The Legality and Morality of Using Deadly Force to Protect Unborn Children from Abortionists

Abstract

Is killing abortionists as they arrive at abortuaries to perform regularly scheduled abortions a legally justifiable use of force in defense of another person\u27s life? Under commonly accepted criminal law principles of justification, a person normally is entitled to use force—even deadly force—when necessary to save a person\u27s life from an aggressor bent on taking that life. But because Roe and its progeny have made abortion a constitutionally protected right, courts would predictably hold that using force against an abortionist is not legally justified, despite the fact that the motive for that force is to defend innocent human life. Even if intentionally killing an abortionist can be legally justified, is it morally justified? Roman Catholics apply Catholic moral teaching to this question. That teaching embodies universal moral principles that are useful to anybody—Catholic or non-Catholic—who cares to analyze the moral issue. Based on Catholic moral teaching, intentionally killing abortionists as Griffin and Hill did is morally wrong, at least at a time when we are not in a state of justified rebellion. For now, there are alternatives to violence—particularly prayer and the uncompromising proclamation of the truth about abortion—that are more appropriate, prudent, and in the long run, effective than escalating the violence that abortionists, spurred by the Supreme Court, have started