Clinic killings.

The shootings at two women's clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts, last month should be a call to the prolife movement to clarify once again its basic priorities and examine how they are to be carried out in thought, word, and deed.

Catholic moral teaching in no way legitimates acts of premeditated murder under the rubric of "justifiable homicide," even in defense of vulnerable and unprotected human life. That fact must be articulated again with the fullest clarity and urgency by the bishops of the United States. While continuing to deplore the legal killing of millions of unborn children, the bishops must underscore the universal scope of the church's commitment to life, exemplified by their teaching on the consistent ethic of life. They must make clear that the lives of employees of clinics where abortions are performed, and the women who seek assistance there, are inviolable.

Over the last two years, Catholic leaders in this country have made a concerted effort to clarify church teaching prohibiting the use of violence in the antiabortion movement. In particular, Cardinals John O'Connor, Bernard Law, and Roger Mahony have all made strong, detailed explications of why Catholic teaching forbids homicide to save the lives of the unborn: Good ends never justify evil means; violent force is legitimate only as self-defense, but even then it is subject to the requirements of public order; taking the law into one's own hands, even in the case of preventing abortions, contradicts the church's teaching; and the use of violent means undermines the credibility of the whole prolife movement.

An even more timely argument was put forth by Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb of Mobile, Alabama (Origins, September 29, 1994). He refuted the renegade priest, David C. Trosch, and stripped Trosch of his priestly faculties. Trosch not only advocates violence to deter abortions, but last July, in a letter to members of Congress, outlined a "target list" (including members of Planned Parenthood and the National Organization of Women) who would be "sought out and terminated as vermin are terminated."

Though the archbishop's statement was forceful, Trosch continues to advocate murder and is still identified in the media--technically, they are correct in doing so--as a Catholic priest. Trosch's ongoing advocacy is a detriment to the lives and souls of others; it is a public scandal. Since Catholics who obtain or facilitate abortions de jure separate themselves from the church; and since the U.S. Catholic church in the 1960s publicly excommunicated those who persisted in advocating segregation, many are led to ask why the church hesitates to excommunicate Trosch. The Presbyterian church did excommunicate the Rev. Paul Hill well before he murdered two people at a Florida abortion clinic last year.

But something more than the reiterating of Catholic teaching and the punishment of those who flout it is needed. On a number of occasions, Mohandas Gandhi, the prophet of nonviolence, was forced to deal with the violent tendencies of his followers by calling off campaigns in which his movement for Indian independence was engaged and by fasting publicly. Cesar Chavez did the same thing in this country in 1968, fasting for twenty-five days to purify the motives and actions of his nonviolent movement for farm workers. It is time for the U.S. bishops to propose that members of the prolife movement follow the example of Gandhi and Chavez. The bishops could suggest a fast: from food, for a specified period; and from volatile acts and rhetoric on the part of prolifers, permanently.

Perhaps because of frustrations following the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1993, some of those who protest at abortion clinics seem to have lost a sense of self-restraint. They intimidate others with their speech, graphic placards, and physical bearing in a way that belies respect for the dignity of the human person. One recent study--from the prochoice Feminist Majority Foundation--stated that one-fourth of all clinics they surveyed reported that doctors and staff members had received death threats. Public protest against abortion must be peaceful, principled, unthreatening, and unfailingly civil. If this can be achieved, it will be in marked contrast to much prochoice rhetoric, and all the more persuasive for it.

Cardinal Law has wisely proposed a moratorium on demonstrations at abortion clinics located in his archdiocese. If and when such demonstrations do resume, their spirit should convey a consistent nonviolent message. Over time, it would be hoped that such attempts at self-discipline by the anti-abortion movement might even have an effect on the incendiary and often bigoted language of prochoice groups (see Planned Parenthood's comments about Cardinal O'Connor in its New York Times ad, January 5, 1995).

The genius of the Catholic insight into the sacredness of human life--attested to with great clarity by Mother Teresa at a national prayer breakfast last February before President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore--is that it finds this value in all human life: even in its least apparently winning, least immediately recognizable, or least comely and readily lovable manifestations. This intuition is the source of hope for resolving the abortion impasse. It holds that change is possible because rational people can recognize the value of their own lives, and thus the lives of others; and that fetal life is deserving of respect precisely because it is part of the continuum of life through which we all pass and on which we all depend.

The odds that such a realization will eventually "ripen" in the hearts of most Americans will rest on many factors, including how men, the church, and society in general value women and children. It will also depend on a trust born of courtesy and respect. So let a fast be declared. The sanctity of life can be witnessed to in many ways.