THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 19, 1994 TAG: 9408190634
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
An article arguing a legal defense for the killers of abortion doctors has been pulled from a Regent University publication the same month that the school's law center unsuccessfully tried to drop accused abortion-doctor murderer Paul Hill as a client.
The center represents Hill on misdemeanor charges involving earlier abortion protests, but a judge refused their request to quit the case. They do not represent Hill on charges that he killed a doctor and another man outside a Florida abortion clinic in July.
Michael Hirsh, an attorney on the team representing Hill on the misdemeanor charges, is also the author of the unusually personal and passionate Regent University Law Review article proposing a defense of ``justifiable homicide'' for those accused of killing abortion doctors.
He uses as his example the March 1993 killing of another doctor in Florida by abortion opponent Michael Griffin, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Hirsh noted that Florida law allows the use of even deadly force by someone who reasonably believes it will ``prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or another.''
Unborn babies inside abortion clinics are in such peril, author Hirsh argued.
``Though Michael Griffin could have fled for his own safety, the children he protected could not flee and had their backs to the wall - the uterine wall,'' Hirsh wrote.
Hirsh argued that Griffin's action was reasonable, as the law required:
The doctor, David Gunn, was approaching the clinic's doors, so harm was imminent.
The force Griffin used was necessary under the circumstances; anything less only would have delayed future abortions.
Unborn children count as ``another'' person under the law because they have rights in other areas, such as inheritances and wrongful deaths from traffic accidents and criminal acts.
He compared abortion opponents to people through history who opposed what they considered to be unjust or immoral laws: Harriet Tubman and the Undergrown Railroad that freed 19th-century slaves, those who resisted the Nazis in World War II, the soldiers who refused orders to participate in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
``Individuals, like Michael Griffin, who have protected others in violation of positive law, are exonerated by history as having acted lawfully,'' he wrote.
Hirsh also said Griffin should've been excused ``because his actions are consistent with Biblical Truth.'' Hirsh noted that Moses was considered justified in killing an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite because he prevented a harm, even though the harm was allowed by the law of the time.
``That is exactly what Michael Griffin did when he killed David Gunn,'' Hirsh wrote. ``Abortion is a harm permitted by the lawless, covenant-breaking code of this nation.''
Hirsh wrote his article long before the July 29 shotgun slayings of a doctor and his volunteer escort outside a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic. But the review, a scholarly journal for lawyers, was scheduled to be released just days after those killings, for which Hill was charged.
Hirsh is a recent Regent law graduate and now attorney for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice founded at the school by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
Through the Center, he is one of the attorneys representing Hill on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a city noise ordinance by yelling at patients and staffers outside an abortion clinic.
The dean of the law school ordered the full run of the printed law review - about 500 copies - returned to his office before they could be sent to subscribers and law schools around the country. A few copies were distributed before his order. One was obtained by The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star.
Officials told students that it was ``bad timing'' for the article, but some objected.
``This goes directly to academic freedom,'' said an angry former student, who asked not to be named for fear of jeopardizing his job status. ``But the whole reason this was pulled was politics. And fear.''
Regent University President Terrence R. Lindvall said his administration didn't interfere with or pressure anyone about the article, and the author himself asked that it be withdrawn.
Hirsh declined to comment. The law-school dean, J. Nelson Happy, didn't return phone calls to his office or home.
``I don't think there's any problem with academic freedom,'' Lindvall said. ``The students can print anything they want.'' by CNB