Harlan Drake

James Pouillon (Flint Journal photo)

In Michigan, an anti-abortion activist was shot and killed by a man who reportedly took issue with his protests (see the details below). While not completely analogous with incidents like the shooting of George Tiller, it is just as wrong, just as much an act of evil, and should not in any way, shape, or form be condoned–nor should it be ignored by the pro-choice crowd, allowed to pass without actively condemning this or any other act of violence on grounds even approaching those of belief, or action related to belief–political, religious, or otherwise.

That said, it should also be noted that this is most likely not even close to equalling or canceling out violence encouraged and committed by the pro-life extremists. Already, Randall Terry has jumped in front of the microphones and declared, “May God grant him a Martyr’s Crown,” referring to the slain anti-abortion activist, promising to speak more on this at length; one can expect him to get as much mileage out of this as he possibly can. But even at this early time, it is pretty clear that what happened here is very different from the Tiller case.

First of all, the shooting was not isolated; the killer, one Harlan Drake, a truck driver from Owosso, Michigan, shot two people and planned on shooting a third. After killing James Pouillon, an man who long protested against abortion by carrying graphic signs showing dead fetuses, Drake went on to shoot Mike Fuoss, a gravel pit owner who reportedly had employed Drake’s father at one time. After being captured, Drake confessed that he planned to kill a third man, James Howe, a local realtor who had dealings with Drake’s mother. It appears that Drake, far from being on an ideological crusade, simply had personal grudges against all three men. In the case of Pouillon, it might not even have been about abortion per se; early reports have Drake saying that “he didn’t like the graphic nature of the activist’s sign, saying an image of fetus shouldn’t be around students.” Pouillon often carried his signs around local schools, as well as other locations, and reportedly upset and annoyed a great many people with his “aggressive tactics,” often having things thrown at him from cars.

It is not even known what Drake’s politics are. Reader comments on news stories and in political forums are filled with right-wingers salivating at the prospect of discovering Drake to be a “registered Democrat” (a label they take glee in applying to every criminal suspect ever named), an “Obama volunteer,” and a “liberal activist.” An early look at the case, however, does not seem to indicate any real political connections; unlike Tiller’s shooter Scott Roeder, Drake was not known as an activist in the abortion debate, and the two other planned shootings had nothing to do with the issue, either. It would appear that Drake might just as easily have shot a homeless man or Jehovah’s Witness whose actions he didn’t like instead of Pouillon.

Second, and more relevant on a larger scale, Drake did not carry out his actions in an atmosphere of widespread extremist incitement and provocation by a vocal activist community. Pouillon had not been singled out and vilified by high-profile pundits and activists who called him a Nazi, a killer, and worse; there were no calls for “something to be done,” no publicizing of Pouillon’s home or work address. In short, not a single person, to the best of my knowledge, made any statement of any kind which might have goaded Drake into killing Pouillon.

Nor was this one in a string of killings, nor was it any way a part of a larger campaign to terrorize anti-abortion activists, despite Randall Terry’s attempts to play the victim in exactly this manner, as if this were only the latest in a string of murders of anti-abortion activists at the hands of rabid pro-choicers. (How quickly right-wingers love to “turn the tables” and at the first provocation claim to be victims of the very wrongs they take pride in committing.)

All of these mean nothing in the immediate tragedy of Pouillon’s and Fuoss’ murders, which in themselves are part of a horrible wrong at the personal and local level; I would not think of taking away anything from that. However, at the level of national discourse, where one can fully expect pro-lifers to take full political advantage of this crime, these facts are highly significant and must be discussed, lest they be distorted and used to justify or excuse what is quite frankly a large and highly organized terrorist campaign.

For someone like Randall Terry, who praised and even lionized the politically-motivated murderer Scott Roeder, to use this incident to play up his own terrorist plans, is obscene beyond imagination.

Even if, against all early appearances, Drake was politically active on the left, even if he was involved in the pro-choice movement, even if the murder of Pouillon was his primary goal and the other planned killings incidental, and even it the shootings were intended to cow the pro-life movement–again, contrary to all initial appearances–even if all of those were true, this would still not be in any way exculpatory in reference to the decades-long pro-life campaign of violence against abortion doctors and workers, nor would it come in any way close to equalling what the pro-life movement has been guilty of, nor would it be anything that the pro-life community could use to ignore, excuse, or otherwise play down the egregious crusade of brutality they so desperately wish to legitimize.