The Murder of Dr. Tiller, Starhawk and morality

The Witherspoon Society has posted several articles on their site, some faulting all Pro-life groups for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the abortionist who specialized in late term abortions. Via Elizabeth Sarfaty they have posted some of a short essay by the Wiccan teacher and theologian, Starhawk. Her column is in the Washington Post under "On Faith." The Article is entitled “Tiller’s Murder an Act of Terror Against Women.”Picture by Viola Larson

Starhawk writes:

“The murder of Dr. Tiller was an act of terror. Although its immediate victim was a man, it was aimed at women's hearts and minds, designed to shatter our oneness and assert control. And it is part of a larger campaign of terror--if we must throw that word around then let us use it where it truly applies. When the murderer squeezes the trigger, when Bill O'Reilly thunders on Fox News or Randall Terry pontificates, they are sending the same message to women, "Your bodies, your fertility, your sexuality must remain under our control, or you will die, along with anyone who helps you."

I found that some of the other ideas that Starhawk wrote about were more interesting and I want to write about them in light of her views on abortion and her references at the end of the essay to her book The Pagan Book of Living and Dying: Practical Rituals, Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations on Crossing Over.

Starhawk begins her essay with the work she and others were in the midst of when they heard the news about the murder. She states that she and some other wiccans were constructing a goddess bench. She writes of the work and the song they sing as they work, “My body is the body of the Goddess.”

Starhawk refers to the ground they scrape as “the greater body of the Goddess. She also writes, “Our minds, our hands, our creative bodies and the body of the earth are one.”

Later explaining her and other Wiccan’s beliefs she writes:

“Witches, Pagans, Goddess worshipers have no dogma, no central body that tells us what to believe or what decisions to make. But if there is one belief we all hold in common, it is this: that we are each our own moral and spiritual authority. From women’s power to conceive, profound and sometimes painful choices arise, and we must be free to make those choice [sic] for ourselves. To deny that right is to deny our most basic human agency.”

Additional information on what Wiccans believe about abortion can be found in Starhawk’s book.

She explains that each woman has her own sense of when life quickens in the womb, some sensing it even before conception, others long after conception. Moreover, some of the rituals found in this book infer that abortion happens to real persons. Other chants or prayers assume that the unborn are simply possibilities. In the first case one prayer is to the child, “How sorry I am/ to close my womb to you/ but now is not the time.”

The latter, the possibility prayer is directed to the goddess. The Chant in part is:

"You are the Goddess of
All possibilities.
Here is one that cannot come to be.
This is a holy act I perform:
to send back to you
this spark, this might have been.
I act as the gardener
that thins the seedlings;
I act as the wolf that culls the herd.
I act with sorrow."

In a longer ritual which includes a trance, the women are directed to the Place of the Mothers where they will speak with their grandmothers, mothers, all mothers of the past and possibly their aborted children. So for many Wiccans the aborted are more than tissue. They are people.

I have several thoughts on all of this coming from my Christian perspective.

First, Starhawk’s complaints about the death of Tiller has, within her belief system, no logical foundation. When she writes that each person is a moral authority unto themselves, then anyone’s decision must be morally right. So anything done both by Tiller or any late term abortionist who kills unborn children, who are actually viable, and the murderer of Tiller are on a level playing ground. In that kind of a moral philosophy there is no difference between Mother Teresa and a serial killer.

Second, the goddess of Wicca, which according to Starhawk is all of creation, offers no moral authority. And in fact if one looks at the prayer to the goddess one sees a picture of a broken creation. The child has been conceived, (or a possibility) by a mistaken deity. According to the prayer, it isn’t time to give birth but nature or the goddess plants the seed anyway.

Third, the women who conceive, or not, are the ones with power and their acts are thought to be holy whether they are acts of giving life or acts of killing life.

Finally, the very sad part here is that while the Wiccans are trying to find morality, even sacredness in abortion, they nonetheless have slipped over into a contradictory world of immorality. Yes, they have become like “the wolf that culls the herd.”

Many believe that the child is real and can be communicated with by one of the very persons who has caused the innocent child both pain and death and yet there is no redemption in their faith. That is, there is no mediator to redeem and reconcile the two people, mother and child.

There is a deeper story here in the very words of Starhawk, plus the words of Sarfaty, and the words of the Witherspoon Society that placed these names on their site. The deep story is not that all pro-life people are murderers. (Shall we insist that Mother Teresa and Dietrich Bonheoffer are also responsible for the murder of Tiller?)

If morality is based on human authority any act can be called holy. If abortion is a moral and holy act made by humans then any death caused by another can become holy.

The true story is that many are missing that grounding in truth that up-holds life and reconciles the wounded with the wounded. They, instead, are laying the ground for another round of some unholy darkness.