Audacity of Despair

I'd had secret fears of this for some time now, and now it's happened: Someone's killed an abortion practitioner.

After a 10-year respite from violent opposition to abortion, we've had an unwanted, unnecessary, and even detrimental event. Wasn't the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act supposed to stop all this?

It wasn't any law, regulation, or statute that prevented anti-abortion violence; hope to end abortion through legal process prevented violence. For the last 10 years, social conservatives hoped that legislation, Republicans, and conservative judicial nominations would end abortion.

Now, faced with a proven pro-abortion administration bent on negating the minute gains made over the last ten years, despair is creeping into the fringes. The more the Obama administration advances the abortion agenda, the more I fear that despair will drive more to immoral and illegal means of opposing abortion.

The Obama administration is doing nothing to assuage the fear and prevent despair. First order of business was to start funding overseas abortions again. Next, Obama moved to strike down conscience protections for people refusing to provide information on, deliver or perform contraceptive or abortive services. In every forum on the issue, he equivocates and dodges, spouting platitudes based on his read of the audience. I ignore his words and focus on the deeds, and they are no encouragement.

Still, to despair, and allow ourselves to justify violence as a means to prevent abortions is counter to the very principles that we base our opposition on.

And every time an abortion doctor is killed, the media lionizes the deceased and manufacture a martyr, and people who otherwise think abortion is repugnant become more sympathetic. Like every time Israel sends a missile strike into the West Bank to nail one Hamas leader, 10 more civilians join to take his place. It's a sure-fire way to lose the war.