Thoughts On Tiller
Posted on June 12th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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Scott Richert and Richard Spencer have been debating the murder of George Tiller. It will hardly come as a surprise that I entirely agree with Scott on this question, which will make some of what I have to say a bit redundant, but Richard has erred in his most recent post on something quite important that needs to be addressed more directly. Answering Scott’s remarks on regicide, Richard writes:
Were he [Tiller], however, performing abortions while holding the title of Baron of Wichita, then his murder would be just. Ditto if he were a soldier in an invading army performing abortions. Though I’m not sure where this leaves the status of Kathleen Sebelius and Barack Obama, two sovereigns who in their respective territories use the power of the state to engage in something Richert considers murder. Furthermore, would Richert like to argue that Bonhoeffer and Stauffenberg were justified because they attacked Hitler while he was head of state, but then would have sinned greatly if they, say, shot down a man who was operating a concentration camp?
There is a lot that Richard gets wrong here. Despite his complaints that Scott has misread his earlier remarks about just war, which would be easier not to misread if Richard stopped talking about pacifism, Richard keeps conflating conditions of war and peace, the status of combatants and non-combatants, the difference between members of the military and civilians, and those in power and those subject to it. Tiller was not a cog in some machinery of coercion and mass murder; he was not a soldier or agent of a government engaged in mass murder.
Were Tiller someone in authority and he was using the apparatus of the government in the commission of murders, his authority would be de-legitimized and would no longer be deserving of respect or obedience, and for the common good and the restoration of peace violence might justifiably be used against him. As an act of self-defense for the polity against illegitimate and abusive government, it might then be permissible to kill, so long as there were no peaceful remedy that could be used hold such a person accountable. Like war, this would have to be a last resort, especially considering the potential consequences for civil strife and disorder that could follow. What is important to remember about this is that such an action would be exceptional and would have to be in response to extreme circumstances. The obligation to submit to civil authority, even a negligent one, is not one that can or should be lightly tossed aside.
Likewise, the command not to murder is absolute, and for killing to be anything other than murder it has to be done under very specific circumstances by lawful authority. Killing is rarely justified, and we should be striving to raise barriers to make it harder to do this or to rationalize it rather than seek out loopholes that permit us to find more and more excuses for it. What has to remain foremost in our minds is that respecting the sanctity of life means that we as private citizens cannot presume to decide who deserves to live or die. This is the role appointed to those in authority, who legitimately wield power in order to restrain and punish the wicked, and even then only under certain circumstances. Their failure to restrain and punish does not give us license to take over for them and to shed blood, because we are not permitted to shed blood except in defense of ourselves, our family and our neighbors.
Filed under: politics
Isn’t the more fundamental point that it’s simply insane to call Tiller a mass murderer, let alone a “Hitler”?
The fundamental difference between Tiller and all murderers, whether heads of state (Hitler) or not, is that Tiller was doing what he did in direct response to the wishes of the people most closely affected, namely, the women having the abortions. If you really and truly believe abortion is murder, then the situation in the US should not be thought of as a small number of mass murderers, but as a truly stunning incidence of literally tens of millions of individual murderers, who happen to be employing a small number of people to perform the actual killings.
Considering the separation between intent to kill (individual pregnant women) and performance of the killing (abortion doctors), then if you really think abortion is murder, Tiller may be seen as analogous to a hit man, and every woman who has ever had an abortion as analogous to a mini-Don Corleone ordering a hit on her own family member. A strange analogy, but much closer to reality than considering Tiller to be similar to maniacs like Charles Manson, Ed Gein or Jeffrey Dahmer.
But the analogy of Tiller to Hitler is absolutely ludicrous. A critical element in the justification of murdering someone like Hitler is that Hitler’s position is one of dictator, using the power of the state to destroy people without consent, and without any feasible way of stopping him short of murdering him. Tiller could be stopped peacefully, simply by convincing pregnant women not to have abortions. Where peaceful means are available, murder cannot be justified, under just war theory or any other moderately sane way of thinking morally.
Clearly, the moral responsibility should be placed at the feet of the people making the decision (the pregnant women) rather than with the people such as Tiller who merely carry out their wishes. It is beyond me why the pro life side refuses to follow through on its beliefs and call for every woman who has ever had an abortion to be prosecuted for murder.
For the same reason the pro life side doesn’t picket IVF clinics, abuse and harass their upper class patrons or murder the attending physicians: it would not advance their political or economic interests to do so.
“Tiller was doing what he did in direct response to the wishes of the people most closely affected, namely, the women having the abortions.”
Umm … well not really. The person most closely affected was the baby getting extracted from the womb.
“It is beyond me why the pro life side refuses to follow through on its beliefs and call for every woman who has ever had an abortion to be prosecuted for murder.”
No it isn’t beyond you. Such a call would be politically untenable and would damage the cause. I do agree however that the squeamishness of many pro-lifers when it comes to penalties for the mothers seeking abortions weakens their rhetorical (as opposed to political) case. Historically it was doctors who were prosecuted for performing the act, but it is not outrageous that the mother calling for the “hit” as you say face some punishment. Although that could interfere with the goal of having her become a healthy mother who wants to nurture her child instead of kill it.
But I would add that it is not necessary that abortion be entirely equivalent to the murder of say a 5 yo to justify legal proscription. The law proscribes many things that are less serious than murder.
So penalties for murder should vary by the age of the victim? Fascinating.
Red:
That assumes requiring the woman who doesn’t want the kid and is even remotely considering getting rid of it to have it doesn’t interfere with the healthy mother goal.
Just a hunch, but I’d imagine that in the case of women who didn’t want the kid they had anyway that’s likely to influence how well they raise them. Too bad that people who want to adopt (and people who make the rules on adoption, but that’s another matter, one I already know I’m not going to make leeway on here) are so picky these days, otherwise that part of the issue wouldn’t be significant…
“we are not permitted to shed blood except in defense of ourselves, our family and our neighbors.”
I’m not quite sure how to transpose the robbery victim in the story of “the good Samaritan” into one yet unborn, but it ought to be possible.
And when those who claim authority can only be corrupt, insane, or idiots (in the sense of sub-50 IQs), is there a case for obeying such people?
When the rules of society and natural law are except for an occasional accident completely disjoint, where is authority?
And the command not to murder is absolute – and would apply in 60 thousand instances against George Tiller. Or against what the Bush Administration did to the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan (if the war is unjust, the killings are equally murders). Those years blurred the line between killing and murder, so it is disingenuous to restore it just for a single particular case.
Of course you leave principles on the trash heap where they’ve been thrown and argue that killing Tiller was counterproductive to the pro-life movement, but then we need to ignore abortion as right and wrong and consider it as we do so many other things, so this act becomes something which will lose points in some infernal game instead of anything of actual morality.
By becoming evil to fight terrorism, there is no cause to mourn over the loss of the moral high-ground. The greater terrorism is local, and that battle is now being fought with the same tactics. Either Cheney is a monster or Tiller’s killer is not.
Or to put it another way, if someone saw his neighbor (whom he reported to the police who did and would do nothing), Mohamed, loading fertilizer and diesel fuel into his van, and stopping by the local mosque to pray, and was shot dead coming out and prevented from detonating the van-bomb, would Mohamed’s killer be criticized for “taking the law into his own hand”, or “Murder”, not having the authority, or whatever?
Of course I know in a political sense why the pro-life side doesn’t call for the prosecution of women for murder. What I don’t get is the moral side of it. There is a sharp divide between what pro-life people claim to believe, and the political action they are actually calling for. Why?
The answer being pushed in the responses to my initial question is that it’s all a political consideration. But that’s false. If that were true, there would be open, forthright admission of the conundrum (morality versus practical politics) in which pro-lifers find themselves.
A parallel case: libertarians believe in legalization of drugs, with many libertarians advocating for legalization up to and including drugs like crack cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, etc. These people know that their call for legalization will not be heeded, and that the expression of these ideas may damage the public perception of libertarianism, but they make the arguments anyway. And to the extent that libertarians shy away from making these calls public, they have (passionate) discussions about the difficult trade-off between following your deepest beliefs and advocating what’s politically feasible. They have debates in which phrases such as “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” play a prominent role.
Another obvious example would be on gay marriage, circa a few years ago. The question was often debated: Shall we push for gay marriage, or only civil unions … or should we just be happy we’re not getting our skulls bashed in as much anymore? Gay marriage would be reflective of our deepest ideals, but caution may be called for in light of political realities.
You don’t see any of this, at all, in pro-life conversations. There is nobody out there taking seriously the idea of punishing women for having abortions. “Well, I would *like* to advocate for the prosecution for murder of all women who had had an abortion. I am just sad that such an important moral goal is not a viable political outcome at this time.” “Yes, our ultimate goal is to send millions of women to jail for murder. But for now, let’s focus on the more politically achievable goals. Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good!”
Ever heard a conversation like that? Neither have I. And until I start hearing them, I’m not buying the claim that pro-lifers actually believe that abortion is murder. They may try to convince you, or me, or themselves that they believe this, but they don’t.
What they believe is that abortion is wrong, and they have latched on to the “murder” analogy (which they don’t recognize as an analogy) to try to convey their sense of the wrongness. Maybe they don’t have a rich enough moral language to even understand their own sense of the wrongness without resorting to this false equivalence, or maybe they do understand it and they’re just lying. I don’t know. Either way, it’s a falsehood.
But taking it to the “Tiller = Hitler” level is just off the charts insane.
I would speculate most regular readers of Eunomia have no issue with prosecuting women for commiting abortion in principle. I would speculate your typical Eunomia reader is supportative of the pro-life movement while not being invested in it.
The only part of Dr. Larison’s commentary is that it has rather Statist implications. I’m of the camp that the person needs to be prosecuted, but I’m not finding the cosmic injustice others are finding. To analogize, I find it to be like the innocent man that gets fed up with a gang member destroying his neighborhood, so he kills him. Except in this case, the “victim” is rich and white, which makes it a tragedy to so many people.
MZ, I’d speculate that many of the most vocal of Eunomia readers have no issue with abortion.
Anyway, kent and les have a point – it takes a certain amount of willful compartmentalization to avoid facing the cognitive dissonance inherent in the beliefs held by most anti-abortionists. Not all. Some anti-abortionists clearly get the links between IVF and abortion and the complicity of the woman who hires a doctor to perform an abortion. I don’t agree with them, but you at least have to admire their consistency.
kent is also right about “abortion is wrong” and the convenience of accusing the doctor of murder but not the woman. For whatever reason, many anti-abortionists believe the woman shouldn’t be held responsible for her actions. I think it is the same kind of thinking that underlies the resistance to abortion – the subject is defenseless, at the mercy of more powerful beings, and because we have an obligation to protect and defend the weak, we also don’t hold the weak (fully) responsible for their bad actions. In essence, a woman is a permanent ward of her family, and not an autonomous actor in her life.
Jake
An incident like this, or any similar incident of “vigilante justice”, exposes the disconnect between the classical notions of justice and the system we live under.
tz said: “Either Cheney is a monster or Tiller’s killer is not.” he’s touched on something here which is creeping below the surface of this discussion, and which few will acknowledge outright, for perhaps good reason.
There is not a social consensus on whether abortion is murder, and so Tiller’s killing is condemned by those who do not think abortion is murder, and may be privately supported by others who do, who would consider his death “justice”.
In contrast, there would be little public outrage if a notorious criminal gang leader, for example, was taken out by a citizen fed-up with an unresponsive authorities, aside from the predictable noise about vigilantism.
But what about govt–that institution with all the power of a criminal gang but without the stigma? If you, for example, believe a certain war to be illegal and immoral, and therefore all of the killing resultant of the conflict to be akin to murder, how do maintain a principled view of classical justice without venturing to conclusions unspeakable?
When we say that the pro-life movement is acting “politically”, it’s a delicate way of saying that they are simply lying and propagandizing. They call abortion murder, but don’t punish the women who bring their fetuses to the execution block. Instead, they target the guy who is just doing his job – the executioner. This would be like death-penalty opponents targetting the lives and homes of the prison guards who carry out state executions, rather than the politicians and judges who order these things. But even then, death penalty opponents don’t make these things personal. They don’t go around murdering either guards or politicians and judges. Why? Because they tend to be honest and straightforward about their cause. Pro-life people targeting abortion providers are simply not honest and straight-forward people. They are dishonest, not only with others, but with themselves. They whip themselves into violently irrational states in order to overshadow the endless contradictions they have created within themsevles over this issue. Violence and persecution of abortion providers is a way to solve their own internal irrationality, rather than a meaningful response to the notion that abortion is murder. As stated by others, the rational response, even at the level of vigilantism, is to go after the women who murder their children, not the doctors who help them safely carry out those murders. And the targets shouldn’t be late term abortions which usually involve severe health problems, but early abortions of what are generally healthy fetuses who could be brought to term without much difficulty. But a rational and just response to the perceived problem of mothers murdering their children is not what these people are even capable of. It isn’t just political tactics on their part, it’s the outcome of a deranged and irrational mindset.
What a bunch of nonsense; the obvious comparison, suggested earlier, is to the hiring of a hit man, and in that case the person who does (or attempts) the killing is held guilty under the law, though of course the person who orders it is, too. But in a case where a woman procured or attempted to procure an illegal abortion, it seems to me that it might be appropriate for the law to punish her, too – though I do think there’s a case to be made for mercy, especially in light of the tremendous amount of emotional strain that many women in such a situation are under.
Also, contra les, RedPhillips’s suggestion that “it is not necessary that abortion be entirely equivalent to the murder of say a 5 yo to justify legal proscription” makes perfect sense. The definition of murder as a legal category need not overlap perfectly with its abstract moral sense, and indeed it’s entirely possible to think that abortion is heinous without thinking that it’s murder even in the second of those senses.
P.S. To clarify: one key factor in deciding whether an act is murder is determining whether the appropriate mens rea is present. Even if the killing of a fetus is morally equivalent to the killing of an infant in the abstract, if the guilty parties don’t appreciate that equivalence then what they’re doing might not count as murder in the strictest sense.
I was thinking it might be worth exploring the similarities between abortion and euthanasia, rather than between abortion and a hit man. Women procuring abortions and people seeking euthanasia for their loved ones are similar in that they have close relations to the ones being killed, and normally feel tremendous sadness that the decision has to be made. Unlike hit men, or murderers in general.
Thought experiment: Charles Manson escapes. Joe Schmoe comes home from work and finds Manson hiding in his house (we assume he identifies him with total accuracy). Let’s say Manson has injured himself in his flight and thus is incapable of fighting or injuring Joe. Joe can easily subdue him (he’s an ex-Marine) until the cops get there. Instead of doing so, Joe shoots him dead (perhaps one of Manson’s victims had some connection of family or friendship to Joe).
Now, there are two responses one could make here. One is that Joe has no authority to arrest, pursue, or kill criminals or fugitives. Even legitimate officers of the law are not authorized to use deadly force except in justifiable circumstances (so if Manson surrendered peacefully to the police, they would have no justification in shooting him). Obviously, in the terms that Daniel describes, Joe has murdered Manson and deserves any penalties resulting from such.
On the other hand, the vast majority of the public would probably consider that Manson got what he has always deserved, and I imagine that Joe would become a folk hero, and that there would be a movement to absolve Joe of legal penalties for the murder, or at least to reduce his sentence.
In other words, there’s a distinction between saying that Manson should die and that he shouldn’t die in this way.
Daniel, and Scott in the article that Daniel quotes, are both in essence arguing that the issue is completely one of the proper authority, which Tiller’s killer obviously lacked. I think that what a lot of people are saying is this: Granted that the killer lacked the legal (and therefore theological) right to kill Tiller, should we nevertheless laud him, in the same way that I imagine the hypothetical Joe Schmoe would doubtless be lauded for killing Charles Manson? I think there is justified frustration that much of the argumentation is avoiding the second part of this, for obvious reasons.
Now one could argue, as Daniel and Scott seem to be (although it’s implicit, I think), that since any killing by one without the right to do so is murder, and since murder is obviously never laudable, one should not laud Roeder. However, it seems to me that unless one considers all capital punishment wrong, or is a pacifist, that is a difficult argument to make. I understand Scott’s argument in terms of the Catechism, but of course this would not be accepted by non-Catholics, and I’m inclined to think that even a lot of Catholics wouldn’t necessarily accept the logic (given that there are plenty that are far more favorable to the death penalty than the Catechism teaches they should be).
My belief, from my understanding of Church history, is that Christianity in its origins was almost completely pacifist, and that this gradually changed as a compromise with the State and the realities of the world after the Third Century. In my understanding, in the Orthodox Church, there is or was a rite for the forgiveness of soldiers returning from war–the idea being that even necessary and justifiable violence is still sinful. This seems closer to the original concept than the Western tendency to look at it as either unjustifiable and thus sinful, or justifiable and thus peachy keen.
Thus, it seems to me that kent, MZ, and jake are correct. It seems to me that for non-pacifists, at least, to assert that abortion is murder is to assert that on some level the assassination of Tiller was indeed laudable, justifiable, or at least not a bad thing–which of course, for political reasons, they can’t actually say. Ditto mothers–we may have felt compassion for the mental unbalance and dysfunctional household of the woman who drowned all her children a few years ago, but she was still sent to jail. Thus, if we are to equate abortion with murder, it seems inexplicable, if we’re being logically consistent, that we don’t call for jailing of mothers who procure abortions. Unless, of course, it’s political again.
The point is that I’m pro-life, but the logical point to take from this seems to me that abortion, while abhorrent and wrong, is not (in most circumstances, at least) murder (just as we distinguish degrees of murder, manslaughter, etc.). This is because my gut moral instinct is that a mother who’s had an abortion or an abortion doctor should not be jailed (in the former case) or murdered, and such an instinct seems incompatible with the belief that the action of abortion actually is murder. I would say that the point of development, the circumstances, etc. might bring a particular abortion closer to or farther from murder–but it seems that in most cases it’s not. Otherwise, why not jail the mothers and shoot the abortionists?
jake has IMHO nailed it:
For whatever reason, many anti-abortionists believe the woman shouldn’t be held responsible for her actions. I think it is the same kind of thinking that underlies the resistance to abortion – the subject is defenseless, at the mercy of more powerful beings, and because we have an obligation to protect and defend the weak, we also don’t hold the weak (fully) responsible for their bad actions. In essence, a woman is a permanent ward of her family, and not an autonomous actor in her life.
In other words, the central question is *not*, despite the framing, “Is a fetus a human being?” but “Is a woman a human being to the fullest extent of the law?” You don’t get to say “of course! no-one ever doubted it!” when the historical truth is that it has *often* been doubted, at great length.
I must say it’s enraging to see Scott, Richard, and Daniel discussing abortion as though their opinions must be Serious and Important, even though none of them has any skin in the game. And it’s doubly enraging to see posts like Daniel’s that do not even mention the word “women”, as though we’re invisible and inaudible even when the battlefield is our own bodies.
Until you *act* as though women are autonomous actors in our own lives, it would be foolish of me to assume that’s what you believe. You may even tell youself you fully respect me as a human being with my own agency, but when you discuss what barriers to place between me and my doctor *without even mentioning my existence* your actions — that is, your words — show that I am not solid and real in your eyes.
“What a bunch of nonsense; the obvious comparison, suggested earlier, is to the hiring of a hit man, and in that case the person who does (or attempts) the killing is held guilty under the law.”
That’s exactly the comparison I am arguing against. A hit man is acting illegally, but an abortionist is not. He is acting in accord with the laws of the state. So the only valid comparison would be to an executioner who is authorized by the state to carry out a killing. Pro-life advocates are opposed to the laws which allow abortions to take place, in the same way that anti-death penalty advocates are opposed to laws which allow the death penalty to be carried out. The difference is that pro-life advocates target the people who simply carry out these acts in a workmanlike manner, rather than those who order these acts, or the politicians who are responsible for these laws. It would certainly make more sense if they were to target the people who are actually responsible for these acts, rather than the people whose job it is to carry them out.
“RedPhillips’s suggestion that “it is not necessary that abortion be entirely equivalent to the murder of say a 5 yo to justify legal proscription” makes perfect sense. The definition of murder as a legal category need not overlap perfectly with its abstract moral sense, and indeed it’s entirely possible to think that abortion is heinous without thinking that it’s murder even in the second of those senses.”
I don’t see how it is possible to conceive of a legal category of murder that is of lesser degree based upon the age or other characteristics of the victim, rather than the diminished capacity of the murderer. Our current degrees of murder have nothing to do with who is killed, but have only to do with whether the act was premeditated, intentional, the result of mere negligence, etc. Or are you suggesting that it’s permissible to make murder a lesser crime for the killing of negroes, jews, methodists, or whores? What is clearly evident in your rationale is that you simply don’t think the fetus is a human person as you think the born are. And that pretty much proves the pro-choice point.
“To clarify: one key factor in deciding whether an act is murder is determining whether the appropriate mens rea is present. Even if the killing of a fetus is morally equivalent to the killing of an infant in the abstract, if the guilty parties don’t appreciate that equivalence then what they’re doing might not count as murder in the strictest sense.”
So you’re saying that when Hitler killed Jews, homosexuals, and Gypsies, it was a much lesser crime than murder because in his mind, these were not murders at all, but the necessary cleansing of vermin from the human gene pool? Don’t you think this rationale is even more absurd and inhuman than the last idea you had? How many more absurd notions must be put forward to keep in place the tortured logic of the pro-life movement? Clearly, you simply don’t believe what you are saying. Qualifying these statements by saying they are only equivalent in the abstract, is the same as saying they aren’t actually equivalent at all in any real sense, but only in some twisted abstraction that is divorced from real life. You seem to be aware of this, but can’t bring yourself to face the consequences in life of trying to enforce this bizarre, abstract notion that abortion is murder, because it always ends up betraying both common sense and even greater moral principles.
While I’m on the anti-abortion side, I do think there’s some plausibility in the argument that opponents of abortion don’t genuinely believe abortion to be murder, since we don’t believe in harshly punishing the mothers, or in killing abortion doctors. But I think those who use this argument tend to overlook some relevant points. The following are just two of them.
First, as to pro-lifers’ tendency to castigate abortion doctors rather than the mothers seeking their services, I’ll reiterate something obvious. The mothers are the ones who bear the difficulty of the pregnancy or the prospective years of parenthood, the ones for whom abortion is a major temptation as a relief from seeming trouble. The doctors are not in that situation of duress. It’s far easier for pro-lifers to envision the women who abort as people who are making a bad decision in unusually demanding circumstances, and who might make the right choice if it weren’t so hard. Anyone can understand moral weakness; all of us know what it is to do what we ourselves consider to be immoral when the temptation becomes great. That doesn’t give us reason to excuse the resulting conduct, but it does explain why we would have even less sympathy for those, like abortion doctors, who do wrong without even having a strong personal stake in the matter.
Second, it often seems to be suggested that if the million fetuses being aborted annually were, say, five-year-olds, then we opponents of abortion (and everyone else) would be far more active and aggressive in our opposition. I’m not so sure. I’m opposed to the idea of abortion, but I do virtually nothing to work against it. This *might* be because deep down I don’t *really* believe it’s murder (indeed, I’m not certain that it should be considered such, but that’s a theological question for a different discussion), but it also has a great deal to do with simple laziness, apathy, cowardice, etc. (it’s way more fun to spend my time reading blogs). This (excepting the last) is probably also true of many other opponents of abortion who aren’t actively involved in the pro-life movement. And I wonder how much different it would really be if we were talking about five-year-olds, in a truly parallel situation (i.e. where millions of five-year-olds had been legally killed over the last forty years, where the majority of the population supported the legality of the practice, where most opinion leaders strongly resisted its restriction, etc.). We’d still face the same dillemas. What exactly would one do about it: buy a gun and drive down to the local euthanizing centre to shoot someone, thereby becoming a killer oneself and being trundled off to prison? How exactly would we convince our opponents to stop killing five-year-olds, while they insisted up and down that there was nothing immoral about the practice? Would we want to throw people in jail for it, when such a large chunk of the population was involved, and when so many of those supporting the practice were such nice, friendly, civil, urbane people with whom we worked or socialized? It would still be easiest to do nothing, or to take only limited steps, nothing too costly to ourselves. And we might well respond this way even if we really did intellectually believe that the practice was murder.
If there’s any truth in what I’m suggesting, then this doesn’t reflect well on us pro-lifers. But it does suggest that intellectual dishonesty might not be the main problem.
And if killing five-year-olds commanded that much support and had been practiced for that long, we probably would start to have some doubts about whether such killing was really immoral, or about whether it was the type of immorality that ought to be coercively stamped out. I think we underestimate the degree to which we rely upon social confirmation and consensus in the moral stances that we take. If opponents of abortion sometimes begin to doubt that it is murder, that might very well reflect the fact that they encounter a great deal of pro-choice argumentation, rather than that they possessed no strong perception of abortion as murder in the first place.
No I’m not, you idiot, because those are things about which a reasonable person can’t disagree – and that directly parallels one of the central standards in determining an adequate mens rea.
In what sense, pray tell, is an abortionist not “actually responsible” for an abortion he performs?
Even if such a thing were true, it wouldn’t prove the pro-choice point at all, since there are many things other than the killing of a born human being that deserve to be proscribed by law.
Or, to simplify, Red makes sense if abortion is not murder. Thanks; I agree.
Umm … no. As you quoted:
The definition of murder as a legal category need not overlap perfectly with its abstract moral sense …
OK, then I don’t get it. Do I take it that the abstract moral sense is that abortion is murder, but the legal category is not/does not have to be murder? From the point of view of the abstract moral sensor, is that not the current situation? And is not the position of the pro-life camp that the legal category must be conformed to the moral?
My point is precisely that that needn’t be so; abortion could very well be outlawed or criminalized without being categorized as murder (or abortion-seeking mothers as accessories to it), and I imagine that the vast majority of prolifers would be satisfied with that outcome.
“No I’m not, you idiot, because those are things about which a reasonable person can’t disagree – and that directly parallels one of the central standards in determining an adequate mens rea.”
Calling me an idiot is a confession that you can’t make a good argument. The notion that someone is innocent of murder, because they deem the victim to be less than human is what is idiotic. Mothers seeking abortions are not insane people. If they consider their fetuses less than human, it is still murder if fetuses actually are, in reality (not just in your fevered moral imagination) human persons. Is killing a black person not murder, because they are deemed to be subhuman animals by lynch mobs? I would think the punishment should be greater for such people, not less.
“In what sense, pray tell, is an abortionist not “actually responsible” for an abortion he performs”
In the same way that a state executioner is not responsible for the killing of a condemned prisoner, even though he is the one who actually does the killing. An abortionist does not go around trying to drum up business. They are simply the ones performing the legal act initiated by someone else. It would only be the equivalent of a hitman if murder were a legally sactioned act, and hitman were in the phone book like plumbers and carpenters. You don’t blame a contractor for tearing down a cherished building condemned by a legal process, not owned by the contractor himself, if he is only performing his job as required, and according to code. You could certainly blame the owner of the building, but the contractor doing the work? Not very sensible.
“Even if such a thing were true, it wouldn’t prove the pro-choice point at all, since there are many things other than the killing of a born human being that deserve to be proscribed by law.”
Now, this is certainly true, and it’s something I’ve said many times elsewhere. There is no need to declare the fetus a legal person with rights in order to regulate abortion. We regulate all kinds of things, even basic human rights, setting limits on gun ownership, economic speech, protest permits, etc. We can also regulate abortion rights. But the argument you have been persuing here is that abortion is murder, and that leads to a whole bevy of idiotic problems that only tell us that this is a stupid, idiotic argument that should be abandoned by both sides. And yet the pro-life movement has fairly well staked its entire rationale upon this “right to life” for fetuses. So, yes, I should be more specific and say that the “right to life” movement is pretty well destroyed by your own tacit admission that you don’t actually see fetuses as legal persons. It doesn’t entirely destroy the “pro-life” movement, in that one can still argue for regulations on abortion. But one can’t sensibly argue for a total ban on abortion, in that the woman is clearly a person with legal rights, and hers tend to prevail in all but late term abortions when no health issues are present. The fact that you, who seem a pretty stauch pro-life advocate, can’t defend the right-to-life argument, means that what we are really arguing is how extensive the pro-choice rights of the woman are, not whether they exist or not.
It’s comments like this that make my “idiot” remark seem entirely accurate, even if inappropriate (though it wasn’t much harsher than the language you’d gone in for). Pro-lifers are trying to change the law, which means that if they (we) had their (our) way, then abortionists wouldn’t be listed in the phone book.
More to the point, though, the idea that it’s not sensible to blame people for doing immoral things just because those things are legal and were requested by others is beyond absurd. Pro-lifers do try to persuade women not to have abortions, and also protest the actions of abortionists – this is because, if abortion is what pro-lifers say it is, then both parties are clearly responsible.
So there’s only a right to life if the killing in question is murder? Hardly. I’d argue that given the state of our criminal justice system anyone sentenced to death has clearly got a right to life, but nevertheless executioners aren’t murderers (though they are responsible, and I think their actions are demonstrably immoral and worthy of protest). In a society where fetuses were widely recognized as human, then abortion – or at least some abortions – could reasonably be classified as murder under the law and punished as such; short of this, there are other classifications that might be more appropriate. How is this so hard to see?
conradg isn’t an idiot in the normal sense of the word, and from the argument he put up, I’d place his/her IQ to be significantly over 100. It’s somewhat clever, though stupid, false, and outrageously sophistical.
1st, just because an executioner (or anyone else) does something that is legally sanctioned and ordered by an authority, it doesn’t absolve him of responsibility. A mob lawyer is employed by a Boss in a way that is perfectly valid legally so that the Boss can evade justice. The lawyer’s actions are regardless ethically dubious and morally reprehensible.
Secondly, while it’s true that the claim that a fetus is a person is somewhat problematic does present some difficulties, flat-out asserting that it isn’t is not without its own problems. A doctor delivers a baby, slaps it in the rear and makes it cry. The mother, annoyed by the noise, promptly instructs the doctor to chop the baby’s head off. Monstrous! One ward down, a mother instructs an abortionist to abort the fetus at roughly the same stage of pregnancy except that the fetus is still positioned in the womb and the cord hasn’t been cut. Just before the birth is complete, the procedure called abortion (the crushing of the head of the fetus) takes place. Now it’s not monsterous, but a God-given right of the mother over her body!
Preposterous, one might say, but then if that action is criminalized, how to draw the line from that to terminating the pregnancy the week before? Biologically, little has changed. And so on. Furthermore, simple infanticide has not been without legal sanction and social currency. Reasonable people HAVE disagreed over this. Perhaps conradg wishes to return to that state of affairs?
“Pro-lifers are trying to change the law, which means that if they (we) had their (our) way, then abortionists wouldn’t be listed in the phone book.”
Yes, but until then, the appropriate comparison is to a legally sanctioned murder, such as an execution. If abortion becomes illegal, then it is closer to the hitman comparison – but even then, only if the fetus is legally considered a person with rights. Otherwise, even if abortion is illegal, it’s more like someone who is guilty of any ordinary violation of the law that carries comparable penalties (depending on what those penalties are in anti-abortion legal regime).
As for the present situation, I don’t mind you putting some blame on the doctor performing the abortion. I don’t think concentration camp guards are innocent either. But if I were opposing the Nazi holocaust regime, I don’t think I’d concentrate my hatred and moral indignation and violent reaction upon the prison guards. They’d be the last people in the chain of responsibility I’d be targetting. Rather, I’d be going after the people who ordered these killings. In the case of abortion, those who consider this a second holocaust, a mass murder of innocents, the primary people ordering these murders are the mothers, and of course the legal regime of politicians and judges who make it possible. But instead of targeting mothers, the pro-life movement essentially absolves them of responsibility, and instead goes after the doctors. This seems, might I say, morally idiotic?
“So there’s only a right to life if the killing in question is murder? Hardly. I’d argue that given the state of our criminal justice system anyone sentenced to death has clearly got a right to life,”
In the first place, yes, any intentional killing of a person is murder, unless their right to life has been legally terminated by a court. Self-defense is the only exception I can think of, and that too is determined by legal means, and is of course inapplicable to most abortions. I don’t see how one can find fetuses to be legal persons with a right to life, and yet kill them without it being murder, unless, of course, one can get a court to condemn the fetus to death for some reason. Maybe you geniuses out there can enlighten me.
And, of course, someone who has been sentenced to death does NOT have a right to life anymore. That right has been abridged by legal proceedings. The same way all kinds of rights are taken away from criminals on a daily basis. Heard of prison? So rights can be taken away by a court, but the right to life is only taken away under the most extreme of circumstances, after lengthy trials, appeals, and all sorts of things, none of which could, I imagine, be completed in the short span of a pregnancy. So if the fetus has a right to life, I have a hard time imagining almost any abortions being allowed, except in the most dire health circumstance (which could be likened to a kind of self-defense).
As I said, this is not true. I for one have spent hundreds of hours volunteering in pregnancy centers and standing on freezing sidewalks trying to persuade women not to have abortions, and I can assure you that the number of prolifers who do this far exceeds the number who attack or murder, or even protest against, abortionists.
In the legal sense, of course, but if the sentence or the regime is illegitimate then obviously – assuming that there are rights at all – such a person DOES have such a right. This is elementary moral reasoning, really.
rbs, regarding your just-before-birth abortion vs. just-after-birth infanticide scenario, this is certainly a genuine problem with drawing the abortion-permission line at birth, which is why the current legal regime doesn’t do that. Legal rights are given at birth, simply because that is the legal tradition and precedent, written into the Constitution even, but the court certainly recognizes that this introduces an uncomfortable paradox as you describe. Which is why it draws the line at “viability”. Even this is somewhat problematic, in that technology can make the viability line move ever further away from birth. But for now at least it seems to be an acceptable compromise, giving plenty of “room” between the time the fetus seems viable outside the womb, and the time it is given legal rights.
“I for one have spent hundreds of hours volunteering in pregnancy centers and standing on freezing sidewalks trying to persuade women not to have abortions, and I can assure you that the number of prolifers who do this far exceeds the number who attack or murder, or even protest against, abortionists.”
But this isn’t the subject of our argument. I’m sure anti-abortion protestors will try to persuade women not to have abortions, since they are the only one who can decide that. We are talking about abortion as murder, however, and who should be blamed for the murder of these fetuses. Once a woman takes the next step, and actually has her fetus aborted, she is now the primary murderer of her child, not the doctor, who is just the legally and medically qualified person who performs the act. What we are arguing about is the incongruence in the pro-life movement between the blame and hatred they direct at the doctors, versus the lack of same directed at the woman after the “murder” has taken place. Again, this incongruity makes no sense whatsoever if one considers abortion to be murder, since it is the woman who has planned and decided and ordered the murder of her fetus. The doctor certainly bears some moral responsibility in this, but much less than the woman – at least that’s what the logic of calling it murder ought to imply.
“if the sentence or the regime is illegitimate then obviously – assuming that there are rights at all – such a person DOES have such a right.”
Yes, and in such a case – let’s say Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany – who would you go after, the guy whose job it is to carry out the execution, or the people who ordered it? Obviously you have to go after the people who are genuinely responsible – the people who run the regime, issue the orders, who set it all up, not the grunts who just do their job, nasty as it might be.
Of course, we all know why you don’t go around calling women who have had abortions murderers, throwing blood on their houses, harrassing them after the murder has been committed. It would mean going after some very sympathetic people, like Barry Goldwater’s daughter, who had an abortion with his blessing (and help) when it was still illegal. So he’s an accessory to murder before-the-fact. Good luck persuing that kind of prosecution, morally or legally.
That certainly doesn’t seem like part of the “logic of calling it murder” to me – again, the hitman is no less (and perhaps more) morally culpable than the person who orders the hit. But anyway. Has it occurred to you that another factor here might be that most abortionists are involved in many abortions, while the same obviously isn’t true of most women? Or how about the recognition, which is quite widespread among prolifers, that many women who seek abortions are under a huge degree of pressure from many different sides, that they aren’t aware of the full scope of what they’re doing, and that for these reasons and a host of others they’re deserving of sympathy and – here’s a Christian concept for you – forgiveness even if what they are doing/have done is very deeply wrong?
And by the way: the average prolifer doesn’t “go after” abortionists, and indeed is likely to regard the kind of harassment you describe in that last paragraph as quite wrong. But it seems that creating cruel, irrational, rage-filled bogeymen is a favorite trope of yours, so best of luck with that.
Look, if I thought abortion really, truly, no-fingers-tied-behind-my-back were murder, I’d go after these people too. I have no problem with killing Nazis, and if this really were a Holocaust, I wouldn’t have any problem killing the people perpetuating it. Killing a bunch of women would certainly scare off a whole lot of them from openly having abortions, and I’d consider the killers to be freedom-fighting heroes, just as I do the German and French resistance in WWII. But we know all that talk of zbortion as murder is just rhetorical nonsense. Neither you nor, as you say, most of the pro-life movement actually believes in it, and if they say they do, most of them are just lying for effect, to themselves and others. Where does that leave this conversation? I’m apparently the idiot, for pointing out how much sheer incoherence there is in your arguments, and the general pro-life movement. And you are left defending something you don’t even believe in, because you favor the overall cause.
As for hitmen, the law does consider the person who orders or pays for a hit to be more culpable than the hitman. So women who hire abortionists would definitely be considered more legally culpable than the doctors. But we both know that an abortion doctor is not a hitman, and the entire comparison is just rheotical nonsense. They are someone carrying out a legal medical procedure. If abortion werre illegal, very few of them would do it. If they in any sense thought it was murder, they wouldn’t perform it either, legal or not. Hitmen don’t much care who they kill, but an abortion doctor will only kill fetuses, which seems like a strange preference.
The point is that hitmen only exist because people want to kill each other, but can’t or don’t want to do the act themselve, because they don’t want to get caught. Women would be more than happy to kill their fetuses themselves, but it’s just safer to have a doctor do the trick, because they’re trained in the medical aspects of it. With the abortion pill, or the morning after pill, they can and do kill fetuses without the help of doctors, other than a prescription. Why not go after pharmacists? So the doctor is just there to ensure that the woman goes through the procedure safely. Without the doctor present, there’s a lot more risk involved. But clearly women did go for abortions before it was legal, with unqualified abortionists. The point being that the doctor is not the responsible party in this case, because the woman can go to many, many doctors for the procedure, but only she can actually go through with it. She’s present at 100% of the abortions, not far from the scene like most murder-for-hires.
Now, it’s true any individual woman is going to have very few abortions in her life, probably just the one (though I personally know several women who have had multiple abortions, and they don’t fit the profiles of serial killers), whereas abortion doctors have many. But that is only because they specialize in this procedure, and can give the best care to women for that very reason. Their primary concern is the health of the mother, not the fetus. So targeting the best abortion doctors means eliminating those who can give women the best health care, which means the best doctors, not the worst. This is like going after the best prison guards, or the best soldiers, or the best plumbers. It’s a dirty job, certainly, but these are just professionals.
And since when is it considered okay to kill just one person? Isn’t the real problem here, that women feel that it’s okay for them to kill just one person, in part because the pro-life movement focuses its moral indignation on the doctor, and not the woman? They propose criminal penalties for the doctor, but not the woman, for the same specific act. In that respect, it doesn’t matter who has had or performed more abortions in the past. This is like having drug laws against the sale of drugs, but not the possession or use of them. Why target drug dealers, when it’s the users who create the industry?
The problem here is that women are just more sympathetic than men, and it’s easier to target the doctors because they are in one place. It makes no actual sense as far as criminal or moral justice goes, it’s just easier to make targets of them. Yet no abortion doctor has ever gone around trying to convince women to have abortions. The women come to them. If anything, they make sure the woman is sure she wants to do this. The only reason for this incoherence and qualms about going after women is that most pro-life people, like you, don’t really consider fetuses to be human, and they don’t consider abortion to be murder, so all these comparisons to hitmen and executioners are just bunk. And they know this deep down, which is why they simply avoid really looking at the logic owhat they say, since the logic is there to hide and deflect what is really going on, not explain it.
I appreciate your attempts at armchair psychoanalysis, conradg, but it’s hard for you to do it well when you obviously have no sympathy at all for the people you’re trying to understand.
I think that abortion is a heinous act that is, or is the approximate moral equivalent of, murder. I think the same is true, at least in many cases, of the execution of convicted criminals as a function of our criminal justice system. So is much of what happens in modern warfare. So is what happened in our prisons to detainees in the GWOT. So are countless other things that happen every day, both inside and outside of this country. Faced with such evils, those who recognize them as such respond in a host of ways. Some pray. Some protest. Some counsel. Some donate. That most prolifers don’t think further violence is an appropriate response to the evil of abortion is the function of a whole host of factors, including (as you suggest) sympathy for the women who seek it out, a general predisposition against violence, trust in the power of God to work things out, the hope that all is not lost in the cause for a political solution, the belief that such a cause requires changing hearts and minds who will only be lost through violence, the abundance of statements from church leaders and other figures of authority that claim that violence is unacceptable, and so on. Faced with all of this, and perhaps overwhelmed by the immensity of what is at stake and recognizing the obvious fact that violence and killing would do nothing at all to remedy it, preferring peaceful means to violent ones is an obviously appropriate course of action.
But you’re not going to acknowledge that, which is fine. I’m sure that demonizing those who disagree with you will serve your purposes just fine.
Are you saying that sending abortion doctors to jail is not an act of violence? That it is the moral solution to this problem? That treating the doctors as criminals, and the women as innocent victims, is somehow the moral way to look at this? That equating all forms of violence is somehow a moral outlook? Again, this is simply not a logical and rational way of examining these things and finding a moral solution to them. It’s the kind of fuzzy-headed, cognitive dissonance thinking that people indulge in when they are trying to cover up their incoherent positions.
So you say that war is murder, and executing criminals is murder, and abortion is murder. So would you send our soldiers to jail, along with the prison guards who carry out those executions, and leave the politicians and judges who order them to do those things alone? Of course not, because you don’t really think these things are murder, either legally or morally. In other words, what you say here is simply not believable, regardless of whether you say you believe in it or not. Your beliefs are incoherent and self-contradictory, and make no sense, either legally or morally. This is rather obvious if you break it down, which is why you resort to the oldest trick in the book, creating moral equivalence for every kind of violence, as if they really are the same, either morally or legally.
I have trust in God too, but I trust God not to be an idiot who is fooled by this sort of silliness. What you fail to realize is that you, too, are enacting a kind of moral evil, and perpetuating it through your own insipid moralizing, pretending to be the guy on the side of God and Good, but really just a pawn in a cynical game of political positioning. And talk about demonizing! My God, what nerve you have to accuse anyone of that. What you are expressing, my friend, is the simplistic evil of narcissistic banality.
So you’re not able to see the difference between a government sending someone to prison for violation of the law after a trial by his or her peers and a private actor engaging in direct violence? Great.
Pardon my language, but I really don’t need any longer to have some anonymous internet asshole declaiming on the true nature of my beliefs. You’re wrong. Bye.
“So you’re not able to see the difference between a government sending someone to prison for violation of the law after a trial by his or her peers and a private actor engaging in direct violence? Great.”
Say what? You’re the guy who can’t see the difference between court-sanctioned executions, soldiers fighting in battle, abortion, and murder. But now suddenly it’s me who is creating moral and legal equivalence? Sorry, you continue to make no sense. I can see why you are forced to leave the conversation. It would require you to actually face up to the contradictions in your views, and that’s clearly too much to handle.
Sending people to jail is an act of violence, just of a lesser degree than executing them. To prove the point, ask what happens if you refuse to go to jail. I guarantee the state will use violence to put you there. You who claim to be against violence have no problem putting abortion doctors in jail, and yet won’t put mothers in jail for paying doctors to perform abortions. This is selective punishment that makes no moral or legal sense. You can blather on all you like about your moral superiority, just leave alone the legal issue of using state violence to enforce your particular senseless and incoherent morals. Because that is what you advocate – using state violence to enforce your version of morality.
No irony there, eh?
That’s not true at all. Of course I see “the difference” (or differences, really) between such actions; all that I said was that they are, at least approximately, the moral equivalent of murder. (Though obviously not all court-sanctioned executions or actions of soldiers in battle have this characteristic, and I made as much quite clear in the comment you’re so happily misconstruing.) And then the point is that the same moral equivalence clearly isn’t present between whatever violence might be involved in a person’s being jailed by a legitimate authority and that same person’s being assaulted by a private actor. “Senseless and incoherent morals”, indeed.
As to the incessant charge of inconsistency, I’m also in favor of serious leniency in the sentencing of women who e.g. kill or attempt to kill their infants after they’re born, and that conviction has nothing at all to do with a belief in the less than full personhood of such children. Women in such a position are, I think, overwhelmingly likely to be acting out of desperation or hopelessness rather than malice (and indeed it’s been shown that the impulse to kill one’s own children is strikingly endemic to humans), and as such the law ought to treat them with mercy. That’s not to say, as I made clear above is also my position in the case of women who procure abortions, that I think there should be no penalties in such a case, but only that it seems entirely appropriate for these killings to carry sentences less severe than do others.
I would consider a woman capable of having multiple abortions depraved and probably mentally ill/sociopathic.
The fact is that honestly believing that abortion is close to murder on the scale of evil, regardless of whether or not it is actually murder, does NOT suggest immediately that pro-lifers should go out and kill the perpetrators, be they the doctors or the women. Quite frankly, a (small) majority of the American public disagrees, which also includes a large majority of the political class. Slavery is rather unseemly, and for most of the country’s early history, few people cared very much, and those who agitated against it were considered busybodies and Quakers. (I am not making the bad analogy between slavery and abortion per se, only in the response to it.) Does this mean that abolitionists not only would be justified in going around killing slaveholders (like Thomas Jefferson), but would be hypocrites if they didn’t?
Women who have abortions are told from the beginning that it’s their God-given right and that a fetus is a clump of cells. They then go and undertake a procedure that has explicit legal sanction. It is obvious that these women should not be executed or imprisoned for this. They have simply been lied to and in many cases suffer for that lie. (There are also those who simply have no problem having multiple partial-birth abortions/infanticides–a procedure that, pace conrad, is sanctioned in many states and that most pro-choice advocates defend vociferously–and as I said, those women simply strike me as sociopathic.
In a different setting, in the abstract sense, I see no real problem in subjecting a woman who contracts for the killing of her unborn child to legal penalties. What those penalties should be is an interesting question that is addressed by discussing what the nature of the crime is. Start with full-blown infanticide (the kind that is considered murder now, not the kind that is legally protected) and work backwards. What does conradg think the penalty should be for for a woman killing her child one hour into the child’s life?