Brutally honest about a brute

Okay, I'm going to be honest.

I don't feel bad about George Tiller's death.

I've been trying to. As a Christian, I know that I deserve death and eternal damnation as much he does. Only God's grace can save either me or him. I know also that no soul is presumed to be in Hell. There's always the possibility that Tiller repented of his crimes at some point just prior to his shooting. It's my duty to pray so and I've been doing that. Honest. I truly don't wish him to be damned, even if I fear the odds point in that direction.

But on a secular level, frankly, I think he really did have this coming. Let's not pussyfoot here: the man made a huge amount of money slaughtering defenseless babies. These were not early-term fetuses (feti?), nor "clumps of cells," as abortionists often say to gloss over the question of whether or not a fetus is human. These were late-term, viable babies. Fully or near-fully formed children. Some of them, by Tiller's own admission, were due to be born the next day.These were human infants, beyond any room for argument, whose parents had decided for one reason or another they wanted them dead. Not adopted. Dead. And George Tiller was more than happy to make that a reality. For a handsome fee, of course.

Nor was this an easy, painless death such as the most despicable criminal gets. These babies were torn to pieces with no anesthetic and vacuumed out bit by grisly, pathetic bit.

Tiller bragged that he had killed more than 60,000 babies in this way. Why should we mourn the loss of a man who treated human life that cavalierly?

In fact, Tiller died in much the same way as his victims: at the hands of a stranger, in a place where he should have been safe. His death was followed by tribute upon tribute and candlelight vigils outside his abattoir. Yet not one candle was lit there for any of the nameless, forgotten infants he snuffed out with no remorse whatsoever. If anyone had been so brazen as to light one, they'd probably have been arrested for arson.

His defenders point to the fact that his actions were permitted under current law. So was the Holocaust. But who defends Eichmann because he was within the law?

I've never mentioned it before, but I had a friend who was convinced to have a late-term abortion at Tiller's "clinic," about twenty years ago. A doctor told her the baby growing inside her wouldn't live very long, and her husband didn't want the work of raising a "defective" child, so they flew to Wichita and had it killed. Not "it," him. She had already named him, and for as long as I knew her after, she wore a bracelet with his name on it, carrying the grief of a child she never got to hold or see. But Tiller didn't lose any sleep over it. He pocketed the money and went on to the next one. It turned out later that the doctor's diagnosis could well have been wrong and my friend's baby might have been perfectly healthy. But we'll never know.

At that, my friend was one of the lucky ones. Stories abound of women whose abortions were handled haphazardly at Tiller's hands. Some of them died. We may never know how many, because abortion clinics operate above the laws on record-keeping and reporting. The only botched abortion is one where the patient dies before the check clears.

George Tiller was a stain on the human race. I wish it weren't so, but he was. There is no personal virtue he could have possessed that I can imagine mitigating his sheer loathesomeness. God loved him. I wish I could, but I just can't. (I hope God will correct that defect in me one day.) I also, as I said, hope that he repented. I wish he had been granted more time, in the hope that he might eventually have turned from his grisly ways.

Mind you, I'm not gloating at his death. I know I'll be accused of that. I also know I should see him as the child of God he was. But all I can see is a monster.

God also loved the children that Tiller tortured and killed. Do any of the people eulogizing him today have hearts soft enough to spare a thought for them?

I didn't think so.