Tom Piatak

June 11, 2009

I am not gladdened when two friends disagree, particularly friends whose work I have long admired.  But my purpose is not to address the substance of the disagreement between Scott Richert and Paul Gottfried on the morality of the killing of abortionist George Tiller.  My purpose is to make sure no one thinks that Scott should be caught up in some of Paul’s conclusions about the broader right-to-life movement.  Specifically, Paul writes that the condemnation of Tiller’s killing by right-to-life organizations makes him question whether “these groups are really appalled about the professional activities Tiller became rich by performing,” and Paul also suggests that “GOP party hacks” might profit from Tiller’s death by “presenting themselves as moderate ‘defenders of innocent life.’” 

Paul’s doubts about the right-to-life movement emphatically do not apply to Scott.  As a quick Google search could verify, Scott has written many times on the evils of abortion and the rightness of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the subject.  More to the point, his actions show a sincere conviction.  Scott and Amy Richert, as the parents of seven children, take seriously the teaching of Humanae Vitae.  My guess, based on a lifetime of Catholicism, is that the number of people who take seriously Humanae Vitae but are indifferent to the evil of abortion is approximately zero.

However, Scott’s opposition to abortion has not blinded him to the fact that many in the GOP have cynically used the issue for political advantage, with no intention of doing anything to make it illegal.  In fact, Scott wrote three articles for his Catholicism newsletter at About.com explaining that, even though “Abortion, as the slaughter of innocents, is the gravest moral evil currently practiced in the modern world,” that fact did not oblige Catholics to vote for Republicans whose opposition to abortion has proven to be ineffective and perhaps insincere.