Cathleen Cleaver, of the bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat, issued a statement following reports that police have apprehended Eric Robert Rudolph, a former soldier and survivalist.
«We are gratified by the prospect of the suspected perpetrator of these terrible attacks being brought to justice,» Cleaver said in the statement. «The loss of life from Mr. Rudolph’s alleged attacks is tragic. Every human life has inestimable value, and no one has the right to kill.»
«While we condemn every one of the attacks allegedly committed by Mr. Rudolph, we in particular condemn the use of violence to oppose abortion,» she said. «The violence of killing in the name of pro-life makes a mockery of the pro-life cause. Just as we abhor the violence of abortion, we abhor violence as a means to stop abortion.»
In Birmingham, Alabama, on Tuesday, the 36-year-old Rudolph pleaded innocent before a federal magistrate in the January 1998 bombing of New Woman All Women Health Care, where an off-duty police officer was killed and a nurse critically injured.
