Updated version of a column originally published in the Daily Beacon April 16, 2007
While the other side is out bombing clinics, we’ll be electing candidates! Senator Alan Cranston (1914–2000)
That quote, often repeated in discussions of abortion politics, captures a deeply destructive tendency in America’s abortion debate: the attempt to portray the entire pro-life movement as inherently violent, extremist, or terroristic. This narrative resurfaces regularly in media commentary, political rhetoric, and social discourse, especially during moments of heightened legal or cultural conflict over abortion.
But this framing depends on a logical fallacy: guilt by association. It collapses a large, diverse moral and political movement into the actions of a tiny number of criminals, while ignoring both the pro-life movement’s consistent rejection of violence and the uncomfortable reality that extremism has also existed on the pro-choice side.
Violence Is Rejected by the Pro-Life Movement
Acts of violence against abortion providers, murders, bombings, arson are real, horrifying, and indefensible. They should be unequivocally condemned. And they have been. Across decades, pro-life organizations, churches, advocacy groups, and leaders have universally denounced violence as incompatible with the very principle they claim to defend: the sanctity of human life.
Those who commit such acts are not praised or protected within the pro-life movement; they are rejected, reported, and prosecuted.
As pro-life liberal writer Jim Trageser once wrote:
I have vehemently condemned these attacks for the exact same reason I condemn abortion—we do not have the right to take another’s life… To suggest I am guilty or share the blame for these abominable attacks is to stretch the meaning of personal responsibility beyond all reasonable recognition.
He went on to note the absurdity of blaming Martin Luther King Jr. for the Black Panthers or Abraham Lincoln for John Brown, simply because they opposed the same injustice. Moral agreement on ends does not imply approval of all means.
Notably, pro-life groups have often cooperated with law enforcement to bring perpetrators of clinic violence to justice. Organizations such as Feminists for Life and Priests for Life have, at various times, publicly offered rewards for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for violent acts, an inconvenient fact for those who insist that violence is somehow intrinsic to the pro-life cause.
Violence Is Not Confined to One Side
Another uncomfortable truth is that extremism is not unique to one ideological camp. While pro-life violence receives (rightly) strong media attention, criminal acts connected to pro-choice individuals or motivations have also occurred. In fact, Human Life International (www.hli.org) has documented over 7000 incidents of criminal activity by pro choice extremists. They include 880 homicides and other killings, 86 attempted murders, 23 arsons and bombings, 787 assaults, 1,798 sex crimes (including 169 rapes), 59 kidnappings, 420 cases of vandalism, 270 drug-related crimes and .1,577 medical crimes. Some examples:
- In 1993, pro choice activist Eileen Ornstein Janezik shot and killed Jerry Simon, who was a minister, radio host and pro life activist. Janezik then continued to hold police at bay for six more hours.
- In 1994, abortion provider Alicia Ruiz Hanna was convicted of murdering her patient, Angela Sanchez after Sanchez died at her clinic. Hanna then attempted to stuff Sanchez’s body into the trunk of her car, as Sanchez’s four children looked on.
- in 1998, pro choice activist Alfred E. Smith was convicted of murdering his ex girlfriend, Deena Moody, specifically because she refused to have an abortion.
These acts are rarely framed as “pro-choice violence,” but that same restraint should be applied consistently. The point is not to engage in moral scorekeeping or to relativize wrongdoing. Violence does not become acceptable because the “other side did it too.” Rather, the point is to reject the false narrative that one side is inherently violent while the other is morally pure.
Post-Dobbs: Higher Stakes, Greater Responsibility
Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022, abortion policy has returned largely to the states. This has intensified political activism on both sides—and, in some cases, heightened rhetoric and intimidation.
In this climate, the temptation to demonize opponents is strong. But if there is any common ground left in the abortion debate, it must include this principle:
Violence and coercion are never legitimate tools of persuasion in a democratic society.
- Not when clinics are attacked.
- Not when churches are vandalized.
- Not when pregnancy centers are firebombed.
- Not when individuals are threatened or harassed for their views.
To excuse violence because one believes the cause is righteous is to abandon moral reasoning altogether. That logic, carried to its conclusion, is the logic of terrorism.
A Call for Moral Clarity
Abortion touches the deepest questions of life, sex, responsibility, religion, autonomy, and justice. People will continue to disagree, often passionately. Debate, protest, voting, persuasion, and peaceful advocacy are all legitimate. Violence is not.
If we are serious about defending human dignity, whether unborn life, women in crisis, medical workers, or political opponents—then we must refuse the easy slander of guilt by association and the dangerous allure of righteous aggression.
No cause, however noble it may appear to its supporters, is made better by bloodshed. And no movement should be judged by its worst criminals rather than its clearly stated principles and consistent actions.
Condemning violence should not be controversial. It should be the minimum moral consensus we all share.
Keep It Real,
James
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