
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 4, 1994                   TAG: 9408040056
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FLORIDA SLAYINGS

DR. JOHN Britton and James Barrett should not be dead. But they are. Their deaths ought to be weighing burdensomely on Paul Hill's conscience. But Hill, to the extent outward demeanor can shed light on inner thought, appears not to comprehend the enormity of his deed in shooting them.

On one level, then, the slaying last week of the physician and his escort at a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic evokes the sense of outrage that attends any eruption of horrible violence.

There is, however, another level on which the deaths of Britton and Barrett can be comprehended. Though not inevitable, the killings were a logical outcome of the ferocity with which the abortion wars are fought.

Hill, one gathers from subsequent news accounts, had edged steadily toward the egocentric notion that his was a God-given duty to kill abortionists. The cliche about "senseless violence" is in a way inapplicable here: If abortion is defined as nothing more nor less than murder, there is a certain sense to Hill's act.

Not that it makes very good sense, including to the vast majority of abortion foes. Such acts do not win public sympathy for the cause; more fundamentally, they are at odds with the reverence for life that inspires many anti-abortion activists.

Still, the anti-abortion movement is beleaguered these days, with the abortion rights established in Roe vs. Wade evidently not be overturned in the foreseeable future. This is a condition that easily gives rise to corrosive bitterness.

But the take-no-quarter tone is not the product of only one side. Too often, abortion-rights proponents talk as if the constitutional right in Roe is all there is to the matter. Too seldom is it acknowledged that abortion is not simply another medical procedure, and that it involves or ought to involve more considerations than a decision to have, say, gall-bladder surgery.

Lack of such acknowledgment feeds the frustrations of those who detest Roe on moral grounds. It also tends to separate abortion-rights activism from the views of a majority of Americans. Most Americans seem to dislike the idea of a governmental ban on abortion. But most seem also to dislike the idea of abortions. The viewpoint, while ambivalent, is not necessarily incoherent or inconsistent.

It's a viewpoint, granted, that leaves plenty of details unsettled: the parental-notification issue, for example, or the role of abortion funding in health-care reform. But if it could be agreed that abortion is neither murder nor a triviality, but something somewhere in between, then perhaps the debate could move on to more productive questions. For example: How can we reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, which are the cause of abortions in the first place?

If the absolutist atmosphere surrounding the abortion issue were dissipated, it might also prevent future shocks. Paul Hill apparently was a walking bomb waiting to detonate; even so, society shouldn't be providing fuses.

by CNB