A Book of American Martyrs(9)

I wondered if the Professor had a way of reasoning, with his special insight, that might better explain the death of a young person, than the ways in which a Protestant might reason.

In the Coalition newsletter I had learned that Willard Wohlman was the “preeminent” Christian conservative philosopher of our time. At an “Ivy League university” (as it was called) the Professor taught courses in moral philosophy, political theory, and jurisprudence—(which I had to suppose dealt with juries and the law). One of his former Jesuit instructors at Loyola of Chicago had said of Willard Wohlman that he was “the most brilliant student” he’d ever encountered.

In an interview, Wohlman was asked why he had left the seminary without becoming a priest. His reply was a humble one—“I was made to realize that God had another plan for my life.”

The Order of Jesus was the most exacting of all Catholic orders, Wohlman had said. Poverty, chastity, obedience—he had wished to pledge himself to these. Yet, he had been given to know, by an intervention of God, that his life outside the Order would be more challenging.

Professor Wohlman shifted tone now to speak of persons well known to us—Michael Griffin. Lionel Greene. Terence Mitchell. Pictures of these men were projected onto a screen behind the Professor and caused much surprise and comment in the audience. For the men were acclaimed soldiers of (the secret organization) Operation Rescue who had shot abortion providers and who had been imprisoned by the government as a consequence.

Michael Griffin and Lionel Greene had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison in Pensacola, Florida, and in Waynesboro, Indiana, in 1994 and 1995 respectively. Terence Mitchell had been arrested in March 1998 for slaying an abortion provider in Traverse City, Michigan, and was awaiting trial at this time.

Professor Wohlman spoke of how these men had “dared to step forward” to “take extreme action”; in defense of the unborn, they had committed “justifiable homicide.”

Terence Mitchell, who was twenty-nine, a former U.S. Marine and a member of the Catholic right-to-life organization The Lambs of Christ, had spent many hours in prayer before driving to the abortion clinic in Traverse City with a double-barreled shotgun; after the shooting of the abortion doctor he made no attempt to escape from police but surrendered his weapon and made a full confession to authorities. “And what did Terence Mitchell say?—‘I had no choice. If I had not stopped the abortion doctor, he would have killed more babies that day.’”

Professor Wohlman gazed up at the projected pictures of Griffin, Greene, Mitchell. These faces were familiar to us for we had seen them many times online. Yet, they were powerful to behold at this time.

I felt a clutch in my heart, Terence Mitchell looked very young. Even with his beard he was young enough to be my son it almost seemed.

The young ex-Marine’s troubled eyes, fixed upon us. We were made to feel shame for our safe and selfish lives, that Jesus would look upon with scorn if he were not our Savior who loves us and does not judge harshly.

In a grave voice Professor Wohlman continued: “In some quarters these courageous men are considered ‘criminals’—‘murderers.’ But we know better. I have argued that such acts are ‘morally justifiable homicide.’ There is no ‘homicide’ in a war, for instance—a soldier is not a criminal or a murderer for engaging with the enemy. It is the same situation here. Any act of civil disobedience, in opposition to state-sanctioned murder, is ‘justified.’ For consider, would you have any choice except to interfere, if a child were being assaulted and murdered before your eyes? If, here, on this platform, at this very moment, a young child were being violently stabbed to death, hacked to death with a butcher knife, screaming in terror and in pain . . . If you could stop the pervert-murderer from killing the child, of course you would. If such a horrible sight happened before your eyes, not one of you could stand by helplessly and do nothing. You could not.”

The Professor spoke quietly but his voice quavered with feeling. His fingers clenched and unclenched. Light flashed in his eyeglasses. I saw that he wore black-polished shoes, leather dress shoes, with flat thin soles, that would not grip a surface at a slant, and would be dangerous on any slippery surface.

There was quiet in the hall—the hush of indrawn breaths. Only beside me Edna Mae continued to sob.

I was blinking back tears of rage, not sorrow. My hands, that were bigger than the Professor’s, were also clenching and unclenching. Like one who steps backward carelessly at the edge of a roof I felt the danger of a sudden plunge.

That sickening sensation of losing balance.

For some seconds as if in prayer the Professor stood in silence, his head bowed, as we in the audience gazed at him, in the shared horror of an innocent child murdered before our eyes.

I was not unfamiliar with photographs of aborted babies. These piteous and gruesome pictures on picket signs we are supplied by the Coalition, to bear aloft in front of the abortion clinic and sometimes in the roadway, to force individuals to see what it is, they are not wishing to see. And there is the Little Hand, you will see everywhere. Such pictures always tear at my insides, as they are meant to do. But Professor Wohlman was able to make us “see” a living child on the platform, murdered before our eyes.

“And always, and forever, unless we stop them, the abortion murderers will be destroying and dismembering babies in their mothers’ wombs, with the consent of the godless government. Unless we stop them.”