Closing George Tiller's clinic

What the shuttering of the murdered late-term abortion doctor's clinic means for the U.S. abortion debate

Apparently, "terrorism works," said Mary C. Curtis in AOL's Politics Daily. The family of slain late-term abortion doctor George Tiller said his Wichita clinic will not reopen for business. There is "shock and sadness on both sides of the abortion debate" over Tiller's murder, but you can't get around that fact that the murderer achieved his goal through fear-inducing violence. Pro-life activists may or may not believe that "this turn of events is a victory," but it's a sure win for "vigilantism."

George Tiller was the victim of tragic "terrorist violence," said Ross Douthat in The New York Times, because he was willing to abort a fetus "we wouldn’t hesitate to call a baby if we saw it struggling for life in a hospital bed." But the small number of hard cases Tiller handled—including rape, incest, life-threatening complications—needn't define the abortion debate. If we decided questions of abortion through the "democratic process," rather than "enshrining" it as a "near-absolute" constitutional right, we might defuse everything from peaceful protests to "crimes like George Tiller's murder."

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