"What If" Is For Children

The horror of abortion cannot be rightly confronted, much less corrected, by means of violence and acts outside the law and lawful means of remedy. This is not merely a legal technicality -- it is a vital test of the morality of the pro-life movement.

Even though I agree that this issue must take into account God's sovereignty and His right to set up governments to restrain the evils of mankind, the question is not as simple as Mohler makes it sound.

Mohler argues that "Christian citizens work within legal, judicial, and political means to persuade governing authorities concerning what is good, right, just, and honoring to God." However, Beckwith offers an interesting counter-argument in his book Politically Correct Death. What if there was a "clinic" in your city or town in which people were allowed to legally take their 8-year-olds and abort them. They go inside with the young person and come out without him/her. How many of us would wait even 30 seconds before we come to the conclusion that we would not only stop the person taking the 8-year-old into the building, we would probably use any means necessary.

So in essence what is the difference between what Prolifers believe about abortion of the unborn and the abortion of 8-year-olds? Beckwith answers this by distinguishing between prudential arguments and moral arguments. Because abortion of the unborn is accepted and legal, the killing of Dr. Tiller may actually hurt the Prolife cause. Therefore, one might justify his killing on moral grounds, prudential arguments should cause us to look for alternative actions.

Having said this, I believe the killing of Dr. Tiller in the foyer of his church was murder. It was not only prudentially wrong but morally wrong as well. Dr. Tiller needed to be arrested for having committed murder of thousands of children. The average citizen should be calling upon the government for justice in the place of those, who cannot speak for themselves.

The abortion debate has been going on for nearly 37 years. We have stood by while millions of our children were slaughtered. No politician is willing to stop this. The United States government is not going to stop this wicked evil. The Prolife movement is going to have to rethink this again.

What if a "clinic" for 8-year-olds were built right next door to Albert Mohler's church tomorrow? I have a gut feeling that Mohler would arrive to an empty building come Sunday morning. His congregation would either be protesting the "clinic" or they would be in jail for attempting any number of means of destroying such a place, no matter what "doctor" was inside.

So again, I think Mohler is right in many ways, but if someone is about to murder my neighbor, if I have the ability to defend this defenseless person from being murdered, what is the citizen of the City of Man's responsibility before God? How ought we to love our neighbor? It is precisely the "horror of abortion" that we need to confront.