Will Tiller s Murder Be Used to Undermine Free Speech?

Oh the DRAMA!

Funny how anti-choice terrorists will screech their heads off in contemplation of having their hate spew censored, but have no problem wanting to eliminate the rights of all women, just because they do not approve of abortion.

Friggin hypocrites.

http://lifenews.com/state4235.html

"Former abortion practitioner Bernard Nathanson, who has since converted to the pro-life position, was a former mentor of George Tiller, the slain late-term abortion practitioner. In a new interview, Nathanson said he was surprised that Tiller never became pro-life himself because of new medical technologies.

"Nathanson is no stranger to the abortion industry, having done more than 75,000 abortions himself during the 1960s and 1970s and presiding over one of the nation's premier pro-abortion groups, NARAL.

"He earned widespread praise from the pro-life movement for his movie "Silent Scream" which showed the advancement in ultrasound technology and how an abortion destroys human life.

"I knew George Tiller years ago when I was on the pro-abortion side," he told the Washington Times. "He came to a course I was giving in the technique of abortion in New York in 1970 under the auspices of NARAL. And I did late-term abortions until I changed my opinion as of 1980."

"My switch to pro-life had nothing to do with religion," he told the newspaper.

"Tiller was a church-going man, which doesn't say a whole lot in this country, but one wonders why he never changed his mind based on the scientific evidence. That is where I changed my mind, based on fetoscopies and ultrasound studies," Nathanson added.

"Once we had ultrasound in place, we could study the fetus and see it was a member of our community. If you don't do that, you're just a creature of political ideology. In 1970, there were approximately 1,100 articles on the functioning of the fetus. By 1990, there were 22,000. The data piled up swiftly and opened a window into the womb," Nathanson continued.

Frank Schaffer, author of Crazy for God:

"My late father and I share the blame (with many others) for the murder of Dr. George Tiller the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America.

In the late 1970s my evangelical pro-life leader father Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop (who soon become Surgeon General in the Reagan administration) went on the road with me taking the documentary antiabortion film series I produced and directed ( Whatever Happened to the Human Race?) to the evangelical public. The series and companion book eventually brought millions of heretofore non-political evangelical Americans into the antiabortion crusade. We personally also got people like Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan and countless Republican leaders involved in the "issue."

In the early 80s my father followed up with a book that sold over a million copies called A Christian Manifesto. In certain passages he advocated force if all other methods for rolling back the abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade failed. He compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler's Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion. I said the same thing in a book I wrote (A Time For Anger) that right wing evangelicals made into a best seller. For instance Dr. James Dobson (of the Focus On the Family radio show) gave away over 100,000 copies.

Like many writers of moral/political/religious theories my father and I would have been shocked that someone took us at our word, walked into a Lutheran Church and pulled the trigger on an abortionist. But even if the murderer never read Dad's or my words we helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.

In fact that very thing has happened before. In 1994, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Paul Hill, a former minister, was convicted of the killings and executed in 2003. Paul Hill was an avid follower of my father's.

Hyperbole from the pulpit from religious leaders, be it from my father or from President Obama's former pastor the Rev. Wright, is par for the course. But once in a while someone "does something" about it and then everyone says that they were only speaking metaphorically or "spiritually" when they called for violence or for the overthrow the state or when they said things like "God damn America!" or that "abortionists are murderers like Hitler!"

Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which -- when taken seriously -- lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed.

When evangelicals on the right call President Obama a socialist, a racist, anti-American, an abortionist, not a real American, and, echoing the former Vice President, someone who is weakening America's defenses and making us less safe, the logical conclusion is violence. If you take these words literally you might pull the trigger to "make America safe" and/or free us from communism or to even protect us from -- what some "Christian" leaders claim -- Obama as the Antichrist."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer...

Pro-Life Frank Schaffer. One of the creators of the "religious right", aplogizes for the actions of himself and other religious zealots.

"Schaeffer addressed the hateful rhetoric from those like Bill O'Reilly during the interview and O'Reilly's unwillingness, unlike Schaeffer, to take responsibility for his words.

Schaeffer: And when you look at what happened to Dr. Tiller, there's a direct line connecting the rhetoric that I was part of as a young man and this murder. And so people like me are responsible for what we said and what we did and the way we raised the temperature on this debate out of all bounds. And so when O'Reilly talks about the fact that these people of the far left are against Fox or against him or trying to muzzle debate, he's telling a lie.

I am not a member of the far right. Until I voted for Barack Obama in the last election I was a lifelong Republican and I am still pro-life. I also believe abortion should be legal, but I agree with Barack Obama when he says we ought to find ways to help women, help children, give contraceptives, sex education to lessen the number of abortions. I think abortion is a tragedy. But I also think that pretending that you can call abortion murder and Tiller the baby killer, etc., etc., etc. and that these words don't have an impact is crazy. So this is what helps unhinge a society, talking like that. And I apologize and I will apologize again. I am sorry for what I did."

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/r...

It didn't happen when abortion clinics were bombed before. It probably won't happen for THAT reason now.

HOWEVER, it MAY happen for other reasons. Note this thread.