Commentary: If you reading last week's column in the Sun News print edition, and you thought it ended abruptly, it wasn't just you. The column was truncated due to a minor editing glitch. Although your humble correspondent was not to blame, let me apologize and complete that thought before moving on.
This is, in fact, consistent with the theme of last week's column: the difference between casting blame and accepting responsibility. If my son sticks his tongue out at you at the supermarket, it is not my fault; yet I accept responsibility, in my role as parent, for showing him what kind of behavior is expected in society. If I suspect my friend is harming himself, it may be none of my business and yet I may take responsibility as his friend to offer assistance.
Omitted from last week's column was a quote from a commendable statement by Mark Cavaliere, leader of Las Cruces for Life, in response to the fatal shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs: "No person who carries out, intends to carry out, or justifies in theory such acts of violence has any part in our movement... We furthermore pledge to redouble our efforts to advance a climate of nonjudgmental understanding and peaceful non-violence."
In a court appearance last week, Robert Dear left no witness in doubt as to what motivated his visit to the clinic where he was arrested with weapons and propane tanks in his car. Dear has been charged with the murders of three people in that shooting. At a motions hearing, Dear repeatedly interrupted with declarations such as, "I am guilty. There is no trial," and "I am a warrior for the babies." Many of his utterances, all on videotape, sounded paranoid, some were non-sequitirs - enough to raise questions about his psychiatric health.
Although Dear is avowedly Christian and claims to have acted on his conscience as a Christian, we cannot responsibly argue that Dear is representative of Christians or even the pro-life movement generally. Even so, at least one local pro-life activist took responsibility, without being asked, to state what many - including national figures, including presidential candidates - avoid stating: terrorism, the use of violence and intimidation to win a political fight, is out of bounds.
While statements like Mr. Cavaliere's are commendable, there is more to do. Physicians and staff of women's health clinics have been murdered, assaulted, and menaced for decades. The clinics themselves have been vandalized, burnt down, or forced to close by other means, depriving working class people of their services. Some of the clinics targeted did not even perform abortions. The government has been loath to define these events as domestic terrorism, although it is hard to avoid that definition when organizations like the Army of God explicitly sanction violence against people involved in abortion procedures and celebrate murderers for their cause as heroes.
Mainstream organizations like Operation Rescue have circulated the names and addresses of abortion doctors, affixing their faces to "wanted" posters or within crosshairs. Major media figures like Bill O'Reilly have named doctors and branded them "baby killers." We have seen abortion opponents including elected officials repeat false claims, based on debunked evidence, about Planned Parenthood's practices. This has continued in a country where people with strange ideas can easily get their hands on powerful guns. These people and institutions have gleefully supplied the tinder and the matches but claim no responsibility for the fire.
As citizens on either side of the abortion debate, we need to shun these tactics. Creating a climate that inspires terrorism, when guns are so accessible, is out of bounds.
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Algernon D'Ammassa is Desert Sage. Write to him atDesertSageMail@gmail.com.