Published: June 12, 2009 10:46 am      

Abortion remains most divisive issue

Editorial

It’s hard to say where most Americans were on that day in 1973 when a case filed as Roe vs. Wade was decided.

What isn’t hard to say is that no one could have envisioned then how long that one case would endure, what impact it would have and how divisive it would be. No other case before the Supreme Court has transcended party lines, religious lines, moral and ethical lines like Roe.

The latest testament to that resonance came Sunday. By now, most Americans who have been near a television set, a radio newscast, a newspaper or a Web site know the name of George Tiller, the Wichita physician who was among a handful of doctors nationwide performing late-term abortions.

What’s ironically tragic is that he was murdered while attending his church. A practicing Lutheran, Tiller had previously survived a murder attempt that left him with gunshots in both arms.

Depending on which side of the abortion debate anyone takes, the events that happened in Wichita resonate in a different way – the wrong way.

Opposing abortion is one thing. Protesting it is another. Performing vigilante justice in a way that will not change the issue is, as one newscast described it, domestic terrorism.

It will not change a Supreme Court ruling, but this particular abortion doctor’s murder comes at a time when Congress is facing the confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice. It’s unlikely the Tiller murder case will change the composition of the Supreme Court, but it may change or intimidate physicians who are considering becoming doctors who perform abortions.

There are few issues that have ever been this divisive. Separation from England, slavery, isolationism, the bomb and Vietnam are the most controversial. Yet if the dialogue has changed one thing, it is that Americans are having fewer abortions.

One reason why may be the numerous restrictions states have imposed. In nearly two dozen states, women have to wait at least a day after an initial visit to a clinic or hospital where abortions are performed. Other states limit abortions to facilities that will not use taxpayer money to perform abortions. Others limit insurance benefits.

But in no state can we allow assassins to become the American equivalents of suicide bombers in Israel, Iraq or Pakistan. Civil disobedience is understandable, but when the threshold of blood is crossed as it was at Kent State in the 1970s after a war protest, the issue has been pushed too far.

Of course, there is the other irony of tragic stories like the one in Wichita. It is that people who supposedly believe so deeply in respecting life that they have no problem brandishing a gun to kill a doctor who has saved lives and is a husband and father. I guess the same irony applies to politicians who call themselves pro-life on one hand, yet support the death penalty on the other. Apparently not everyone believes the Bible’s edict of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth all the time, just on certain issues.

The day may come when Roe will be overturned, or that day may never come. But the day when doctors who perform legal procedures in this country are assassinated has to end, once and for all.