A Book of American Martyrs(86)

“That might be. You seem to know.”

“Would you describe yourself as a militant anti-abortionist, Mr. Stockard?”

“‘Militant’?—no.”

“No?”

“I am not a militant. I am an activist in the cause, but my commitment is to active non-violence.”

“Yet you’ve supported militancy in the anti-abortion movement?”

“Yes I have supported militancy, if it is another’s genuine belief.”

“Not for yourself but for another? Militancy—violence?”

“It is not for me to judge others in this struggle. It is a war against abortion which is the murder of the defenseless and it is a war against the forces that have inspired to support and protect abortion, and in this struggle we have differing stratagems.”

“What do you think—personally—of the ‘stratagem’ of Luther Dunphy?”

“Luther Dunphy is a soldier of God who has put his life on the line for his beliefs. The rest of us bear witness—we but ‘stand and wait.’”

“You admire Luther Dunphy, then?”

“Yes. I admire Luther Dunphy.”

“You consider Luther Dunphy’s act of premeditated, cold-blooded murder of two defenseless persons ‘admirable’?”

“I’ve said—I do not in any way condone violence. And especially against Timothy Barron who was not an imminent threat to any baby or baby’s mother.”

“But you admire Dunphy for shooting Voorhees?”

“Voorhees was an abortion doctor. There is no question that, if he had not been stopped, he would have killed babies that day, as he’d killed hundreds of babies over the years with impunity.”

“You believe that homicide is ‘justifiable’ under these circumstances?”

“Don’t you, sir? Doesn’t everyone?”

“I am asking you, Mr. Stockard. ‘Everyone’ is not involved here.”

“If infants’ lives are at immediate risk, the abortionist must be stopped.”

“Must be stopped. And this includes—murder?”

“It is not murder but self-defense.”

“Self-defense?”

The prosecutor spoke in a voice heavy with sarcasm, that made Jenna flinch. She was feeling uneasy, the mood of the courtroom was hushed with attention and (it seemed to her) respect for the ex-priest’s position, as for the stammer and warmth of his words that were like raw cries from the heart.

“If—if you saw someone about to murder an infant, for instance with a knife, you would be obliged to attack him, wouldn’t you, to save the infant; it is your moral duty to try to prevent the infant being killed.”

“Even in violation of the law?”

“That’s the secular law. The law passed by the legislature of Ohio in the wake of Roe v. Wade of 1973. But there is a higher law. There is always a law higher than the secular—as in Nazi Germany in the time of the death camps and experimentation on human beings, there was a higher law in defiance of the secular law.”

“But the State of Ohio isn’t Nazi Germany, Mr. Stockard! And the Muskegee Falls Women’s Center is not the Holocaust.”

“Where innocent lives are destroyed, there is a Holocaust. The abortion in the mother’s womb is the Holocaust.”

“Mr. Stockard, did you advise parishioners and young people to break the law when you were a priest in Lincoln?”

“No.”

“Really—no?”

“Not nearly as much as I should have.”

“That’s a clear-cut answer, Father! Thank you.”

“But I did not advise anyone to break the law. Only to follow their conscience. They will tell you.”

“Yet, you claim that you have not actively conspired in murdering an abortion doctor.”

“I have not . . .”

“And why have you not?”

“I am not proud of my prudence. My cowardice.”

Stockard was trembling now. His voice quavered, he was barely audible.

There came a ripple of emotion through the courtroom, like a current of water. Jenna could not help but feel it herself. The former priest with his tormented face had made a strong impression on all who’d heard him speak, including even the elderly judge whose expression was usually opaque, impassive.

Belatedly, the prosecutor realized this. He sensed the jurors’ sympathies, and abruptly ceased his cross-examination. But now it was the defense attorney’s turn, and his questions were respectful, drawing from Stockard such protracted admiration for Luther Dunphy, and such passion for the Right-to-Life movement, as well as vilification of the Pro-Choice movement, that the prosecutor was forced to object several times. Like an attorney in a TV show he leapt to his feet. He spoke sharply. He spoke with an edge of sarcasm. This was not strategic. This was an error. In dismay Jenna could feel a shift in the atmosphere of the courtroom subtle as a heartbeat.

So many times the term defending the defenseless had been uttered, it hung in the air of the courtroom like a bad smell. There was no way to ignore it, and it would not be possible to forget it.

At last the ordeal was over. Stockard had been questioned for more than an hour. But he was defiant, he had triumphed. His eyes shone with tears.