Loving Them

The other day, a man walked into a church and shot an abortion doctor dead. The doc had just been acquitted on all criminal counts related to his practice, in which he conducted late-term abortions. He was one of very few doctors in the U.S. who would do that kind of an abortion. There are people who saw him as a hero of the pro-choice movement. There are people who see the man who shot him as a hero of the pro-life movement.

Were either of these men heroes? I personally find it difficult to support either of them, as far as the choices they made in their lives. The doctor is dead now, and his killer will be in prison for a long time to come. In a very real way, both of these men chose violence. Both of them chose to end another person's life. The doctor surely ended many lives, lives that had hardly begun. The doctor, as it happened, had a long life. He was a grandfather. Undoubtedly, both the doctor and the man who killed him thought they were right. Which frankly is beside the point. They were both killers. That is more to the point, I think.

Under natural law, you reap what you sow. The doctor reaped a violent death, and that is just what he dealt in. He drew it to him like a magnet draws a nail. The other fellow is harder to understand. How do you take the position that you are a stand for life, and then take another person's life? What was he doing? Playing the percentages? Did he think if he saved a lot of lives, it would be okay to take just one? Well I can tell you I wouldn't want his karma. Gandhi had it right. He stuck with non-violence. To be sure, it is easy to love Gandhi. But how to love these other two?

But that is the challenge. To have compassion for the murderer as well as the abortionist. To extend unconditional love to both of them, in the same measure as we extend unconditional love to our own children, to the newborn baby, to the unborn baby in the womb, to our mothers. We are here to practice this, and the suffering will not lessen until we get busy.