Bozell Column: A Pro-Life 'Jihad'?

In the very heart of the pro-life community, there is nothing they wanted less than another shooting of an abortionist. An unhinged vigilante's shooting of notorious Kansas late-term abortion "provider" George Tiller prompted an avalanche of press releases from pro-life groups denouncing the killing.

Why bother? Let's face it. The national media had zero interest in spotlighting a pro-life spokesman expressing horror, because let's face it, they don't believe it. Instead, as with ABC, they found anonymous citizens on the website Twitter saying "Oh, happy, day. Tiller the baby killer is dead." Another wrote, "God bless the gunman."

It was time for a barrage of liberal mudslinging. Keith Olbermann started his MSNBC program with these words: "A religious jihad by fundamentalist crusaders who believe that murder is justified, their acts of violence having the intended effect of changing behavior. Our fifth story on the Countdown: Not the Taliban, not Hamas, not al Qaeda."

He was referring to conservative politicans and bloggers and the Fox News Channel. Olbermann insisted there was a "straight line" of culpability from Fox News to the Tiller shooter. He played clips of O'Reilly disparaging Tiller: "For 5,000 dollars, Tiller, the baby killer, as some call him, will perform a late-term abortion for just about any reason." And: "Tiller the baby killer out in Kansas, acquitted. Acquitted today of murdering babies. There`s got to be a special place in hell for this guy."

Olbermann was so offended he called for a boycott of businesses that allow a Fox News infection in public.

"Don't write a letter, don't make a threat, just get up and explain, if they will not change the channel," he exclaimed, "leave the place and say calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere. If you know a viewer of that channel, show them this tape, or just the tape of the attacks on Dr. Tiller that set the stage for his assassination. Fox News Channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism, not until its profits begin to decline, when its growth stops. So not so much a boycott here as a quarantine, because this has got to stop."

The Tiller assassination? Olbermann insisted that the mere act of denouncing Tiller as killer of babies – as if he were instead removing tumors – is an invitation to terrorism and murder. This was not a call for moderation by the pro-life movement, but for rhetorical surrender. The media demanded that pro-lifers stop defining abortion as the ending of a human life. Such a definition was so raw and emotional that it somehow disfigured the "truth" that this is merely a woman-saving health procedure that was not only legal, but commendable.

While they pawed through Twitter looking for anti-Tiller "hate speech," liberal journalists expressed no distaste for the revoltingly gilded rhetoric in praise of this monster. In the Washington Times, reporter Julia Duin found the "Very Reverend" Katharine Ragsdale of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts to express how the "choice" advocates felt. "This is about the loss of a man who was a saint and a martyr," she said in an interview. "He was a prayerful man who put his life at risk to protect others and died for it."

Over on National Public Radio, "Talk of the Nation" host Neal Conan was hoping the polls would tilt back to the left: "There was a recent Gallup poll that suggested that opinion on abortion had actually shifted in this country toward the pro-life side, sort of, outside of the context of Kansas in -- on the national level -- there might be some concern that if the pro-life movement is associated with vigilante tactics like this, again, that could cut in to those gains."

His guest, Wichita Eagle reporter Dion Lefler, agreed: "Yeah. I think that it could. I mean, you know, every time there's an incident like this, I mean, you will -- one prominent pro-life person here in town told me that he thought that if this guy is linked to the movement then it's going to set them back 20 years."

That's exactly what the pro-abortion media would love to accomplish. They're willing to smear the pro-life movement with the mud of the militia movement or al-Qaeda if it will enable their cause. There is no extreme, and no mainstream. There is only a ghastly, murderous blur.

George Tiller was a monster who personally murdered 60,000 babies. May God have mercy on his soul.