Abortion: the two sides gear up - Column

The abortion controversy moves quickly to another set of planes. A few months ago it was the general understanding that American voters had spoken on the subject and that from now on abortions would be, with here and there a constraint or two, as available as tonsillectomies. But what happened in November was the election of over forty new legislators who either believe that abortion is fundamentally wrong and immoral, or else believe that if the voters of a state wish it, qualifications for an abortion should be selective, and that on no account should abortions be used as a handy means of birth control or of assuring the birth of the desired sex. A second development is the nature and the force of the protestors.

In this space a few weeks ago I wrote that no leader of the pro-life movement defended the murders committed by Paul Hill and John Salvi. I am required to qualify that statement. Mrs. Dawn Marie Stover has protested abortion, under the auspices of Operation Rescue and of Advocates for Life Ministries. She is not a learned woman, commands no legions, yet in a recent forum on the subject of abortion protests - "Licit and Illicit" - she appeared as a representative of the militant movement and was accepted in that capacity. She is the mother of four children; at age 15 she aborted what would have been her first child, and evidently seeks to redress that wrong. How? Among other things, by averring that she will not disavow Paul Hill.

Mrs. Stover does not make distinctions lucidly, but one gathers that she simultaneously regrets that the abortionist and his driver were killed, but refuses to say that Mr. Hill was wrong to kill them. Her reasoning is that the laws of God and country give the right to kill in self-defense, and that since six-month-old fetuses don't have the capacity to defend themselves, it is just that surrogates should accept that responsibility.

This analysis brought a thundering dismissal from Father Richard John Neuhaus, who spoke on behalf of God by observing that it is nowhere excused in Christian theology to kill with the intent to kill, and that since the mothers waiting in line for an abortion by the slain doctor were left free to engage the services of other abortionists, it cannot even be maintained that Paul Hill saved the life of a single fetus. On the legal question, there is no right by anyone with the exception of a state executioner to kill except in self-defense, and there was nobody on the scene who had approached Paul Hill, weapon in hand, clearly intending to kill him. So much for Mrs. Stover.

But in the meantime, other arguments were being made. It was generally understood that Cardinal Law of Boston had in effect counseled the pro-life protestors to step back this side of the militancy they had been showing. Cardinal O'Connor of New York would not go that far, enjoining his knights to go to the limits of the law. What, then, are the limits of the law, and what protections are justified for the pro-abortion front?

Attorney General Janet Reno, Fr. Neuhaus complained, has more or less announced that the Justice Department is going to tape the conversations, and perhaps open the mail, of men and women who give evidence that they are bent on terrorist assaults on abortionists. But such activity would seem entirely proper, provided that due process is observed. This means that before a line is tapped, a petition must be presented to the court to authorize this apparent infringement of the Fourth Amendment. If Mr. Hill's conversation disclosing his intentions to kill had been overheard, his crime might have been averted.

But we are indeed left without a crystallized line that protects on the one hand the right of free assembly, and on the other hand the right of women to exercise what the Court has pronounced to be a constitutional guarantee. And it is certainly true that organized judicial machinery is mobilized more on the side of abortion than on the side of the protestors, roughly the opposite of the alignment of forces during the civil-rights struggles. After the forum was completed, Fr. Neuhaus pondered the point that the prosecution in Los Angeles announced that it would not seek the death penalty for O. J. Simpson, while in Florida, the prosecutor announced that he would seek the death penalty for Paul Hill. "One wonders," Fr. Neuhaus paused, "what would the prosecutor have called for if O. J. Simpson had murdered an abortionist?"

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