How Pro-Choicers Should Learn to Talk to Pro-Lifers
All too often in American politics opposing sides talk past one another, firing off arguments loaded with language that stands no chance of persuading those who hold other views.
The debate over what to do about 9/11 was such a moment, one that initiated the current era of polarization. When liberals recoiled at torture and GOP attacks on civil liberties, conservatives accused them of being anti-American traitors. When Republicans supported preemptive warfare against Iraq, liberals called them fascists and warmongers.
If we had the chance for a do-over, it would probably happen just the same way. The attacks in New York and Washington exposed a fault line in Americans’ views of what makes our country great: liberals treasure the U.S. for the Bill of Rights whereas conservatives value living at the center of a wealthy and powerful empire. The kill-’em-all-let-God-sort-’em-out crowd doesn’t live in the same universe as those of us who would have used diplomacy and international law to apprehend the murderers of September 2001.
The murder of doctor George Tiller at his Kansas church has again exposed the fault line over abortion. Both sides talk past one another. The pro-choice contingent snaps that pro-lifers, more often than not right of center, care only about human life between conception and birth. For their part, many pro-lifers fail to concede some obvious points, like the fact that forcing a girl to bear a child that results from rape or incest is obscene.
I am militantly pro-choice on practical grounds. You can’t tie a woman down for nine months and force her to bear a child. And also on moral ones: women must be able to control their bodies. Nevertheless, I am disgusted by much of my fellow pro-choicers’ rhetoric in the aftermath of the shooting of Dr. Tiller.
Reveling in the same kind of smug self-righteousness that characterized Bush and his supporters after 9/11 (did they really think questioning liberals’ patriotism would convince them to support invading Iraq?), my fellow pro-choicers are attempting to marginalize pro-life Americans as out of touch and possibly insane.
“It’s senseless,” said the director of an abortion clinic in Portland, Oregon. Even President Obama weighed in: “However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence,” said a White House statement.
If you’re intellectually honest, however, murdering an abortionist isn’t inherently “senseless.” If you believe (as I do) that life begins at conception, then the first cellular division after a sperm fertilizes the ovum represents human life every bit as much as you and me. The standard feminist claim that a baby isn’t alive until it’ “viable” outside the womb is ridiculous. I know 25-year-olds who aren’t fully viable.
Abortion is murder. In my view women have—and ought to continue to have—the right to murder their unborn babies. Each abortion is a tragedy, some necessary and others not, and all of them are murder. It’s not a position that I’m comfortable with. But as sad and horrible as abortion is, I can’t see telling a woman who doesn’t want to carry a pregnancy to term that she has to do so.
For those who choose to prioritize the fetus over the mother, on the other hand, it is a simple straightforward leap to the next assumption. Since murder is wrong and mass murder is even worse, than it becomes morally incumbent upon people of good will to do whatever it takes to stop it. President Obama says abortion “cannot be resolved by…violence,” but he’s too cute by half. With abortion the law of the land since 1973, a Democratic-majority Congress and Obama about to see his (pro-choice) pick seated on the Supreme Court, there is nothing anyone can do within the existing legal and political system to put an end to what pro-lifers view as the annual murder of millions of Americans. What are they supposed to do? Write a blog?
“According to God’s laws,” wrote Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry after the shooting, “and the laws that govern how we protect the innocent in times of peace, George Tiller was one of the most evil men on the planet; every bit as vile as the Nazi war criminals who were hunted down, tried, and sentenced after they participated in the ‘legal’ murder of the Jews that fell into their hands.”
Tiller wasn’t just any doctor. His practice’s focus on third-trimester abortions—60,000 in all, according to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, but exact numbers aren’t available—had already prompted an anti-abortion activist to shoot him. “Dr. Tiller was well-known for providing abortions for women who discovered late in pregnancy that their fetuses had severe or fatal birth defects,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “He also aborted healthy late-term fetuses. Some of his patients, he said, were drug addicted and some were as young as nine years old.” Complexity is so damned complicated. He aborted healthy late-term babies? Sick! But who wants a nine-year-old girl to become a mom? Not me.
For those who oppose abortion, the question is: Would you kill Adolf Hitler?
As liberal talking heads have been saying repeatedly, abortion is legal. But that’s not much of an argument. So was slavery. So was denying women the right to vote. As Randall Terry points out, so was killing Jews in Nazi Germany. If obeying the law was always the right thing to do, we would teach our kids that George Washington was a terrorist. And no one would drive faster than 55.
True, many pro-lifers are right-wingers with their own problems with hypocrisy—I’d love to see the stats on “pro-lifers” who voted for Bush in 2004, after he’d murdered more than a hundred thousand Afghans and Iraqis. But liberals don’t do themselves or the pro-choice movement any favors by glibly dismissing every fetus as a soulless lump of protoplasm or calling those who resort to violence to try to save them psychotic terrorists.
COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL
61 Comments.
There are too few people that can reason out an argument like this. Cheers. If America can be rescued, it's men like you that are going to pull it off. Thanks again.
By your logic Ted, then killing anyone you feel is breaking the laws of your personal belief system is ok. That's exactly what you are saying.
The fact is, the Christian terrorist movement is motivated to strike fear into any woman who is even THINKING of having an abortion. THAT was the MAIN goal of Tiller's murderer, not to simply stop him from performing the procedures – however grim they are. That makes him a terrorist, and makes the extreme wing of the Christian anti-abortion movement a terrorist movement.
I liked your column Ted.
I also see abortion as murder, third trimester more so. One of the things is that in the third trimester unless the baby is deformed then it might actually be viable.
That is the juxtaposition in the pro-choice argument. They claim viability; however, even if it is viable they still don't care. It's the argument of it's right when I say it's right.
One of the arguments that pro-lifers use is that if murder is wrong why would you kill someone in the first place? This is an extremely shallow argument taken from an extremely shallow view of Christianity. In other words just looking up quotes and trying to spew truth and arguments from them.
The answer to your question (would you kill Hitler) as taught by ancient rabbinic scholars (the ones who wrote the old testament) and Catholic scholars (the ones who wrote the new testament) is, yes! If your life is threatened or you know of someone who is going to murder many people nonsensically then you have a duty to protect life. That's the purpose of the commandment, thou shall not kill. To preserve life. If anyone needs a reference to expand their shallow view of Judeo Christian beliefs I suggest read the entire old testament.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and he made something to me very clear that many pro-choice people do not understand. Pro-life people consider abortion murder. So Obama's argument of finding a middle ground (among other people) is completely insane and devoid of reality. The middle ground means that I as a pro-lifer have to completely give up my beliefs. Because I just plainly admitted that murder is "somewhat" OK on the innocent. Pro-choice people can rationally make the middle ground argument because they do not lose an inch in their argument!
This is the understanding missing in pro-choice rhetoric and lets get along rhetoric.
I see your militant argument Ted and I see the logic. But fundamentally there are other options, but at least you understand the core concept. To not call abortion murder is a slippery slope argument that can lead to Logan' Run. It's an argument that you and only you know every single molecular thing about the universe and you and only you can thus decide if something is viable or not. Thus you are presuming you know more than God or if you are an atheist that you know and understand every single thing in the universe.
To make it short I'll end here because I could keep on arguing. So… FIN! 🙂
P.S. Unless addressing you Ted I am just using you because it's easier but obviously it's not pertaining to you.
"The standard feminist claim that a baby isn't alive until it' [sic] "viable" outside the womb is ridiculous. I know 25-year-olds who aren't fully viable."
ted, i'm as big a rall fan as anyone, and i agree with you 99% of the time, but man… sometimes your "logic" is really fucking pathetically lame.
You didn't actually give advice as to 'how to talk to a Pro-Lifer' in this column.
Whoah, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that Obama's token nominee for the Supreme Court is pro-choice. Her record on abortion is thin, and it's not exactly endorsed by Planned Parenthood. I have a really bad feeling about her. Like maybe she'll turn out to be the anti-Souter.
Santiago,
I think you're misrepresenting Obama's position. Most of the modern pragmatic liberals want a completely different outcome that was espoused by Clinton: safe, legal, rare. The left wants to get children, teens, and young adults armed with sex ed and birth control. They believe abortions will decline in this way.
The right wants fewer abortions and refuses to endorse this strategy (sex ed + birth control). They PARTICULARLY won't endorse it until and unless the left actually admits abortion is undesirable and should be reduced.
The middle ground is very real, but the heels are dug in for separate reasons. The grim irony is that the rightwing could advance on the goal of fewer murdered fetuses if they conceded this point (sex ed + birth control). For whatever reason, they won't.
Okay, let me offer a third opinion here:
The million dollar question is, why are we even talking about abortion when people are living in tent cities, and we are losing jobs left and right? GM just went bankrupt, which may also cost us as much as a million more jobs.
Why are we talking about abortion when the troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, costing us eight hundred billion motherfuckin' dollars to date and counting?
The so-called abortion issue is nothing but a distraction away from the real problems that we have in our society, similar to flag-burning distraction. Yes, let's talk about those little fuckers inside the womb when the little fuckers OUTSIDE of the womb are not getting enough to eat, are not getting a decent education (or none at all), are not getting adequate health care (or none at all), and who are living in war zones and getting shot at, bombed at, and a whole host of other horrors.
I prefer to talk about the babies already breathing, thank you very much, because they are the ones who need our help and care.
Bill O'Reilly and the WSJ – I like your sources!! You should read the 1st hand accounts linked here, Ted:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/06/01/patients-remember-dr-tiller/
When Bill O'Reilly says it is "Nazi stuff" he implies that the abortions are done out of medical curiosity, bigotry or sadism. Read those 1st hand accounts. He is lying, and you quoted him with approval. Bullshit detector fail.
You're also confused about terms. If you think abortion should be legal, it aint murder. Murder is homicide without a legal justification. You meant homicide.
Abortion has been the law since 1973, not by legislative action, but by judicial action. We the people have never had the right to vote. This issue should be decided by the states.
This is more a column on what one oughtn't say to pro-lifers than, as the title promises, how to actually talk to them and convince them of anything. It also comes close to the same problem you have rightly noticed, Ted, in many other instances – people on the left being asked to be very tolerant of and understanding toward intolerant dickweeds who don't want to understand us at all.
If you agree that protecting a woman's right to choose is important, then the rhetorical methods of keeping that right safe are tactics. Pointing out the hypocrisy of murderous "pro-life" advocates is a good idea, and may well help convince people who sit on the "abortion is icky but I sure hope my girlfriend can have one, just not sluts" fence. Bending over backward to point out how they might be justified in-some-way-but-not-really is hardly my job in a debate.
Come to that, debates are rarely if ever effective in the hard-core supporters of one side convincing the other. The fight is for the middle and the undecided, so if some rhetorical moves don't convince people who want to shoot a doctor, fine. The audience is people who think shooting a doctor is wrong.
Don't fall into the trap of advocating passivity toward people full of hate, Ted. One of the things I enjoy the most about your writing is that you don't feel guilty for standing up and fighting for what you think is right.
ridiculous.
idiot.
this paragraph and the one follows, i stopped reading there:
"If you're intellectually honest, however, murdering an abortionist isn't inherently "senseless." If you believe (as I do) that life begins at conception, then the first cellular division after a sperm fertilizes the ovum represents human life every bit as much as you and me. The standard feminist claim that a baby isn't alive until it' "viable" outside the womb is ridiculous. I know 25-year-olds who aren't fully viable."
You have some significant typos in this, Ted, I hope you correct them before it's published.
I agree with Anon 4:21 on this. This was a terrorist attack, it was a lynching. The fundamental drive of the anti-choice crowd is the control of women's bodies and fertility. It is very obvious by that this is the case, through the context in which the anti-choice crowd argue their case. They are also against contraception, sex education, greater protections for female victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, and also attack women's shelters in rural areas. Most women's shelters in rural areas keep their locations fairly secret, have armed guards, and ban men from entering the compound.
This isn't just to protect women from the perpetrators, but to protect them from the aggressive male population at large. Pastors and preachers at conservative churches throughout the country counsel women who are in sexually and physically abusive relationships to return to their mates, rather than offering them help. By doctrine, many of them insist that women are inferior and subservient to men.
This constitutes a habitual and perpetually abusive culture toward women. Anti-choice in this context is, in itself a form of terrorism against women.
I don't think I'm talking past these people, I simply refuse to believe that they have a valid point. Just because they believe in it deeply and religiously does not make it right. 50 years ago segregation was God's Will too….200 years ago slavery was God's Will. It justified abuse, lynching, and terrorism to maintain a specific power structure.
The extreme right now claims that Roe v. Wade was the result of "activist judges," but these same people, when confronted, reluctantly admit (in order to be logically consistent) that Brown v. Board of Education was the result of activist judges, despite being unanimous.
I understand the opposing point of view, Ted, but until these people truly present a pro-life agenda, in social programs, promotion of nonviolent resolution to international conflicts, and support for all who are oppressed and abused, I fail to see why I need to take their whining about abortion seriously.
Quoting Bill O'Reilly these days? *sigh*
ted,
could you please elaborate on
a) why do you single out conception as the "start" of the life process?
b) what status does this distinction have for you (definition? logical deduction from normal usage of words? physiological statement? legal "opinion"?)
c) what considerations led you to this "event" (which btw. isn't actually a clear-cut event at all, cell-biology wise…) as the "start" and under what circumstances might you reconsider this ascription?
things might be even more complex 😉
take care
adoption that is all
1: Ted, I continually thank you for having and voicing one of the only honest pro-choice opinions out there. I get in arguments with my family (who is not nearly as far right as I am) because I can't believe they support state killing while opposing medical killing. AFAIAC killing in either instance is a tragedy.
2: Susan is right. Abortion is an excellent red herring.
It saddens me that conservatives somehow co-opted the whole pro-life position.
One of the core concepts that drew me to progressive and liberal politics was the idea of protecting the rights of the "little guy," standing up for the individual against the oppressive momentum of the wealthy elite and corporate interestes.
With that in mind, who among is us more helpless, more in need of an advocate, than an unborn child? An unborn child is so weak and needy that it literally cannot live without the biological support of the mother. It has no way to speak on its behalf, little way to even show the outside world that it exists.
To me, supporting pro-choice policies is absolutely incompatible with the idea that we should be protecting and standing up for the weak among us. The hungry and homeless need our help, but they can also get up, move around, and act on their own behalf to some degree. An unborn child has none of these abilities, and completely relies on others to protect it.
Is it a tragedy when someone is impregnated by a rape? Yes. Is it a tragedy when a child is impregnated by incestuous rape? Yes. Is it inconvenient when a single mother living in poverty is pregnant with her nth child? Yes.
However, these victims still at least have their lives. By supporting pro-choice policies, you are denying even this most basic, most fundamental human right to the unborn child. It was not the child's choice that it be created through rape or poverty or some other evil, yet the most innocent among us is punished for things it cannot control.
Abortion isn't a convenience, it isn't a band-aid to help soothe the wounds of a tragic rape. It is the murder of another living human being with a beating heart. If you support abortion, you are no better than a corporate executive who cuts jobs for the sake of convenience or to improve his profit margins.
I often find myself in a lonely, lonely world as a pro-life progressive liberal. However, in my heart, I know this is the just cause, and I will continue to fight to give voice to those without one of their own.
People who bomb clinics and kill doctors are terrorist. If you cannot see that then you are an idiot. Everyone who actively participates in operation rescue are terrorist enablers.
You may have the idiotic view that life begins at conception but that does not make it so. So please go back to enabling Anti-Abortion terrorist and just hope that you don't get caught in between the violence that they create.
By the way since you brought up the whole Nazi thing. You do know that abortion was illegal in Nazi Germany, right?
Anon@10:18, sorry but I refuse to be lumped in with cut-throat execs because I support women's rights and reproductive justice. While losing any life is a horrible, horrible thing, bringing someone into this world without being able to care for them may just be worse than "murdering" them.
It seems that folks who support the "pro-life" stance, even the more rational among them, are missing some very fundamental points:
1) Advocating bringing babies into the world without proper support systems, i.e. education, healthcare, future employment, etc., is dooming them to an existence of hardship and destruction. We can't forget that many pro-lifers, being social AND fiscal conservatives, will not pay for the services to take care of these children and aren't willing to take them into their homes either. There are hundreds of thousands of children who never get adopted and, filtered through the decrepit foster care system, end up physically or sexually abused, mentally unstable, or incarcerated. Why aren't pro-lifers opening their arms (and wallets) to all of these kids they want to "save"?
2) The litany of biblical/religious justifications that simply aren't compatible with human rights. Folks have already mentioned where all the faults within these arguments lie so I won't go into it too much. I will say that any dogma or doctrine that treats a person as property has absolutely zero value in making the world better for anyone.
3) There is an implicit, and probably explicit, racist undertone to the "save the babies" rhetoric. Women who DO have their babies and can't manage to care for them alone, are often seen as "welfare queens" or getting over on the system by the same people who oppose comprehensive sex ed, birth control measures, and safe abortion. Does this mean that babies who aren't white don't matter? I don't think so but I'm sure some pro-lifers do.
4) Even if legal abortions were ended, it doesn't mean they would stop. Women with the resources to get them done by a doctor would do so, and women without may go back to deadly back-alley abortions, something none of us should want to see happen.
5) Being "pro-life" and advocating murder (and terrorism and war, etc.) is oxymoronic, not to mention truly senseless.
I could go on but you get the picture…
And Susan, we are talking about this issue because it is directly tied to all the other issues that you mentioned. As you pointed out, the U.S. has a system that neglects children, once they're here, and their families, so why bring them into an environment that does not support them? This is precisely why sex ed, contraception, and yes, safe abortions are so important.
At conception, a zygote IS nothing but blob of protoplasm. You need to be scientifically clearer on that, Ted.
God, or Nature, aborts tens of millions of those blobs of protoplasm every year – the whole issue with Tiller was viability.
The conception line is anti-scientific, and in religious terms, of very recent derivation.
I've had more than a few arguments with the Pro-Life crowd. The odd thing about our argument is that I share their belief that abortion is morally wrong in most instances.
Where I part ways with the Pro-Life crowd is my belief that the simplest and most effective way to decrease abortions in America is open and non-euphemistic sex education coupled with cheap, effective birth control. The Pro-Life crowd recoils in horror from this obvious, sane and effective solution.
I have heard only one reasonable argument against preventative birth control ("the expectation that one can have sexual intercourse without danger of conception predisposes people to dispose of a baby if the contraception fails"). The rest of the arguments are a series of selective readings from the Bible.
Unless you can get a Pro-Lifer to admit that their morality is flexible and situational (most Pro-Lifers delight in capital punishment, the torture of Muslims and the unprovoked execution of protestors by trigger-happy crowd-control cops) your arguments will never crack their cognitive dissonance.
Wrong, Ted. WRONG!
Merrian-Webster defines murder as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought."
Unlawful killing. The concept of "murder" only exists within the framework of the law. And if it's legal, it's not murder–by definition!
Everyone need quit using the word "murder." If a "pro-lifer" wants to argue against abortion's morality, fine. But no one should call it murder. Our society has decided to legalize this type of killing, so it's not murder.
I oppose capitol punishment, for, among other reasons, moral grounds, but I recognize that it's not "murder."
Our retarded culture needs to pay attention to language.
ah…the eternal question:
"If you could travel back in time… would you kill Hitler as a baby?"
…as one cartoonist, great: Mark Peaslee, once said in an illustrated repsonse the
"is it morally wrong to convince a retarded child into killing Hitler instead?"
BTW: Mark would NEVER delete/censor my blog comments btw
To talk to a pro lifer (and you should) I recommend first researching infanticide and child abandonment. Wikipedia has very good articles covering these topics.
The point is that the practice of killing unwanted babies is old and widespread. It's also never condemned. So if it was OK with Jesus and the rest for a mother to leave her baby to die a potentially horrible death (ever seen sunburn on a baby? It's obviously painful) then who are we to say that a surgical procedure performed before the fetus has a developed nervous system is wrong?
The fundamental drive of the anti-choice crowd is the control of women's bodies and fertility.
You are wrong again Aggie. We oppose abortion because we believe that the baby is a life and deserves to be protected.
Your tactic of wrongly describing someone's motivations isn't worthy of 8th grade debate class.
When you are capable to have an intellectually honest discussion let me know.
Next up: Freepers post "Ted Rall, evil LIEberal scum, admits life begins at conception, admits abortion is murder, admits murder is justified. WE WIN!"
Good on ya givin' em cannonballs, Mr. Rall.
HOW TO REDUCE ABORTION
by Angelo
Here's how to reduce abortion:
copy the social policy of nordic countries.
The end
Delco says:
You are wrong again Aggie. We oppose abortion because we believe that the baby is a life and deserves to be protected.
Especially Iraqi babies.
You are all still operating (including Ted) on the Bill O'Reilly LIE that late term abortions are of babies who could grow to be perfectly happy if only allowed to be born.
I gave one link above, here's another:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/06/01/late_term_abortion/
For eg Trueteal, people are not usually keen to adopt a baby who "would more than likely live a brief and painful life filled with surgery and organ transplants".
Further from that story:
""We always sent the really tragic cases to Tiller." Those included women diagnosed with cancer who needed abortions to qualify for chemotherapy, women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses, and rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months. "We sent him 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds who were way too far along for anybody [else] to see," said Hill. "Eleven-year-olds don't tell anybody. Sometimes they don't even know they've had a period.""
O'Reilly was really concerned for those latter little girls, at least to the point of wanting to know who raped them. But as to their great risk of DYING DURING CHILD BIRTH, he doesn't give a flying fuck apparently.
You're plain old wrong Ted. Of course a blastocyst is "alive" in the sense that algae is also alive, but the definition of murder is not "causing the death of something that is alive". I suppose a published admission of you error is to much to hope for.
Abortion is NOT a red herring. True, there seems to be an undue amount of focus placed on it, but can you honestly tell me that we shouldn't care about it either way?
It ties directly into our civil liberties! Why don't we give up on worker rights too. I mean come on, there are people out there WITHOUT jobs. Let's focus on getting people jobs FIRST and then we can worry about the rest later. Sheesh.
When people argue that the issue of abortion is just a political distraction, isn't that merely an attempt to distract political opponents and change the subject? The people who respond to pro-life arguments with rants about Iraq or Afghanistan are the worst offenders, as this line of defense A. is a completely lame and pathetic attempt to change the subject, and B. makes unjustified political assumptions about their opponents.
Personally, I've always found this subject more complicated than most political issues. I don't really believe there is an on/off switch for deciding when a human life begins; both persons who claim that the union of a sperm and an egg is the flip of the switch and people who claim the birth of the fetus serves this purpose are being overly simplistic, in my view.
Human life is probably more accurately classified as a spectrum or a curve than as a thing that you either have or you don't; a collection of a few dozen cells without a nervous system doesn't have a whole lot of sway with me, but neither does a coma patient on indefinite life support whose brain has almost entirely disintegrated. The question of where to draw the line is so complicated that I don't even know where to start, and I usually just keep my mouth shut when the subject is discussed.
I don't anticipate much success for Ted's plan of attack, either. I think admitting that abortion is murder but then arguing that it should be legal anyway will accomplish little more than making people on both sides of the aisle think you are insane.
Frankly, I was not impressed by the article. Lots of heat and smoke and convoluted logic producing very little light or clarity. To call what it expressed "intellectually honest" is a stretch at best.
From where I sit I see two opposed systems of belief. Each, internally consistent and "rational" within the limitations imposed by such systems. Each side fervently believes the other to be "evil" or at least ill informed. Each side pat's itself on the back for being "right" as the other is cast as being in absolute error. But each system is closed and is thus not able to receive, or accept, new ideas or information. Thus neither position will lead to any intellectually or morally useful result.
There is no "intellectual honesty" in any of this. Nor can there really be any rational discussion since we aren't dealing with ideas that can be shared and developed or facts that can be tested and proven.
We are dealing with opposed sets of beliefs. There is no resolution possible in this case. Historically such arguments and conflicts turn to violence because both sides are trapped in positions that are by definition rigid and closed.
There are so many real and present issues that threaten human life these days. These things are not based on beliefs or opinion but on verifiable facts. Perhaps it would be more honest and morally rigorous that we dealt with them first?
If we tear ourselves apart in this useless way we will fail. In a hundred years no one will remember us, except perhaps as complete idiots, and no one will care.
I agree wholeheartedly with C, so long as pro lifers take abortion out of the context of a fully supportive social system, that in my mind includes the production of safe food in an environmentally sustainable way (not leaving all these children to scarred and polluted planet), then their arguments simply don't carry any legitimacy to me.
Anyone who uses the bible or any other religious text as a basis for justifying this ought to have their voting privileges revoked until they can demonstrate an understanding for why the supremacy of secular law is essential to human civilization. Separation of church and state is a necessary principle for this very reason, and the use of biblical arguments to justify legal premises is not a legitimate position.
This is not about whether abortion is the best alternative.
Furthermore, it would not be moral or ethical to go back in time and kill Hitler prior to him committing any crimes. That would be murdering an innocent person.
Kill Hitler? No point really. History is too complex for the Lone Gunman theory. Nazism and the Holocaust were the result of generations of geopolitics. Jump in your time machine, go back and push Hitler off a ladder while he's still painting houses. I think you'd find upon returning that some other charismatic scum had risen to the top. Your parallel future would be pretty much the same, except Adolph would still be a popular name and those sporty little square 'staches might come back.
Similarly, killing Osama wouldn't stop terrorism. Lynching Saddam didn't improve Iraq's situation.
To those who think that Ted's justifying this assassination, I'm really wondering where you're getting that from. I see nothing saying that the assassination is justified, just that it isn't "senseless." From the perspective of the murderer, the murder is perfectly sensible.
Yes, this was an act of terrorism, putting pro-choice doctors "on notice" that they're still targets for this kind of violence, but if something was done with a greater goal in mind, then by that very definition, it isn't senseless. Unreasonable, maybe, but not senseless.
See, Susan, that's just the kind of snark that undermines your arguments. Killing Iraqis (and by extension) Iraqi babies is and was wrong. All war is sin. No one has to believe in government control of our lives (progressivism in a nutshell) in order to believe that killing is wrong.
Delco, then why are people who are so 'pro life' also so often against birth control, sex education and contraception, which all work to allow people to have children when ready? Is the birth of a child supposed to be punishment for fornication? If not, why make an exception for rape and incest? Is the child no less innocent and sacred regardless of the circumstances in which it was conceived?
Once born, why do so my "pro life" individuals refuse to participate in public forms of support for children? The government is made up of the people, by the people and for the people, so what do you have against the public promotion of life after birth?
If you'd read the entire post I listed, you would understand the context in which I defended my claim that the DEEPER motive is disingenuous. I'm not incapable of a debate, I just refuse to have one with people who can't understand their own positions well enough to be logically consistent about them.
Ted, while I'm starting to warm up with your opinion on Obama, your take on abortion is wrong.
First, I don't think we should even refer to the opposition as "pro-life" cause the issue is not about life, but choice.
Second, pro-choicers represent the moderate position in America and don't have to explain themselves. Anti-choicers on the other side are out of touch and a lot of them are insane.
Third, abortion is not murder. Murder is what happened to Tiller, abortion is in it's own category in the same sense that euthanasia is not murder either, but in it's own category.
Stick to other political issues Ted. The person IMHO who has the best opinion on this issue is Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon.
Ted,
One thing I don't understand is that you believe "murder" is justifiable in the case of abortion, but torture can never be justified. Why the moral absolutism in one case and not the other? (Note: I agree with you 100% on abortion, and about 98% on torture).
I'm not sure if life begins AT conception, but some form of it seems to occur shortly after it. The difference is that it's not sentient life. A case could be made that sentient life doesn't begin until well after birth. I'm with everybody else here, Ted. It's definitely not murder. Justifiable homicide? Probably.
See, Susan, that's just the kind of snark that undermines your arguments. Killing Iraqis (and by extension) Iraqi babies is and was wrong. All war is sin. No one has to believe in government control of our lives (progressivism in a nutshell) in order to believe that killing is wrong.
I was pointing out the hypocrisy of those who supported the Iraq War while at the same calling themselves pro-life. After all, they're not Christian babies, they're just Muslim babies.
And as for the Iraq War being a sin? Well I agree with you on that. I opposed that war long before it became fashionable to do so: meaning, before the war started. And because I did so, I received a lot a hate-filled vitriol from people who called themselves "pro-life".
I second Susan's experience here. It wasn't just opposing the Iraq war that brought a barrage of hateful abuse, it was simply even failing to show the adequate bravado in unquestioned support for it. Warfare brings out the nastiest forms of chauvinistic nationalism in any country whose military is strong enough to beat up on another group of people, even when that military is Serbian and all they're doing is massacring unarmed civilians.
I was living in Greenville, North Carolina at the time, birthplace of the infamous 'freedom fries,' which made their way all the way to Air Farce One and the halls of Congress' cafeteria, at taxpayer expense. I heard people say that we should drag the Statue of Liberty back to France and give it back to them for not supporting our invasion of Iraq.
Now how ironic is THAT!? This from people who are lock-step Republicans, meaning 'pro life' as well on abortion.
Or how about the Florida Congresswoman who wanted to exhume the bodies of WWII vets buried in Normandy because "…France no longer appreciates the sacrifice…" of our soldiers now over a half century ago.
….to say nothing of American appreciation of France's support during the revolutionary war….even immediately after it.
I'm not going to play this game of "oh they have a legitimate point"…they don't.
On the point of sentient life, this is a really important issue. "pro lifers" put the baby's interests ahead of its mother's interests. That is INSANE to me. I-N-S-A-N-E…this isn't about wanting to reduce abortions, this is about wanting to control women.
Or are women not sentient? If all humans have equal rights, why are we hunting down "illegal immigrants"….as though a human being can be illegal? No sir, the so-called 'pro life' position is wrong and I refuse to treat it as a legitimate debate. The LEGITIMATE debate is whether or not abortion is a moral and ethical form of birth control, not whether or not the woman has the right to it.
"For those who oppose abortion, the question is: Would you kill Adolf Hitler?"
Are you comparing Tiller to Hitler?
If so, you're off your whacker on this one.
Or are you suggesting that Hitler could have been aborted? Like we know from the womb what demons may spring?
But of course conception is the beginning of life, the start of a new human, so termination is tantamount to murder, but it isn't. It is the willful cessation of life, an embryonic killing, but not a malicious act of murder.
It's interesting how some responses noted the horror of such an act yet suggested that late term abortions were somehow worse, that somehow the more developed an embryo the more heinous the act, the greater the death. I don't understand such rationale. If one carries that notion further, then the older one is the more painful and tragic death becomes.
It's a sad comment on our society that we as a civilization are so far from civilized that we choose to cull healthy fetuses because of inconvenience or amoral behavior, but that is exactly where we are as we continuously fail to educate our children's children.
For the sake of brevity, I think we should leave the 'Iraqi baby' argument behind. It's a valid point, certainly, but many of the pro-lifers here are against the war, and it seems unfair to demand that they answer for the hypocrisy of other pro-lifers not present.
On the other hand, I'm sure at least a few of them supported the war for years, and may continue to do so but claim otherwise to dodge the argument. Either way, it's only serving to obfuscate the issue.
I also think that portraying pro-life and pro-choice as two opposing extremes is inaccurate. Pro-life means no one can have an abortion; the opposite extreme is forced abortion. Pro-choice IS the middle ground.
Personally, I'm okay with forced abortions/sterilisation under certain circumstances. That said, by being pro-choice I've made my compromise. I won't force someone to have an abortion, you won't force them to give birth. We'll leave that CHOICE up to the individual.
Come on Ted.
Get real with "life" and "murder." What kind of life we are offering to the kids born even to a 'welcoming' parents.
Just imagine normal parents have to be very careful to keep the children away from toxic well processed edible substances called food, junk toys, junk TV etc… Parents have to work hard to make ends meet – the ends dictated by corporations. They do not know if they have job tomorrow. Children are left to struggle for themselves. Sick children are sent to day care. I do not have to describe more to you. You know life better.
We should first ban people, married or willing or whatever, from bearing a child, unless they take education on child development and child psychology and pass an exam.
Look at the baby boomer generation's children. The percentage of clueless folks in them is extremely high.
This is the state of willing parent's children. Think about the plight of a child born to an unwilling parent. It will be a life term sentence awarded at the time of birth. I would prefer a death verdict for them before they are born. They end up in all kind of troubles including ending up in jail or death row.
Pro-life folks wanted these children to be born – that is all they want. They don't care what happens to those children. No mercy if they end up doing crime.
It is not just tying a woman for nine months Ted. There are lots of connections made between parents and the child during that nine months. It is not just forcing a women to bear it for nine months, it is forcing a child to be born to an unwelcoming mother and father.
Man, murdering them before they get into this filthy world is a genuine justice. You and your murder philosophy…
A strong supporter of Ted Rall – a great thinker and a compelling writer in present time, I will not accept your stand on this matter.
Here's the main thing:
only the right-wingers shoot. Only the right-wingers kill those on the left.
Unless and until those on the right start getting their asses laid permanently low, nothing will change.
I've been watching the right terrorize and murder those on the left all of my life. When are the good guys going to start shooting back?
Civil War? Who cares? The plutocrats dodged the revolution bullet in the 1930s and again in the 1960s. Time for them to go down.
only the right-wingers shoot. Only the right-wingers kill those on the left. I've been watching the right terrorize and murder those on the left all of my life.
That's a broad, and inaccurate, statement. Here are some violent leftists:
Unabomber
ELF
Code Pink
Anarchists protesting "globalization"
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad
A variety of Leftists students suppressing speech on college campuses
Shen How Low:
Most of your examples are weak and lame.
You'll have trouble finding any incidents of ELF, Code Pink, "Anarchists protesting 'globalization'" or "Leftists [sic] students … on college campuses" actually psychically harming anyone.
Some of these listed above might occasionally damage property, but they don't engage in political KILLINGS of those on the right. (Do you really think anyone feels "terrorized" by Code Pink? Code fucking Pink?)
So what's left. The Unabomber and Muhammad.
I'd argue that Muhammad's 1 killing was more driven by religious motives than
"leftist" politics.
So that leaves the Unabomber. He killed 3 people and injured 23 over a 20 year period. I don't think many "leftists" would claim him. He ranted against "liberals" and espoused an anarchist and anti-technology creed. And he was a lone "nut," certainly not part of any wider movement.
Again, your posting is pretty lame.