To the principles of innocence and necessity we need to add a third principle, what the Catholic tradition calls "legitimate authority." The main body of the Christian tradition allows that we have a right to self-defense, and even insists that we have a duty to defend others. However, when it comes to calculated, premeditated, and methodical use of force the tradition is very clear: No individual can take justice into his or her own hands.In other words, if you really believe abortion=murder, then killing Dr. Tiller was morally just in a vacuum. However, it's impractical because it undermines the rule of law and civil society—things you need if you want to go on protecting life.
A number of pro-life groups zeroed in on this aspect of Tiller's murder. From Operation Rescue: "We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning." The National Right to Life Committee condemned "any such acts regardless of motivation. The pro-life movement works to protect the right to life and increase respect for human life. The unlawful use of violence is directly contrary to that goal." The Family Research Council: "We strongly condemn the actions taken today by this vigilante killer."
The emphasis on "unlawful use of violence," the evocation of "vigilantism," and the description of Tiller's killer as a "vigilante killer" are all exactly right. We are all sinners, but it is painfully obvious that Dr. George Tiller acted in wanton disregard for the sanctity of life. Killing him did not violate the principle of innocence. Moreover, he gave no evidence of stopping. As a result, perhaps something like the principle of necessity can be satisfied. But it is certainly obvious that his killer was acting as the law unto himself. He arrogated to himself the roles of jury, judge, and executioner. He violated the principle of legitimate authority.
We live in an age that makes revolutionaries into celebrities and unrepentant terrorists into community leaders. By and large, our progressively minded elites pride themselves on questioning legitimate authority, and antiglobalization zealots can be counted on to riot at WTO meetings. Not surprisingly, therefore, the principle of legitimate authority leaves us cold. Isn't the very notion of legitimate authority part of a complacent, Establishmentarian mentality? Who really cares about narrow, technical questions of legality when fundamental questions of justice are at stake?
[...] Our legal regime clearly suffers from the corruption of human sinfulness. Abortion is legal. As St. Thomas taught, unjust laws have "not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence." So there we have it, a painful fact. In America, abortion is a legalized illegality, a socially permitted injustice.
Eric Rudolph bombed several abortion clinics in the late 1990s. He wrote the following to justify his actions: "The fact of the matter is that if you recognize that abortion is murder but do not recognize the right to use force to prevent this murder, then the only logical conclusion is that you do not consider that the unborn have a legitimate claim to life."
The syllogism seems so pure, so morally heroic, so rigorous-and yet it represents a far greater threat to the culture of life than the shameful fact that abortion is legal in America. To take a gun into your hand and presume to become the instrument of a greater, supra-legal justice represents a fundamental assault on the very idea of legitimate authority.
It is a moral luxury for modern men and women to discount the tremendous importance of the principle of legitimate authority. Go to a collapsed African country where warlords rule and the raw lust for power dominates. There you will see that that the rule of law is not a narrowly technical or complacently legalistic social good. A legitimate, functioning government is the precondition for civilization. It is the very basis for any successful collective effort to respect life.
I have always loathed revolutionary vanguards, terrorists, and assassins. I have never felt any attraction to John Brown. On the contrary, he strikes me as a dangerous man who was capable of horrible crimes. The same holds for Che Guevara and others. They have imagined that the noble truth of their cause justifies their disregard for the laws of society. But law transcended is law destroyed, and law destroyed invites barbarism, as the history of the twentieth century so sadly illustrates.
Pro-life leaders rightly condemn vigilante violence. It is a principled stand, not a public relations maneuver. Legitimate authority restrains the grossest forms of evil. The existence of a civil society allows us to exercise our consciences on behalf of the unborn rather than being absorbed by the cruel need to fight for our own survival. The rule of law provides the fundamental condition for any right-to-life movement that seeks to protect real lives rather than to congratulate itself on its moral purity.
Pro-life leaders condemn vigilante violence not because they believe it is morally unjust, but because undermining the rule of law creates bigger problems. This is a practical moral calculus, not a pure one.
My previous posts on the logic of killing Dr. Tiller focussed on the pure moral calculus, without taking into consideration the effect of undermining the rule of law.
So, logically, those who believe abortion=murder ought to regard vigilante killings as morally just in isolation. But undermining the rule of law in a way you think justified creates two problems.
Most immediately, it gets the feds on your ass.
But assuming you're prepared to deal with that (e.g. trying to be a martyr), in sufficient numbers it's like a country going nuclear. There is a mutually assured destruction. If anti-abortion activists took up arms en masse against abortion providers, then pro-abortion activists would feel equally justified in retaliating—for in their calculus, doctors and mothers are the innocents—and fetuses simply nonpersons.
Such a conflict would tear civil society apart—or at least, the parts of it surrounding the activists and providers—which is why the mainstream of both sides is committed to shunning vigilantism.
