RIGHT OF CENTER: HUMAN LIFE IS VALUABLE REGARDLESS OF CONVENIENCE

Earlier this week, Paul Hill was sentenced to the electric chair for the murder of an abortionist and his bodyguard in Florida.

The day his sentence was announced, one of the national media outlets interviewed a woman aligned with pro-abortion forces in Florida. The woman said she thought the electric chair was too lenient a sentence for Hill. She hoped instead the killer could be made to suffer a protracted and painful death.

Her comments can only mean that she considers the dead abortionist an heroic martyr, who wasn't killed but assassinated. But unless being dry-gulched is the sole requisite for martyrdom, what heroic thing had this doctor done?

Regardless of where they stand on the issue of abortion, most people are repelled by the medical procedure itself, which sometimes requires the abortionist to cut the unborn baby into pieces small enough to be sucked from its mother's womb.

For a doctor to perform such an unhealing act under certain rare exceptions is one thing. But for a physician to turn abortion into a mundane daily routine, a vulgar but lucrative avocation, contradicts and tarnishes the healing profession.

Regardless, Paul Hill's actions amounted to cold-blooded murder, and his sentence is justified. If only more judges would condemn to death convicted killers, we might more successfully deter violent crimes in our society.

Certainly Hill is no martyr. But the moral rationale he gave for his actions warrants a closer examination. It was this: "Whatever force is legitimate in defending a born child is legitimate in defending an unborn child."

But Hill wasn't directly defending an unborn child when he ambushed the two men as they arrived at the abortion clinic. More than a few abortionists have forsaken the practice and joined pro-life forces. At some point they walked into their abortion offices, put down their scalpels and said, "No more."

Who is to say the Pensacola abortionist wouldn't have done the same thing on the day he was murdered by Hill? Improbable? Certainly. But peaceful protest, political activism and legislative pressure -- not violence -- are the means to the pro-life end. Unless access to the political process is denied and traditional means of protest are unavailable, no one is justified in resorting to violence on behalf of the unborn.

Even if those avenues are closed, the real aim of pro-life advocates ought to be the changed hearts of women who choose abortion. Foot soldiers in this movement must always act with compassion for the unborn, mercy for the troubled and confused mothers, and hope that the abortionists will forsake the killing.

And yet the moral ambiguity evinced in Hill's rationale is predictable.

Abortion foes begin from the premise that a child in the womb can't be anything but a human life from its conception, and that this life must not be taken without the most compelling justification. This isn't a radical view or one shared only by religious zealots. It is based in a tradition that spans thousands of years and one that, very simply, seeks to preserve the sanctity of human life. But since 1973, U.S. law stands in rigid opposition to this view.

Thus the volatile issues that stem directly from an abortion mentality -- euthanasia, infanticide, fetal research, cloning, gene manipulation -- or indirectly from a general loss of life's meaning -- rampant crime, illegitimacy, drug abuse, promiscuity, rampant suicide -- penetrate every nook and cranny of society.

While post-modern culture continues to erode, standing against the current are those who possess the ancient presupposition: Human life is valuable regardless of its function or convenience. It is valuable from its inception, because the Creator through His unceasing love made it so.

When innocent human lives are being destroyed in abortion clinics, is it surprising that they would try to stop it? And when they realize the abortionist is acting within the full protection and sanction of the law, is it surprising that a few would violate the law to try to stop the killing?

Not surprising, but wrong nevertheless. Those who would justify Hill's illegal act do so at great peril, for any sanctioned violence invites the replacement of order with chaos.

Of course that is exactly the problem with legal abortion. When the law allows the killing of more than 30 million human lives, all of society is corrupted with a cancer that manifests in violence fallaciously justified by the prevailing moral ambiguity.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.