evangelical forums that actually welcomes robust discussion of serious issues, like the one you raise, and doesn't seem to airbrush out dissent. I wonder if you have come across any form of Christian faith that even slightly tempts you back. If I felt I had to believe the form that you left, I would have left too. |
| Written by Jethro on 11 June 2009 at 11.40 |
| While I agree with many of Bill Smith's points, I can't agree with all of his arguments. He argues that abortion is always the 'taking of an innocent life'. Yet he acknowledges (by implication) that in some cases it may be a choice of saving the life of the unborn child or the life of the mother. For me, to argue that life of the unborn child must always be saved devalues the life of the mother. Failing to take an action which would save her life is killing as surely as starving someone to death. I can't imagine Bill would argue that killing her is OK because her life is not innocent. He tries to cover that dilemma by arguing that for the mother to choose to save her own life is always a selfish act. However, there are circumstances where the act may not be selfish, but a lesser evil, e.g. where the foetus is not expected to survive until birth, to take the most obvious. Then, there is the fact that many forms of contraception involve the taking of innocent life at an early stage (as Peter correctly point out by implication), taken to its logical moral conclusion by the Roman Catholic Church in their view that even coitus interruptus is sin. Bill has difficulty with when compassion shades over into condoning. That is a very legitimate concern, but I think we must be very careful not to make moral issues more black and white than they actually are. We must also understand that acceptable social conventions may not be morally pure and that we may be condemning others while excusing ourselves. |
| Written by Richard Pickles on 09 June 2009 at 10.02 |
| Hi David, Thanks for that. When I hear the term I think of very conservative looking people in suits asking whether something is 'Biblical', and then using the phrase in the same way that people use the term truth. This in turn seems to involve power and a wish to control the meaning of texts and then control the lives of others. It would seem though that without the desire/need to link what the words in the various books of the Bible say to something other than human nature and meaning making, there is a freedom that I dont have to ask why the texts were being written; what was the motivation for writing. There are of course a plethra of answers for this that accademics toss around, but I am always intrigued by how others understand the motivation for the writing, and the motivation for wanting to assume that a person has grsped 'Biblical truth' - when I read it it seems just soo complex and full of personal judgments, interpretation etc etc. there are stories of horrific disasters that can be read, but given that the historicity of these is disputed, to say that a current disaster is of biblical proportions seems fraught with difficulty. It may have similarities to a story that for whatever reason was written down and wants to claim that 'god' was in some way involved, but what is it actualy doing to a current disaster to say that it is biblical - I would like to believe that the BBC commentators when saying such a thing are not attributing it to god? or saying that it didnt really happen? I guess that I am not up for fighting between God and not god - I am much more interested in knowing how someone who does not place the stories within a religious context in some way understands them. That seems interesting. In a way I came on here to find out how the EA understood various things but never got an answer, although I have had fun along the way listening to what they are trying to communicate; it would be nice though to understand more about how you see things. |
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Subject: Evangelism | Abortion
Author: Clark, Susannah
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