Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 12, 1993 TAG: 9303120309
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ABORTION FOES DECRY SLAYING
SOME OPERATION RESCUE officials say the Wednesday slaying of a Florida doctor who provided abortions was justified. But anti-abortion advocates in the Roanoke Valley refused to condone violence.\ While Roanoke Valley activists on both sides of the abortion issue were condemning Wednesday's slaying of a Florida doctor who provided abortions, the state director of Operation Rescue refused to do so.
"Who committed the greater crime?" asked David Crane of Norfolk. "The citizens who stand by and allow the children to be murdered or this one man who stopped a serial killer from killing more children?
"In a just society, this abortionist and hundreds of others like him would have been executed already," Crane said.
That was just the kind of talk anti-abortion activist Ron Hedlund, founder of the Pro-Life Action Coalition of Southwest Virginia, said he hoped wouldn't be heard.
Hedlund said his group "clearly and strongly condemns the apparent murder . . . This distressing incident cannot be condoned or justified by any means, and we find it no less tragic than" abortion, which his group also considers murder.
"I think the national pro-life movement needs to come out with one voice against violence," he said.
Although he is not a member of the organization, Hedlund contended that Operation Rescue at the national level advocates nonviolence. That organization has led the movement of protesters using their bodies to block access to abortion clinics.
Blockaders generally are subject to arrest on trespassing or other charges and frequently find their actions the subjects of counterprotests by abortion-rights advocates.
Among Operation Rescue's national leadership, "One of their great fears is of someone losing it - getting violent. When they see someone losing their temper, they encourage them not to participate" in clinic blockades, Hedlund said.
But Donald Spitz, Operation Rescue field director for Hampton Roads, used Scripture to justify the shooting.
"The Bible says whatever a man sows, he shall reap. That abortionist was in the trade of bloodshed. He reaped what he sowed. From God's perspective, he deserved it."
Representatives in the Roanoke Valley on both sides said they have experienced violent opposition in protests, but each said they anticipated this escalation of violence would have come from the other side first.
They also acknowledged that some members might try to use the tragedy to further their own organizations' ends. The doctor may be held up as a martyr by abortion-rights advocates, or his killing might be an example to opponents who believe it will deter others from performing abortions.
Kathryn Haynie, executive director of Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge, said she didn't expect leaders on either side of the abortion issue to condone the shooting. But, she said, "the reality is, the tactics of Operation Rescue can kindle [an action such as the shooting in] someone who is unstable.
"We cannot prevent all the nutsoes out there" from hurting someone if they are determined to, she said. She contended that an unstable person who is encouraged to break one set of laws by blockading a clinic might be more likely to break others.
Crane's position was even more extreme than the simply equivocal condemnations David Nova said he had heard from national abortion opponents.
He worried that the shooting has "long-term implications" in the national battle over abortion. "Unfortunately, this killing might be the breaking of a threshold," he said.
Andrea Sexton, spokeswoman for the Virginia Society for Human Life chapter, said her group could "not in any way condone" the shooting, which "can only hurt the pro-life movement."
Sexton said her organization "stands for respecting every single individual human life," and called the shooting "reprehensible."
She and Hedlund said they do not expect the shooting and the inevitable negative light it may shed on their movement to diminish the drive of those who will continue to work to legislate the elimination of abortion.
The effects are likely to be "far-reaching," though, Hedlund said, "even if there is never another act of violence. We will have to live with this for the rest of the movement."
Some information for this story was provided by Landmark News Service.
Keywords:
FATALITY