Straight-up domestic terrorism

So — another mass shooting. And this one, you can't blame on mental illness. Robert Dear's only mental defect is an unholy zeal fueled by far-right anti-abortion rhetoric. (Oh, and talk-radio pundits, he's not Muslim, either. He's a white 'Mercun male, the kind of fellow you consider the backbone of the nation.)

Anti-abortion activists, you made him. Take your bows. He cares so much for what you call unborn children that in order to protect them, he's happy to kill full-grown adults, including at least one police officer.

A police officer. A good guy with a gun. Not that he matters more than the other victims, but, well, you pundits who piously weep for aborted embryos also insist on respect for cops. The shooter must have missed that memo.

You anti-abortion activists want to own this massacre? It seems only fair, considering what you accuse Planned Parenthood of doing.

When you incite the kind of outrage anti-abortion activists do, you guarantee that what starts as moral fervor will turn into rage when fervor doesn't lead to satisfactory results. You turn ordinary people into religious crusaders, or rather, Crusaders: guys so inflamed by missionary zeal that any means is justifiable if it furthers their ends. Once, that meant slaughtering Muslims in the Middle East. Today, it means slaughtering M.D.s in the U.S. (Come to think of it, for some folks it has never lost its original meaning.)

All in God's name.

How about you anti-abortion activists lose some of your missionary zeal? As a matter of law, abortion is legal. As a matter of actual practice, Planned Parenthood's work consists overwhelmingly of family planning, the kind of work that reduces the need for abortions. You guys are sabotaging an organization that, if you'd let it do its work, would make the world far better according to your own lights than your religious hectoring does.

Stop making it a Christian jihad to end abortion.

Stop making homegrown terrorists.