handicapping the pro-life movement

ana marie cox, on abortion, and the tiller murder:

"If someone believes that abortion is murder, someone like Tiller would necessarily seem reprehensible.

There are no good parallels, but I think there's weight to the one a lot of young pro-life conservatives I know use: Would you ask an abolitionist to think more charitably about a slaveowner?

You can ask a pro-life person to believe in the essential humanity of someone like Tiller, you can expect a pro-life person to honor Tiller's 'right to live,' but you can't reasonably expect any kind of sympathy.

Nothing, however, justifies a citizen's cold-blooded murder of someone he disagrees with, no matter what level of moral outrage that disagreement reaches. And Tiller's murder -- at his church, in front of friends and family -- is itself such a moral outrage that I think it's set back the pro-life movement at least several years, if not a decade.

I know I don't feel a whole lot of sympathy for them right now."