January 30 - Guilty

Cartoon with no copyright found online whether you search for pro-life or pro-choice images.

By Magdalena I. García

Yesterday a jury convicted Scott Roeder of first-degree murder for putting a .22-caliber gun to Dr. George Tiller’s forehead and pulling the trigger in the narthex of a church, in Wichita, Kansas, on May 31, 2009. Roeder is an activist who confessed to killing one of the only U.S. doctors to perform late-term abortions. Roeder also was convicted of aggravated assault for threatening two church ushers who tried to stop him from fleeing. He now faces a sentence of life in prison, although he could be considered eligible for parole in 25 years.

I saw the breaking news online and felt a sense of relief; I’m sure many other people did too. But not everyone is pleased with the outcome; for pro-life adherents this is clearly a defeat. But as reporter Kathlyn Stone wrote in an article published by fleshandstone.net, it’s a good thing that an “anti-abortion extremist could not kill the law.”

However, the sense of relief soon turns to sadness. It’s sad that this man will waste 25 years in prison. It’s sad that he killed another human being. It’s sad that the pregnant women who sought help from Dr. Tiller may now have nowhere to go, and may put their own lives at risk by practicing unsafe abortions. It’s sad that pregnancies were terminated, because we’ll never know who or what those unwanted children could have become. It’s sad that we live in a world where awful choices coexist. It’s sad.

This case reminds us in a powerful way that the entire human race is, to some degree, guilty of devaluing and despising life—or of not providing the conditions where all life can flourish—. As we say in Spanish: “Tanta culpa tiene el que mata la vaca, como el que le aguanta la pata” (or “The one killing the cow is as guilty as the one holding its leg”).