When Paul Hill used a a 12-gauge shotgun to kill an abortion clinic's doctor, abortion rights supporters - and many foes - called him a monster.
Tuesday, Hill may have graduated from monster to martyr when he was sentenced to die in Florida's electric chair for the July murders of John Bayard Britton and his escort, James Barrett, in Pensacola.
"He'll be a good poster boy for murder in the future," said David Gunn Jr., the son of a doctor killed in 1993 by another protester.
The National Right to Life Committee denounced violence. "The murders committed by Paul Hill were deplorable and reprehensible," says President Wanda Franz.
But radical abortion-rights foes hailed Hill.
"He's a hero and a martyr in my book," says Christian Action Group's Roy McMillan of Jackson, Miss. "I believe in killing people in just wars . . . and there's a war in the womb."
Now, "we are going to execute someone who simply did for a stranger something every father in America would do to protect his children."
Almost from the time he joined demonstrations outside Pensacola's abortion clinics, activists watched as the articulate, soft-spoken former minister and father of three grew more fervent in his protests.
First, his fetus posters became more graphic, his shouting more intense.
"Mommy, don't let them kill me!" he cried out to women at The Ladies Center clinic.
Then, in March 1993, when another protester shot and killed abortion doctor David Gunn in Pensacola, Hill stunned the Bible Belt community by proclaiming he was part of a group that believes in "justifiable homicide" to stop abortion.
The Gunn slaying, Hill said last week on Eye to Eye With Connie Chung, "literally changed my life."
The double murder occurred 17 months later. Britton's wife was wounded, too.
On Eye to Eye, Hill said he has no regrets: "I have done something that I think the Lord is pleased with. I know . . . I'm going to heaven when I die."
Michael Bray, who served four years in prison in connection with the bombings of seven Washington, D.C.-area clinics, calls Hill an inspiration.
"If a martyr is one who dies for a just cause, yes," Bray said. "If he dies for doing what is good and right, yes. Therefore, I say yes."
Abortion rights activists say they're terrified such talk will provoke more violence.
"We are on red alert," says Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Smeal and others are urging the federal government to step up enforcement of a new law that makes it a crime to block access to clinics or threaten or harm workers. Hill also was convicted under that law.
Already, members of the new Republican-controlled Congress are considering ways to limit its scope.
"Those who commit violence ought to have federal penalties," says Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. But the law goes too far, so "we're going to take a (new) look at it."
Barrett's son Bruce said Hill's sentence should send a powerful message.
"It's real important that the state showed that this kind of violence is not going to be condoned, and the only way to do that is to give the maximum penalty," he said. Hill "shot my father in the face with a shotgun. He shot Dr. Britton in the head . . . and he had planned to do it for a long time."
