What Jesus Wouldn't Do

The cold-blooded murder of a doctor whose clinic performed late term abortions was one more travesty in the midst of the abortion wars. No such killing can ever be justified and there appears to be something even more heinous about this particular act as it happened in a church on Sunday morning.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I oppose legalized abortion and I would not be disappointed at all to see it outlawed, even though I believe the matter involves much more than the law. But I categorically reject any justification for the murder of someone who performs abortions as do the vast majority of individuals I know who call themselves pro-life. One does not respond to the killing of innocent and unborn children with killing in kind. To suggest otherwise reveals a contradictory ethic of life in the same way as those who reject capital punishment, war, but not abortion.

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I am very aware of the the fact that there are some very difficult cases where an abortion may be a tragic but acceptable procedure, such as when the life of the mother is actually threatened. What amazes me is that those who consider themselves pro-choice usually appeal to the difficult and rare cases as a justification for their position. It is one thing to take the exceptional cases into account in one's ethics, but an ethic based on the exception is something quite different and makes for a bad ethic.
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I do not have anything else to say about this except that while I can make various arguments as to why unborn children should not be killed and neither should the physicians who perform such deeds, the most convincing case for me is that I cannot imagine Jesus performing an abortion on a child created in the divine image, nor can I imagine him gunning down a doctor who performs abortions, who is made in that very same image.

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It was Karl Barth who said that because of the incarnation, the light of God shines even in the womb.

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Cross-Posted at RedBlueChristian