Responding to the shooting death of late-term abortionist George Tiller, President Obama sent out a welcome message that this nation would not tolerate attacks on pro-lifers or any other Americans because of their religion or beliefs.

Ha ha! Just kidding. That was the lead sentence — with minor edits — of a New York Times editorial warning about theoretical hate crimes against Muslims eight months after 9/11. Why can’t pro-lifers get the same oceans of ink devoted to assuring Americans that “most pro-lifers are peaceful”?

For years, we’ve had to hear about the danger that Americans might overreact to a terrorist attack committed by 19 Muslims shouting “Allahu akbar” as they flew commercial jets into American skyscrapers. We’ve never had a dozen pro-lifers shouting “Abortion kills a beating heart!” as they gunned down thousands of innocent citizens in Wichita, Kan.

Why aren’t liberals rushing to assure us that “most pro-lifers are peaceful”? Unlike Muslims, pro-lifers actually are peaceful.

According to recent polling, a majority of Americans oppose abortion – a fact implicitly acknowledged by liberals’ refusal to let us vote on the subject. In a country with approximately 150 million pro-lifers, five abortionists have been killed since Roe v. Wade.

In that same 36 years, more than 49 million babies have been killed in the womb. Let’s recap that halftime score, sports fans: 49 million to five.

Meanwhile, fewer than 2 million Muslims live in America and, while Muslims are less murderous than abortionists, I’m fairly certain they’ve killed more than five people in the United States in the last 36 years. For some reason, the number “3,000” keeps popping into my head.

So in a country that is more than 50 percent pro-life — and 80 percent opposed to the late-term abortions of the sort performed by Tiller — only five abortionists have been killed. And in a country that is less than 0.5 percent Muslim, Muslims have killed thousands of Americans.

But the killing of about one abortionist per decade leads liberals to condemn the entire pro-life movement as “domestic terrorists.”

Tiller bragged about performing 60,000 abortions, including abortions of viable babies, able to survive outside their mother’s womb. He made millions of dollars performing late-term abortions so gruesome that, in the entire country, only two other abortionists — not a squeamish bunch — would perform them.

Kansas law allows late-term abortions only to save the mother’s life or to prevent “irreversible physical damage” to the mother. But Tiller was more than happy to kill viable babies, provided the mothers: (1) forked over $5,000; and (2) mentioned “substantial and irreversible conditions,” which, in Tiller’s view, included not being able to go to concerts or rodeos or being “temporarily depressed” on account of their pregnancies.

In return for blood money from Tiller’s abattoir, Democrats ran a political protection racket for the late-term abortionist.

In 1997, The Washington Post reported that Tiller attended one of Bill Clinton’s White House coffees for major campaign contributors. In addition to a $25,000 donation to Clinton, Tiller wanted to thank him personally for 30 months of U.S. Marshals’ protection paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.

Kansas Democrats who received hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars from Tiller repeatedly intervened to block any interference with Tiller’s abortion mill.

Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas until Obama made her Health and Human Services Secretary, received six-figure donations from Tiller. She vetoed one bill restricting late-term abortions and another one that would have required Tiller to turn over his records pertaining to “substantial and irreversible conditions” justifying his late-term abortions.

Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison also got elected with the help of Tiller’s blood money, replacing a Republican attorney general who was in the middle of an investigation of Tiller for various crimes including his failure to report statutory rapes, despite performing abortions on girls as young as 11.

But soon after Morrison replaced the Republican attorney general, the charges against Tiller were reduced and, in short order, he was acquitted of a few misdemeanors. In what is a not uncommon occurrence with Democrats, Morrison is now gone, having been forced to resign when his mistress charged him with sexual harassment and corruption.

Tiller was protected not only by a praetorian guard of elected Democrats, but also by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — coincidentally, the same church attended by Tiller’s fellow Wichita executioner, the BTK killer.

The official Web page of the ELCA instructs: “A developing life in the womb does not have an absolute right to be born.” As long as we’re deciding who does and doesn’t have an “absolute right to be born,” who’s to say late-term abortionists have an “absolute right” to live?

I wouldn’t kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn’t want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing those who make the difficult, often tragic, decision to shoot an abortionist be an effective means of reducing the shootings of abortionists?

Following the moral logic of liberals, I say: If you don’t believe in shooting abortionists, then don’t shoot one.

COPYRIGHT 2009 ANN COULTER
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