The End Does Not Justify the Fanatical Means of Terrorism

Michael F. Griffin, defender of the unborn, asked authorities in Pensacola, Fla., to allow him a Bible in his jail cell because the Scriptures will be central to his defense against charges he murdered Dr. David Gunn.

Dr. Gunn was “wanted” by Operation Rescue and other radical “pro-life” groups for performing legal abortions. Michael Griffin, who had prayed for Dr. Gunn’s spiritual salvation, found him.

Then he shot him three times in the back.

Griffin has asked to represent himself in court, as I suspected he would, even though common sense dictates that an attorney versed in the secular law would do a better job. But we must throw out our notion of “common sense” right here.

The inner voice that guides Griffin is not one that most Americans pay much heed. It is the voice of religious fanaticism, only it seems this man confuses it with God’s.

This confusion has been around for millennia, of course, although Americans are used to observing it from afar, in nations less “civilized” than our own.

Suddenly, however, God is supposed to be talking directly to a cult leader near Waco, Tex., and perhaps to terrorists imparting their own brand of catechism via a car bomb in New York.

It’s funny how God seems to be sending the same tired message to them all: The end justifies the means. Amen.

Many have publicly condemned the murder of Dr. Gunn, some with tears in their eyes and rage in their tone, others with measured political concern (yes, it will make the right-to-life movement look bad), and still others with a stone-faced callousness that relegates their sympathy to a prepositional clause.

“While Gunn’s death is unfortunate, it’s also true that quite a number of babies’ lives will be saved,” said Don Treshman, national director of Rescue America, which organized the anti-abortion protest outside the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services clinic where Dr. Gunn worked and where he was killed.

Now Rescue America is asking for funds, for Griffin and his family, but not for Dr. Gunn’s.

Randall Terry, the director of Operation Rescue, said this: “While we grieve for him and for his widow and for his children, we must also grieve for the thousands of children that he has murdered.”

A few days before Dr. Gunn was gunned down, I wrote another column about Operation Rescue’s “No Place to Hide” harassment campaign. Anti-abortion protesters have picketed the homes of local doctors and health care workers and distributed “wanted” posters to neighbors and passers-by.

The protesters call the health care workers murderers, they threaten and they taunt. Remember, says Randall Terry, the doctors are “the weak link.” Randall wants them “exposed.”

“This is not a last ditch effort, it’s part of a master plan,” Allen Meadows, leader of a local Operation Rescue affiliate, wrote me after that column ran. “(It) keeps falling into place no matter what the Pro-Death movement, and reporters like you try to pull.”

Dr. Gunn’s face was on a “wanted” poster distributed by Operation Rescue too. No, nobody said “Go out and kill this man,” but it happened, and it seems few people who follow the battle for reproductive rights were surprised. I was not at all.

Death threats, vandalism and stalking have become routine nationwide.

Zealots have bombed or set fire to more than 100 clinics over the past 15 years, they’ve sprayed others in California with noxious acid and opened fire with a shotgun in Missouri, wounding two. Now, it’s murder in Florida, another anti-abortion first.

Callers to Christian radio talk shows said they were glad. Praise God.

This is the zealots’ logic at work. If abortion providers are indeed mass murderers, then is not one death justifiable if it will prevent many more? And just think how this “message” will sit with other abortion providers throughout the land.

The end justifies the means. Again.

Allen Meadows wrote me of the successes of the “No Place to Hide Campaign.” He mentioned some doctors who have stopped providing abortions and speculated that many others will “not want to get involved in the baby murdering industry.”

Dr. David Keulen, a Garden Grove family practitioner who has been targeted by the “No Place to Hide” campaign, told me this before his colleague in Florida was killed:

“What they are doing is casting a net out. It’s like they are trying to find a crazy person and then pointing him in my direction.”

Now, he says this: “I predicted what happened. It wasn’t me, but it could have been. . . .I have to consider that somebody is systemically planning to assassinate me.”

No, Dr. Keulen will not stop providing abortions for women who ask. But that is not enough. Dr. Keulen and other medical personnel cannot be expected to battle radical “pro-life” organizations on their own.

Dr. Gunn, 47 years old and a father of two, proved that tragically last week. His murder was not an isolated incident, but a byproduct of an organized harassment campaign.

The government must pursue “pro-life” fanatics with no less vigor than if they had detonated a car bomb at the World Trade Center in New York.

Battling terrorism, it is called.