A healthy conscience and compassion for the desperate

I've known about this series of articles on the shooting of Dr. Tiller, abortion doctor, for almost two weeks now. Alas, other interesting (and shorter) posts have gotten in the way.

If abortion of the unborn is murder -- as the pro-life side claims -- then Dr. Tiller was, indeed, a murderer -- one who would likely murder again if he wasn't stopped. Isn't it the duty of a conscientious citizen to stop a murderer?

Of course, that logic hangs on the original premise. And that premise is a huge simplification of a complex and heartbreaking situation. The Dr. Tiller's story shows that he has a healthy conscience with a strong dose of compassion and his opponents (and killer) have precious little of either.

The complexity and heartbreak is because these women (and, in some cases, children) find themselves in a desperate situation. Part 2 of this series describes a couple of these desperate situations (and properly contains a warning for disturbing words and images).

One of those cases is a 9-year-old girl who had been raped by her father. She was simply too small to give birth, which would have put her through a great deal of trauma and perhaps killed her. Why does the pro-life side insist she must carry the baby to term?

Why are there so few doctors willing and able to help a girl in that situation? Because if they turn her away cameramen, protesters, and gunmen don't show up at their door.

In addition to those who desperately don't want to be pregnant, there are many more who desperately do, yet late in the pregnancy find that nature has made a mistake and the fetus has devastating abnormalities, such as bones so brittle that life outside the womb is impossible. Some people do not have the inner resources to deal with that. Late-term abortions are never terminated on a whim. The women do not want to be there. But with problems this severe why wait a couple months for the tragic birth? The rhetoric rarely matches reality. These women are going through one of the most difficult situations a parent faces and they are being hounded and harassed.

The pro-life supporters have so completely cowed potential abortion doctors that a woman whose fetus has died sometimes cannot get a doctor to remove it. Why is refusing help the moral thing to do? All this ranting over late-term abortions when abortions after 9 weeks are only 1.1% of the total.