%1

The murder of abortion provider George Tiller prompts me to do something I do not like to do—venture into the issue of abortion. My hesitation is not because I do not have a position. I do. I believe that matters of reproductive rights and responsibilities are most appropriately left to the woman who is pregnant, her religious and moral conscience and her physician. I believe that the father of the child has a role in the conversation and that the state has a stake in the issue. I do not want abortion to be totally unregulated.

The setting of the murder of physician George Tiller—a Sunday morning inside the Lutheran church where he was a member—counters the image of late-term abortion providers as secularists, casting him more as a churchgoing martyr than a godless murderer.

Tiller was shot and killed May 31 while passing out bulletins in the lobby of his Wichita, Kansas, church as his wife sat with the choir. The event challenges popular perceptions of both abortion providers and the abortion-rights movement.

Conservative groups are hailing—and some pro-choice commentators are questioning—a new Gallup poll that finds that a majority of Americans now describe themselves as pro-life.

The figures, released May 15 from a survey conducted May 7-10, show a self-described pro-life majority for the first time since Gallup started asking the question in 1995 as part of its annual Values and Beliefs Survey. Of the 1,015 adults surveyed, 51 percent described themselves as pro-life while 42 percent said they were pro-choice.

Will President Obama’s plea for common ground on abortion during his speech at the University of Notre Dame persuade ardent abortion opponents to work with the new president? At first glance, it seems unlikely.

“Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction,” Obama said to a mostly receptive audience May 17 at the nation’s flagship Catholic university. “But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.”