This is going to take some time to give a reasoned response and put this into an ethical framework that will help solve the dilemma we're facing about the moral appropriateness of a pro-life Christian shooting down an abortionist. This is a complex issue and part of the problem I've had with people who have dealt with this is that they haven't been very thorough in their thinking.

This dilemma has been with us for a long time, but after Wednesday, March 10, we're forced to deal with it. Unfortunately, now we're forced to deal with it publicly. That was when Michael Frederick Griffin shot Dr. David Gunn as he got out of his car at the Women's Medical Services Clinic in Pensacola, Florida .

Much of the public reflection has not been very well thought through, in my opinion, because virtually none of the discourse has been characterized by careful consideration of the genuine ethical dilemmas this presents to so called "pro-lifers" on both sides of the violence issue. Neither side really escapes a dilemma here.

I, like most, felt that this action was wrong but, to be honest with you, I didn't know what to think of it because, given the position many have taken on the humanness of the unborn, there seems to be some ethical continuity to the actions of Michael Griffin.

I personally want some consonance between my ethical thinking, my ethical feelings, and my ethical conclusions. Because of that, yesterday I couldn't simply respond with what seemed sensible at the moment. A lot of bad ethical thinking--and therefore bad, even tragic, ethical decisions--often result. That's part of what's got us into this mess. A lot of people are feeling about the question of abortion and not thinking about it. They feel like they don't want to be hassled by a child they don't want and can't afford and they can't see anyway, so they go to an abortion clinic and have their problem "solved." What could be more reasonable?

No, what I'm concerned about is doing more rigorous moral reasoning on this incident. I'm going to do my best to sketch out the critical issues in this moral dilemma and explain my thinking point by point. The dilemma has a couple of different elements.

On the face of it, this killing seems immoral; no question about it. Prima facie, it's an immoral act. But the first problem we have is that we have a moral position with regards to abortion that identifies--and I think for good reasons--the unborn child as a human being with rights, so that every time an abortion takes place an innocent human being's life is taken.

Simply put, here is an abortionist under the protection of the law systematically taking the life of little children on a regular basis. Now, how does one act towards someone who is consistently taking the lives of innocent, defenseless little children? He does what he can to stop it. But what happens when he has exhausted all means of stopping it, especially for the particular children immediately threatened by this particular doctor, babies that are about to die? One could argue that we'll change the law tomorrow, but that won't save the lives of the children who die today.

The minute you condemn this act you begin to paint yourself in a corner, and a sharp person is going to block you in. He's going to say, "Wait a minute, you guys are talking out of both sides of your mouth." There is a question of consistency here. On what grounds do we defend breaking the law by blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic, then turn around and condemn the act of Michael Griffin? What do you say to a Dennis Prager, for example, who says, "Wait a minute, I thought you said unborn children were human beings. If that's the case why is it wrong to kill the killer of innocent people? Why aren't more Christians who really believe that unborn children are fully human destroying more abortion clinics?"

His challenge is a fair one. His conclusion is that pro-lifers are engaging in empty rhetoric that ends up being deadly because there are corpses on the street when the dust settles. But was it rhetoric here or was it a person reasoning clearly from an ethical viewpoint and trying to act consistently with it?

In 1976 I visited Auschwitz in Poland. There was a village of the same name next to the camp. I have frequently reflected on what I could have morally justified if I were a member of that community in 1943; what actions would I take to try to thwart that deadly enterprise? Could I even shoot somebody in the back as he was walking out of the crematorium after work? The answer to that is yes, I think I could have; I could have shot a Nazi under those circumstances. I could have blown up the building. I could have burned the trucks that brought supplies. I think I could have done just about anything to slow down that killing machine and justify it morally, even to the point of assassinating Hitler.

Which brings up an interesting parallel. How is what Michael Griffin did different from the actions of Dietrich Bonhoffer, a profoundly spiritual man who was executed for his complicity in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler? How is Michael Griffin's act different from that of the off-duty policeman who put a bullet into the mad man in San Ysidro who burst into a McDonald's and began to cut people down with an automatic weapon? John Brown ignited the Civil War that ultimately brought an end to slavery when he captured the U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry on October 16, 1859. What's the difference here?

That's the dilemma, friends. If you answer that it sets the cause back and it's a bad testimony and it's going to make the pro-abortionists angrier--in short, if you answer it's a bad tactic--then you're arguing pragmatically and have skirted the core ethical question: in isolation, was this killing morally justified?

So the first part of the dilemma has to do with consistency in our moral reasoning.

The second part is this: if abortion takes the life of innocent human beings, then are all abortionists guilty of murder? If so, should they, therefore, be executed as capital criminals? Additionally, if we take the abortionist's life, what about the mother? Should she be shot too? The abortionist is merely accomplishing the "hit;" it was mom who took out the contract. This question doesn't speak to the morality of the first killing, but it does raise the question of consistency again, addressing a different aspect of the consistency question. This problem cannot be skirted because it has legislative ramifications as well as ethical ones: if abortion is outlawed as the taking of an innocent human life, how then do we punish the killers? And shouldn't we punish equally all parties complicit to the crime?

Finally, if you agree with this action committed by Michael Griffin, that this killing was right because the doctor was taking the lives of innocent children, then what of the social contract? Are vigilante squads the best way to execute social justice? Are we willing to encourage others in a similar situation--in which justice, as they see it, is not done--are we willing to encourage them to take the law into their own hands and get the job done themselves? That's exactly what happened nearly a year ago in the L.A. riots of '92. The battle cry then was "No justice; no peace." How is this different? That question really applies to two groups. For those that chanted that slogan, how are the riots you justified different from this killing? And those that condemned the riots but are applauding--some secretly--the actions of Griffin, how can you justify that? Are we ready to live with that? Will that way of doing social business ultimately fulfill the common good; will it accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number?

That's the problem. What's the answer?

What we can't do is say, "This is where this reasoning leads, therefore we can't reason this way." That's an illegitimate solution. We can't look at the results and say, "Eee, I don't like that. This is messy. This looks bad, therefore I'm going to abandon my ethical reasoning." People get to the point Grifin did in part because they follow a series of propositions. What we've got to ask is first whether the ideas are sound--the initial premises--and then if the reasoning is sound, if the facts are right and the reasoning is good, we're stuck with the conclusion. That's the way rationality works.

Here's the reasoning I went through to solve my dilemma step by step

The first question I had to answer is this: "Is the unborn child a human being who ought to be protected?" Obviously, if the answer is "no" the killing in Pensacola was immoral. It was a premeditated murder and immoral. But the evidence is all in on this question and the simple answer is, "Yes, the unborn child is a human being." Sophisticated pro-abortionists have conceded that point. They couldn't do otherwise because there's a raft of medical, biological, philosophical and religious arguments that make the case. Their tactic now is to argue that not all human beings are persons. That fails too, for a number of reasons.

First, it confuses the genus/species relationship (i.e., being human is a subset of being a person, not the other way around. For example, not all persons are humans--angels, for example--but all humans are persons.). Second, it confuses the properties of a thing (it's size, shape, weight, form, etc.) with it's substance, what a thing is in itself (in other words, a human person is not a look-like kind of thing, but a be-like kind of thing). Third, any list of qualifications for personhood ends up including certain forms of animal life and excluding people that are severely handicapped, that are in a coma, children under 18 months of age, people with an excessively low I.Q., etc., and in some cases people that just happen to be asleep. But the conclusion is that these people are not persons is ludicrous. Finally, the distinction between human and person is a completely arbitrary distinction really meant to win the argument by inventing new concepts that don't exist and just confuse things.

So, aborting a child is taking the life of an innocent human being. If this conclusion is sound, then the second premise seems self-evident: one ought not take the life of innocent human beings, especially those that can't protect themselves and who are instead entrusted to our benevolent care.

The next question becomes, "Under what conditions is it permissible to take that life and under what conditions is it criminal?" Generally, you can't take the life of another human being when that person hasn't committed a capital crime or isn't a threat to another person's life. If you take that life it's criminal.

It seems to me, then, that any abortion that isn't a result of the child threatening the life of the mother is an immoral taking of human life. This is the type of abortion David Gunn was performing, since very few abortions are done for the protection of the mother's life.

So abortion usually entails the taking of an innocent human life, but is it murder? That's the next question. And the answer is, "It depends." Murder is a legal concept, and we ought to be very careful how we use that term.

Murder not only has to do with the act of killing an innocent human being; it also has to do with the motive behind the act, and the knowledge of what a person is doing; in other words, murder includes malice and forethought. They've got to intend the crime and know what they're doing. (One could say that you never really witness a murder, only a killing; the fact of murder has to do with the unseen intentions.) A killing must be unlawful and unjustified to be called a murder. That's why we distinguish between first and second degree murder, justifiable and unjustifiable manslaughter. In each case someone dies, but in each case the moral nature of the act is different, and therefore the punishment, if any, is different. That's why I'm very concerned about the murder language because it doesn't take these details into consideration.

For example, an abortion is only murder if the act itself is illegal, and those complicit in the act, knowingly and with malice and forethought, destroy an innocent human person. However, if the law doesn't define a particular type of killing as unjust then it cannot be called murder, though it's still taking a human life.

Incidentally, if the law does forbid abortion because a human life is at stake, then I believe that all parties to the action should be prosecuted, not just the doctor. "You mean, you would charge the doctor with murder and anyone else involved?" Of course. And the law already does this. With the exception of abortion, the law does not distinguish whether a human life is post-natal or pre-natal. If you kill the child of a pregnant woman through your negligence, then you're guilty of murder. That's the law. The law already identifies that child as a human being with the right to live unless the issue is abortion . That's the schizophrenia in the law.

The only one protected now is the mother, because she alone determines whether the killing of her unborn child is a murderous act or not.

This really brings us to the meat of our question: what of the actions of Michael Griffin? We've already established that the unborn child is a person and that one ought not take the life of that person unless that person is threatening the life of another person; that abortion usually takes the life of an innocent child in a way that is inappropriate; though it is inappropriate to call it murder, it still is the taking of an innocent life. What about Michael Griffin?

Let me ask the question in a general way first. Is it right to take a life in the face of deadly force which threatens us (as in self-defense) or threatens another (as in defense of someone weaker)? The answer is yes. How could it be otherwise? I have argued in the past that strict pacifism is immoral because it allows innocent people to be victimized by stronger evil people when we could do something about it. In situations like that I think we actually have a moral obligation to act . We cannot stand by passively.

Therefore, the act of stopping the killing of children by taking the life of the killer when taken in isolation is a morally defensible act.

Ah, but here's the rub: very seldom do moral actions and moral decisions exist in isolation. They are bonded to a matrix of issues such that one cause has multiple effects with ethical ramifications. That's why some things, when done in isolation, may be ethically sound in themselves but, when done in the context of other factors, actually become evil.

I told you yesterday that I felt the killing of Dr. Gunn was wrong. Today I'm telling you I also think it was wrong. It was wrong in at least three different ways.

First, Griffin's action took the law into his own hands in a way that creates greater evil than the evil he prevented . As far as I'm concerned this last phrase is a very important one. His vigilante tactic serves to unravel the fabric of the social contract when the official rule of law which, though imperfect, is still a productive force for the common good in the land. Rule of law in this country has not broken down as it did in Nazi Germany. It's still in effect. It's still accomplishing good. It's still mitigating the impact of evil in the world. The minute we take a shot at the rule of law by taking the law into our own hands in this way we pull the leg out of one of the most important things that holds up our social structure.

This social contract is a very fragile thing. If you pull one leg out of it the whole thing can come crashing down on our own heads. This point is made very powerfully in the movie "A Man for All Seasons." Paul Scofield plays the lead as Sir Thomas Moore, Chancellor of England under Henry the VIII. Moore was executed rather than surrender the leadership of the church to the King. He was a man of tremendous mental acumen, a fine legal mind, a great Christian, a martyr.

This issue of the law and the social contract came up in the film. When Roper, the self-righteous suitor of Moore's daughter, asked Moore if he'd even give the devil the benefit of law, Moore said, "Yes," and added "What would you do, cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?"

"Yes," Roper replied, "I'd cut down every law in England to do that."

And Moore responded, "Oh? And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the benefit of law, for my own safety's sake."

The point is though acts of killing may be ethically defensible in the narrow sense, they may serve to undermine and unravel the fragile social contract, such that a greater evil will result. I think this is what is happening in this particular case.

Second, this extreme act set back the date on the abolition of abortion in this country, costing more children's lives then were saved by the killing of one abortionist. Indeed, one could argue whether any lives were saved at all, or maybe these lives will now merely be sacrificed by different abortionists.

I warned earlier about substituting pragmatic arguments--tactical arguments--for ethical ones. But sometimes pragmatic questions touch the ethical such that tactical issues have ethical consequences. This is called a causal slippery slope. Let me give you an illustration. There's a big beef right now about fetal tissue research. Shall we use the tissue from abortions in research to help other people? I have two thoughts on this and the first is that a corpse is a corpse. If it's okay to do tissue research on adult cadavers, then there is no moral problem, when taken in isolation, with doing research on the corpses of unborn children. They're both corpses. There's no human inside there, the person is gone.

But there's another factor because this issue isn't taken in isolation. If it turns out that something amoral, something with no moral ramifications in itself--like using tissue for research from a dead fetus--actually results in another condition that is immoral then you have a causal slippery slope, i.e., a nonmoral thing slides down the slope into the realm of immorality. For example, if legalizing the use of fetal tissue, which has no moral ramifications as far as I can tell, causes more abortions, which is the immoral taking of an unborn child's life, then the act that was initially non-moral becomes immoral because it leads to something that is patently wrong. That's the causal slippery slope argument.

In this particular situation, if you take an act in isolation--the killing of a killer of unborn children--one may be able to morally justify the violent act. But when the decision to kill is considered as part of a matrix of other things--like the pro-life movement at large and the fundamental goal of stopping abortion once and for all so that all lives can be saved--one must ask tactical questions because those tactical questions take on ethical dimensions since the goal has ethical ramifications. So the tactical question "What's the best way to save human beings?" becomes a moral question, too.

Abolitionist radicals like John Brown actually set the cause back and delayed freedom for the slaves while people like Wilberforce and Finney, through the power of moral suasion, ultimately prevailed. An ironic historical note: John Brown planned to liberate southern slaves through armed intervention, but ended up getting most of his men killed. He was hanged six weeks later, apprehended by U.S. commander (at that time) Robert E. Lee.

One final problem relates to my belief that abortion is not murder. If I'm right then Michael Griffin used capital punishment for a non-capital crime.

Friends, there are times when pulling the trigger is the right thing to do. Sometimes it's the only thing that you can do. There are times, it seems to me, when you have a moral obligation to pull that trigger and kill someone. But as far as I can tell, this was not one of those times.

At least that's the way I see it.