My point at the time in a piece that was called "Pulling the Trigger on Abortion" was that things that are done in isolation, acts done in isolation from other things, may have a moral justification. I thought, for example, that it's morally justifiable in isolation to stop a human being, even kill a human being, who is seeking to kill another innocent human being. In fact, I thought it was even morally obligatory to do so. And if you did not stop someone from killing an innocent human being then you have actually become guilty of a moral crime yourself. This is one of the reasons I'm against strict pacifism.

But very seldom are things taken in a moral vacuum. There are other factors that are involved. In the case of killing an abortionist one might argue that we've done an act that has saved the lives of children; at least in isolation it seems that this abortionist who is now dead can no longer abort children. I'm not entirely convinced that any children's lives were saved when Dr. Gunn was shot; but even if I accepted that, I have to ask another question. Does the act itself ensure, in the long term, the greatest number of saved human lives or does it set the cause backwards? I think in the case of David Gunn's death at the hands of Michael Griffin that was the case. So children's lives were not saved by that murder. Children's lives were lost because the movement was set back.

Now it's important to keep that in mind because what that points out is that we cannot look at our actions in moral isolation from their impact in other areas. We have to take the whole picture into consideration. That's why it's not enough to simply argue that a specific act in itself may be moral; we have to look at it's place in the whole context of the moral debate, in this case about the rights of the unborn child. Things that are morally acceptable in a vacuum take on a different moral quality when they are considered as part of a larger picture.

With that predicate laid, think for a moment about Rescues. I think there was a time when Rescues were good, when they were healthy and they were helpful. They mobilized a lot of Christians that were not involved. It brought to national attention a very, very serious moral crime in this country -- the crime of abortion. It made it an issue and it made it the talk in ethical circles all over the country. But I'm asking myself the question, are Rescue's an appropriate tactic or a fruitful tactic to really get the job done now or are Rescue's setting the clock back? If Rescue's are setting the clock back right now then we would have to say that, even though the idea and the goal is a good one and the intention is a good one, the result is a bad one. Therefore the act itself becomes counterproductive. Though acts of civil disobedience may be permissible the question is, are those acts prudent given the final result that we want to accomplish?

I think, for example, of the war against slavery in our country in the nineteenth century. A person like John Brown just prior to the Civil War participated in radical action and actually set the cause of abolition back. And if people like Wilburforce in England, as I mentioned earlier, used moral suasion effectively to end the institution of slavery forever in the British Empire, I find myself asking the question, what would be the impact if all of the man hours that have been put into Rescue's -- all of the preparation, all of the strategizing, all of the travel, all of the time at the Rescue itself, and add to that all of the man hours spent in county jails and prisons and trials around the country as a result of trespassing -- if that time was spent instead on some basic training in rational and moral suasion, then with application in a gracious, face-to-face, one-on-one encounter in front of abortion clinics doing sidewalk counseling or the like? My feeling right now is that if the same hours had been spent in the latter rather than the former, we'd be much further along in dealing with the problem of abortion in our country. That's important to me because I'm interested in resolving this issue, in saving lives of unborn children.

There's a book out called The Scarlet Lady by Carol Everett. You might have heard of her on this station or another station. She ran an abortion clinic for a while and she was changed by an individual who went face-to-face with her, not because of a Rescue and not because of political action. It was because an individual talked her out of what she was doing. She became a Christian and everything changed for her. Her suggestion is that we ought to do just that. We ought to invest our time instead into this face-to-face kind of encounter rather than the illegal kind of thing that I suspect is causing more problems than it's solving right now.

Now please do not misunderstand me. I am not condemning the work of Operation Rescue per se . I think there was a time for those bold tactics. But I'm becoming more and more convinced that the time for those kinds of tactics is over. If we persist in counterproductive tactics, ladies and gentlemen -- even if our motives are good, even if our cause is just -- then we end up doing something that turns out to be immoral with regards to the life of the unborn. More lives will ultimately be lost rather than saved.

In addition to this, it seems that now we are experiencing less and less freedom to pursue the less aggressive tactics of sidewalk counseling and even public prayer. You know we can't even pray on sidewalks in front of abortion clinics anymore? Why? Because even these are becoming de facto illegal because of guilt by association with illegal trespassing.

Once again, this is not meant to be an attack on Operation Rescue. Instead it is a challenge to individual Christians to spend their personal time, their effort and their money on the most effective tactics available to us. More and more I'm convinced that things like Rescues and other head-on clashes with the law and the culture are simply nonproductive and, in fact, actually move the cause backwards.

It's a new day. We need a new tactic.

Just one last comment on the Rescue issue. To give you an example of how I think over-zealousness and the desire "not to compromise" on the issue has actually cost lives.

About two years ago Louisiana had one of the toughest pro-life, anti-abortion laws moving through it's legislature. The Louisiana governor himself said he would sign it into law as long as there was a provision for rape and incest. He promised he would sign it if there was such a provision, but without that he would not sign it. Instead of accepting what would essentially be a 97% victory -- in other words 97% of all abortions are done for reasons other than rape and incest -- a victory that would have been easily negotiated with the governor, I can't use any other word than extremists on this issue, all-or-nothing-type people took an all-or-nothing approach and they got nothing. Their no compromise approach ended in a complete compromise for all practical purposes. Ladies and gentlemen, in Louisiana they could have saved all but 3% of every child's life that was slated for the abortionist. But instead they saved no one and nothing except for their false sense of moral superiority. They can say "we held our ground, no compromise," but the fact is that the operation was a success but the patient died. That's what I'm talking about.

We ought to go for the 97% tactically and save those lives that we are able to right now rather than being purists and gaining nothing. In that kind of situation the tactical concerns have very serious moral ramifications.