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Of course if abortion is truly murder, Operation Rescue may well be right not to stop at mere persuasion. But in that case it cannot self-righteously invoke the First Amendment. And if it is going to invoke instead the glorious tradition of civil disobedience, other problems arise. There are different rules for legitimate civil disobedience in a democratic society than in a place (e.g., Nazi Germany) where working for change through the established political system is not an available option.
A cardinal principle of civil disobedience in a democracy is that you accept society's punishment -- as acknowledgment that you are breaking society's rules for what you see as a higher cause. Operation Rescue activists have submitted to arrest for minor charges like trespassing. But they also like to flood the home phone lines of judges who have ruled against them. Their purpose is not to "petition for redress of grievances," as protected by the $ First Amendment; their purpose is to make those judges miserable. And even the larger right-to-life movement opposes efforts to protect abortion clinics with laws that work.
An abortion clinic is not a lunch counter -- and anyway, no one was ever prevented from eating lunch by the civil rights movement. The antiabortion movement, like the civil rights movement, may ultimately persuade society that it has been profoundly wrong. But meanwhile, a democratic society cannot fail to protect the exercise of what it has determined to be a fundamental right.
Which brings us back to the question of killing abortion doctors. Even someone who believes that abortion is murder might reasonably conclude that killing abortionists is not justified because America is not Nazi Germany: we are a democracy under the rule of law. But once a group accepts the premise that the laws enacted by a democratic society are no legitimate deterrent in efforts to prevent "baby killing," it becomes harder to see what is wrong with stopping the murders by killing the murderers. The Operation Rescue people are not pacifists. They do not believe in the principle that violence is always wrong, even in response to violence. So why not kill the doctors? Paul Hill understands their logic better than they do.