Today’s ”Just Ask Angie” question comes from Paul, in Quincy, MA:  How does a pro life protester justify calling themselves PRO life when they are willing to kill?

It’s done in the same fashion as any other war that’s been fought in the name of religion.  However, in other, non-Christian-based faiths, those who commit acts of violence in the name of their religion are generally regarded by the masses as being extremist or separatist, or even terrorists.  In the largely-Christian US (75.1% as reported by ARIS in 2008), however, we hesitate to put such labels on those rogues who take divine justice into their own hands.

We are a country founded on freedoms – freedoms of speech, religion – but have those freedoms been bastardized to the point that any one individual is able to twist those freedoms to serve their own agendas?  Have the liberties our forefathers fought for been taken such for granted that we feel entitled to be the judges of others’ moral makeup?

I’ve often heard pro-lifers justify the violent acts of some hardcore protesters by citing the old term lex talionis (“Eye for an Eye”).  In viewing the act of abortion as immoral and wrong, the overzealous protestor feels entitled to threaten or take the life of someone whom they see as willing to do the same to an unborn fetus. 

What is easily forgotten, however, are the many other religious sayings that negate the old ‘eye for an eye’ mentality of justice:

• Judge not that ye be not judged (Matthew 7:1)
• Judge not thy neighbor until thou art come into his place (Hebrew Proverb)
• And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward. Matthew 6:5
•  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Luke 6:31 

The willingness to kill in the name of pro-life is justified by nothing more than hypocrisy and ego.  In ignoring the basic fundamentals of the Christian faith and refusing to focus on the morality of one’s own life, the violent pro-lifer takes on an almost narcissistic role of vigilante, seeing it as his or her duty to carry out “God’s wrath” on those seen as deserving of it.  Seldom does this person stop to examine his or her own lifestyle, often relying on, and ultimately blaming, God’s will, as justification and reasoning for his or her actions.  This person does not see his or herself as a murderer, no – but a special, if not ‘chosen’, messenger of God.

Revisiting the bastardization of American liberties, it is often the violent pro-life protester’s mentality that the law is wrong or flawed, or secondary to the laws of one’s faith.  The laws of man need not apply to those who are ‘carrying out God’s work’.  I struggle, still, to find the differences between such domestic religious zealots and the rogue Muslim terrorists and Islamic extremists that use violence and bloodshed to further impose their views on society.  But that could just be me.

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