Our constitution used to allow the worst kind of slavery, where people were considered simply property (with all the attendant depravity and cruelty--torture and even murder was legal). The Missouri Compromise said new states admitted to the Union north of Missouri had to be free states. Only those parts of the Western Territories south of MO (which was a slave state) could allow slavery. But then the rules were repealed so that Kansas could be allowed to determine if it would be a slave state by vote of its male white settlers. This created a border war that earned the state the name "Bleeding Kansas."
The issue of abortion has made the state once again into Bleeding Kansas. If a woman could get two other doctors to agree that carrying her baby full term would cause irreparable damage to her health, then Dr. Tiller of Wichita had one of three clinics in the country that would perform a late-term abortion. Most of those are grave and difficult circumstances because of the health of the mother or the deformity of the child, but sometimes a mental health exception was allowed as well. On Sunday Dr. Tiller was murdered while attending church.
To paraphrase one of my pastor friends, the abortion of Dr. Tiller is just as wrong as his killing unborn babies. No ifs, ands or buts. The son of the late Francis Schaeffer, evangelical apologist, now believes he and other pro-life leaders contributed to Tiller's murder by their extreme rhetoric.
You have to trace your rhetoric to its logical conclusion if you want to know if it is extreme. For example, if you really say all abortions are absolute murder of innocent children under every circumstance and even though it is allowed by law, then the conclusion is to break the law and kill those who are performing the murders. That is what "extremists" do. It is useless to urge restraint on them because they take their extreme rhetoric to its logical (to them) conclusion, unrestrained even by civil authority.
If you do that, don't claim you're doing something biblical or in line with Christlikeness. In fact, it will help the rest of us believers if you never again claim to be a Christian. The only people Jesus or Paul used extreme arguments with were the extremists themselves (Pharisees and Judaisers--both legalistic ultra-"fundamentalist" groups), and against sin in self (Matt 18:9), not with liberals, compromisers, socialists or etc. Toward civil authorities Jesus was generous (Matt 22:21), and gracious even to the occupiers of his people (Matt 8). The same can be said of Paul who treated Felix, Festus and Herod with respect.
You cannot profess and promote a prolife agenda by taking life, just like you cannot protest the propriety of homosexuality with hatred of homosexuals or fulfill the biblical mandate to be a good citizen by being a disloyal opposition to the President, Congress or courts.
Some people say you have to respect a person's choice even if it's wrong. If a person who is a believer chooses to abort a healthy baby instead of giving it up for adoption, we “respect” their “choice” to the degree the law allows them the freedom to do wrong personally, even if it is wrong biblically or morally. But I do not “respect” the gunman's “choice” to kill the doctor to prevent what he considers the murder of innocent babies.
Today we waste time getting distracted with political and even social crusades to the detriment of a biblical focus on the cross. In Roman times, after the baby was born the father had the option to give "thumbs down" to the newborn, and if he rejected it, the infant was placed outside to die of exposure. Paul says nothing about correcting pagan social customs--abortion or slavery--and keeps his eye on the prize. Satan distracts us because conversion to the cross of Christ is the only thing that will ultimately heal Bleeding Kansas.
