Abortion Foe Gunned Down: A 'George Tiller' for Pro-Lifers?

Abortion foes who are still trying to shake the pall cast on them by the May shooting of Kansas abortionist George Tiller by a rabid right-winger may have a martyr of their own in the murder on Friday of a pro-life protester near a Michigan high school.

Reports say that several shots fired from a passing car felled James Pouillon, 63, of Owosso, near Flint, about 7:20 a.m. in front of Owosso High School as students and teachers looked on in horror.

Pouillon, a retired auto worker who required oxygen tanks to breathe and wore braces on his legs, was a familiar and controversial anti-abortion protester. Police and residents said he often picketed with graphic photos of aborted fetuses and in the 1990s won a court battle to protest in front of the school. He picketed at various sites around town, and was vocal and "offensive" to many, in the words of one resident.

Complicating the protester-as-martyr story line, however, is the fact that the suspect, a 33-year-old local man known as Harlan James Drake, was also charged in another murder Friday morning, the shooting death of a gravel company owner named Michael Fuoss, 61. Fuoss' abortion views were not known. Drake was apparently going to shoot another person, but was arrested before he could do so.

"The defendant had ill will toward these three individuals -- not for the same reason necessarily, but had a grudge," said Shiawassee County Prosecutor Randy Colbry.
Nonetheless, pro-lifers immediately hailed Puillon as a martyr for the cause, and an example of how the left could be as extreme as the right is portrayed to be.

"Now we're at the other end of the spectrum," Anthony Lubkin, a lawyer who knew Pouillon and "admired him for his moxie," told reporters. "It smacks, maybe not of civil war, but it smacks of the disintegration of society."

"Jim Pouillon is a hero," said Monica Migliorino Miller of South Lyon, the director of Citizens for a Pro-life Society. "He died for the cause of life."

Pro-life activists also put pressure on pro-choice groups and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to denounce the killing of Pouillon just as they did Tiller's shooting.

CBN's David Brody also reports that the FBI is responding to complaints from pro-life groups that threats against them have increased since Obama was elected, and spiked "dramatically" in recent months.

"You know, the media has always done the abortion clinic protesters and harassment story," Brody write on his blog. "We will see how the Pouillon murder develops but either way there defintely is a story out there about the increased chatter and death threats against pro-life organizations."

Still, the focus for now remains on Pouillon.

"The press in all its hypocrisy is already painting Jim as a controversial figure. Their hypocrisy is rank," said Pastor Matt Trewhella of Missionaries of the Preborn. "Remember when Tiller was killed how the press painted him as the most saintly man in America, singing his praises? They paint the man who kills the babies as some saint while the man who exposes the babies' suffering is painted as something bad."

"When violence is aimed at those who provide abortion pro-life leaders are swift to condemn it," said Migliorino Miller, according to LifeSiteNews.com. "We call on the pro-abortion community to condemn this violence against Jim Pouillon. Many have already blamed Jim for his own death because he dared to stand on the street with a pro-life sign. Such a point of view is atrocious and grossly irresponsible."

Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life told LifeSite that he hoped to see "a strong expression of indignation from the pro-abortion community, just like there was a strong expression of indignation form the pro-life community at the killing of Dr. Tiller."

In Minneapolis, Charmaine Yoest, head of Americans United for Life, a leading pro-life legal lobby, paused as she prepared to address a gathering of journalists who cover religion (which is where I'm writing from), asking that they "take a moment to recognize two pro-life" activists.

The double shootings, Yoest said, are "such a tragic example of the depth of divisions over conscience in our society." (Yoest was at the meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association to discuss the issue of conscience protections and abortion.)

These claims came even as details of the shooting--and the shooter's motive--remained sketchy.

According to one report, the suspect apparently targeted Mr. Pouillon because he did not like him protesting in front of the children at school.

"There was some displeasure with how open he was," said Sara Edwards, the chief assistant prosecutor for Shiawassee County. "He tended to carry big signs with very graphic pictures of fetuses."

But how the murder of Mike Fuoss, the gravel company owner, and the other target, figure into it is not as clear. Prosecutors said Fuoss had no known connection to abortion groups or views on the issue, nor did he know Pouillon. The suspect apparently knew Fuoss because his father was a former employee of the company.

The speed with which the pro-life movement embraced both men as martyrs to the cause may come back to haunt them if it turns out their deaths were not linked or related to the abortion rights issue. But the pro-life reaction also indicates how sensitive activists remain about the fallout from the Tiller killing and the concern--reinforced by fierce protests over health care reform, for example--that the anti-abortion and social conservative movements are becoming dominated by extremist voices.