Published: June 09, 2009 03:54 pm      

LION AND THE LAMB: Churches and homes ought to be sacred places

On Sunday, May 30, Scott Roeder shot Dr. George Tiller to death in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. Dr. Tiller was handing out church bulletins, but that was not the reason he was shot. During the weekdays Dr. Tiller provided abortions — and to Mr. Roeder, as well as to TV personality Bill O'Reilly, Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, and others, Dr. Tiller was a baby-killer and a mass murderer.

One way of dealing with the problem of abortion is to eliminate the medical personnel who help women to abort. I understand that since 1977 there have been in North America 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault and battery, and 3 kidnappings of such providers. If Mr. Roeder is convicted of first-degree murder, however, the greatest penalty he can receive is a life sentence.

Another way of dealing with the problem of abortion is to address the causes of unwanted pregnancy—the reasons why women decide to abort: contraceptives were not available or used; social support for child-bearing and child-rearing (such as access to adequate income, health care, and day care centers for children) was not available; there was an impregnator who did not take responsibility for the result of his impregnation.

In nations where such life-support systems are provided, where there are strong programs of sex education and family planning, and where the responsibilities of the impregnators are emphasized, the abortion rate decreases significantly.

On March 12, 2006, in the isolated hamlet of Yusufiyah southwest of Baghdad, Private First Class Steven Green and three fellow soldiers invaded the home of Qassim and Fakriya al-Janabi and their two daughters, Abeer (14) and Hadeel (6) while their two sons, Muhammed (13) and Ahmed (10) were in school. Private Green had noticed Abeer at a checkpoint and found out where she lived. He then raped Abeer and killed her, and also killed the parents and sister, thus aborting the lives of the four. They then set fire to the bodies.

On May 21 of this year Private Green was convicted by a jury in Paducah, Kentucky, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. This sentence was regarded as a travesty by the Iraqi people. They claimed that he should have been tried in an Iraqi court to face Iraqi justice where there could be a death sentence.

Would a death sentence, however, have addressed the causes of this tragedy? Andrew Tilghman, a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, had interviewed Private Green after he had been in Iraq for four months, a month before the al-Janabi murders. He told Tilghman, "I came over here because I wanted to kill people...I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience."

Military recruitment for the Iraq War has encountered increasing difficulty in the U.S., and entry standards have been lowered. A person like Steven Green should not have been recruited. Or does this also have something to do with the way we demean Iraqis, calling them "ragheads" and other unfavorable names, and find it so easy to torture them in our detaining prisons?

Supporting and enhancing our human journey from birth to death is one of the most important challenges confronting us in the world. Churches and homes ought to be sacred places where human life is especially celebrated and protected. It is a terrible tragedy when this proves not to be true.