Last week, Dr. George Tiller, one of only three doctors in the country who performed third-trimester abortions, was gunned down by Scott Roeder. From jail, Scott Roeder called the Associated Press to cryptically warn them that "more attacks were coming." OC contributor Kevin joined a chorus of other bloggers in making the following observation:

As you read this, we have in custody an extremely dangerous terrorist who is guilty beyond any doubt, having attempted to blow up a building and murdered a civilian.  But while he's in custody, he has a support ring of other extremists, and is gloating that more attacks are coming.

I have now been struck by another source of hypocrisy in this case, as voiced by Slate.com writer William Saletan:

If abortion is murder, the most efficient thing you could have done to prevent such murders this month was to kill George Tiller. [...] If a doctor in Kansas were butchering hundreds of old or disabled people, and legal authorities failed to intervene, I doubt most members of the National Right to Life Committee would stand by waiting for "educational and legislative activities" to stop him. Somebody would use force. The reason these pro-life groups have held their fire, both rhetorically and literally, is that they don't really equate fetuses with old or disabled people.

[...] You think you're pro-life. You tell yourself that abortion is murder. Maybe you even say that when a pollster calls. But like most of the other people who say such things in polls, you don't mean it literally. There's you, and then there are the people who lock arms outside the clinics. And then there are the people who bomb them. And at the end of the line, there's the guy who killed George Tiller. If you don't accept what he did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided?