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….The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as “murderers.” And today once again the “pro-life” leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I’d like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I — and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words. I am very sorry.

Suppose that an employee at a fertility clinic knows that the director of the clinic intends to destroy a dozen frozen embryos. The employee pleads with the director not to destroy these embryos, but the director insists that their destruction is legal as well as necessary for saving needed funds (funds that will be used to repair the parking lot). The employee promises to raise the “needed funds” by alternate means, but the director dismisses this idea as misguided. Growing desperate, the employee realizes that the only way to save the twelve embryos is to eliminate the director (the co-director who would replace her is “pro-life”). The only clear way to eliminate the director, however, is to assault her in a way that could foreseeably lead to her permanent injury or death. Is it morally permissible for the employee to thus assault the director?