On Sunday, George Tiller, a doctor who had long been a target of anti-abortion activists, was murdered while attending church, allegedly by a 51-year-old "pro-life" (never has that term been more ironic) activist named Scott Roeder, who, according to reports, "believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide".
Attempts had been made on Tiller's life before, including a 1993 shooting for which anti-abortion activist Shelley Shannon was sentenced to 11 years in prison. And Tiller, known to anti-abortion activists as "America's doctor of death" (even on the very page they ostensibly denounce his murder), was a regular target of conservative firebrand Bill O'Reilly, who railed against "Tiller the baby killer" more than two dozen times in the last four years.
Tiller's murder was an act of terrorism, against Tiller personally but also part of a decades-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at abortion providers and abortion seekers. It is one of the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaigns in America, its coordination and orchestration frequently done right out in the open – at meetings, on websites, in email alerts. Yet the US government has largely failed to acknowledge its existence, even as groups like Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center have documented its breadth and effects.
Looking forward, it's evident that the government needs to revisit its position. In the Washington Post, Ezra Klein argues that Congress must immediately take action to "stop [Roeder] from having his intended effect on a woman's ability to choose", and, at the American Prospect, Ann Friedman hopes that Tiller's murder will be "a wake-up call to the fact that our existing laws and regulatory bodies to protect against clinic violence aren't working as well as they should".
As if to underline the point, Tiller's murder prompted attorney general Eric Holder to increase security "for a host of unnamed individuals and facilities", according to the Associated Press.
In the long-term, however, the two parties must fundamentally change the tone of the abortion debate and redefine our societal tolerance for anti-choice extremism.
The Republican party must resolve to discontinue among its ranks and discourage among its supporters the casual use of eliminationist rhetoric to dehumanise abortion providers and abortion seekers and unerringly condemn the extremism that arises therefrom.
No longer should Republicans take to the floor of the House or Senate to refer to abortion as "murder". A belief that abortion terminates a potential human life does not demand – or justify – the use of such inflammatory language. No longer should Republican lawmakers appear on rightwing talkshows whose hosts refer to physicians who perform a legal medical procedure as "murderers" or "baby killers" or some similarly provocative (and flatly incorrect) terminology.
It is, no doubt, too much to ask the Republican party to cease using abortion as a wedge issue on which they try to win elections and derail judicial nominations. But surely the party can find a way to be a principled opposition, rather than effectively serving as an ally to a national terrorist campaign.
The Democratic party must also resolve to stop using rhetoric that insists on an equivalence between "both sides" of the debate, making no caveat that there is a wide swath of anti-choice activism that, in fact, is not only approaching the issue in bad faith but is indeed acting with malicious and murderous intent.
Barack Obama, much to my chagrin, is one of the most culpable purveyors of this damnable equivocation, reflexively and constantly admonishing pro-choice advocates to respect the views of anti-choicers, despite the fact there is very good reason not to afford a modicum of respect for a viewpoint that would force women to relinquish control over their own bodies to the state.
He doesn't seem to get that "both sides" are not equal, not only because one side contains well-funded and well-regarded organisations that tacitly encourage the murder of doctors, but because the pro-choice position allows for individual choice, expands freedom and treats women as autonomous, rights-bearing human beings deserving of full equality, while the anti-choice position disallows individual choice, limits freedom and treats women as incapable of making the best decisions for themselves, thus rendering their bodies as property of the state.
He doesn't seem to care that inviting to participate in his inauguration a minister who equates abortion with the Holocaust is profoundly problematic, contributing to a culture of incendiary, violence-drenched rhetoric in which the murder of Tiller became an inevitability. And he doesn't seem inclined to stop telling lies about pro-choice advocates in order to cast himself as the wise sage in the centre who will find the long-elusive consensus.
Sometimes one side of an issue is just bloody right. This is one of them – and the Democrats need to get on board with that, lest they quite genuinely become the terrorist appeasers the right wing always accuses them of being.
We're all part of the culture, the conversation gone wildly awry, that culminated in Tiller's death. The two parties can use this as an opportunity to become more entrenched in their respective positions, or they can use it as a wake-up call heralding the need for a good-faith reflection on what needs to change.
An act of good faith toward a new approach to abortion in the US would be the leaders of both parties, particularly Obama, attending Tiller's funeral.