Blog Debate of the Day
If abortion truly is what the pro-life movement says it is — if it is the infliction of deadly violence against an innocent and defenseless human being — then doesn’t morality demand that pro-lifers act in any way they can to stop this violence? I mean, if I believed that a guy working in an office down the street was murdering innocent and defenseless human beings every day, and the governing authorities repeatedly refused to intervene on behalf of the victims, I might feel compelled to do something about it, perhaps even something unreasonable and irresponsible. Wouldn’t you?
The answer, I think, has to do with prudence. We live in a society and a culture in which there is wide disagreement about the moral personhood of the unborn child (or, if you prefer, “fetus”). Taking another human life is the gravest crime imaginable. If one is prepared to do that, one had better believe that one has no other choice, and that the stakes are radically high. The consequences for introducing lawless violence into a society, even in a righteous cause, are unpredictable, and stands to bring about a worse evil than the evil the violence is designed to fight.
Yesterday’s killing was meant to render abortive procedures unsafe for doctors to conduct and thus inaccessible.
If a woman cannot get an abortion because no nearby providers are willing to assume the risk of performing it, the actual outcome is precisely the same as if the procedure were illegal. Roeder has, in all likelihood, made abortion less accessible. It would be, in my view, a perfectly appropriate response for the Congress to decisively prove his action not only ineffectual, but, in a broad sense, counterproductive.
That’s not to suggest fast-tracking legislation that radically transforms the county’s uneasy consensus. But there are plenty of remedies that speak to the question of access alone: Bills that make abortion centers safer and help poor women afford treatment, for instance. We can’t stop Scott Roeder from killing George Tiller. But we can stop him from having his intended effect on a woman’s ability to choose.
… if you actually think late-term abortion is murder, then the murder of Dr. Tiller makes total sense. Putting up touching anecdotes about people he’s helped find adoptions, etc, doesn’t change the fact that if you think late-term abortions are murder, the man was systematically butchering hundreds of human beings a year—indeed, not merely butchering them, but vivisecting them without anesthetic. I’m sure many mass murderers have done any number of kind things over the course of their lives, to which the correct response, if you’re trying to stop the murders, is “so?”
…We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders—had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer’s actions. In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions. Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court. If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action? To shrug? Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes? Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn’t seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right? We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it.
As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect. The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one. Tiller’s killer is a murderer, and whether or not he deserves the lengthy jail sentence he will get, society needs him in jail for its own protection.
Still, I am shocked to see so many liberals today saying that the correct response is, essentially, doubling down…. Using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes does not seem to be very effective in getting them to eschew violence. In fact, it seems to be a very good way of getting more violence.
An interesting debate—and one I’ve no desire to enter, except to observe that if even a small minority of Americans took it upon themselves to kill whenever they thought their target to be a murderer, the dead would eventually include OJ Simpson, slaughterhouse workers, air force pilots, exterminators, animal researchers, tobacco executives, and many others. There are any number of professions that small numbers of Americans take to be gravely immoral, even as they conclude that they aren’t justified in committing murder to stop the associated injustice.
Anyway, I mostly posted all this to see what those in comments think about the debate aired above. Please keep in mind, as you post, that Rod, Ezra, Megan and Damon are owed civility — all are intellectually honest writers doing their best to grapple with the morality of an exceedingly thorny issue (and I’ve been forced to strip their posts of nuance by the need to excerpt, so due read their comments in full, especially if you plan to criticize them). An objectively correct conclusion is beyond mere logic, and it is only through conversations like the one they’re having that humanity can grapple toward the best conclusions we have the capacity to reach.
To take Dreher’s point a little further – if, on the other hand, the point of the “pro-life” movement was just slut-shaming and control of female sexuality, wouldn’t major pro-life organziations distance themselves from and denounce the murder, since the reaction could be a threat to their political power and cultural influence?
And isn’t that, in fact, exactly what happened?
— Chet · Jun 1, 09:55 PM · #
It relly doesn’t matter what Rod, Ezra, Damon and Meghan think.
They blew it.
The prolife movement is over.
Prolife position was trending up in the polls, and Obama was offering compromise even though 68% of the electorate support Roe, but that window of opportunity is gone forever now.
No compromise now.
Scott Roeder killed the prolife movement along with Dr. Tiller.
By the time the prolife movement recovers from this (in about 8-10 years I project) we will have operational human ectogenesis. In Japan the j-womb has successfully gestated goat embryos to full term, in another 8-10 years we will be able to just drop aborted fetuses into our swell new Bene Tleilax host-womb-vats and gestate them to term. That is, if anyone wants them.
The prolife movement will become a movement without a cause.
Yay!
And I would like to particularily address the hypocrisy of Megan McArdle.
We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it.
The problem with this, Megan, is that prolifers are fakers. They don’t care about human embryos, or they would protest fertility therapy with its fullscale manufacture of thousands of “spare” embryos destined for the icy holocaust of terminal cryogenesis.
And if prolifers were not total poseurs, they would be volunteering their own personal wombs to save a “human life”, or the own personal wombs of their wives and daughters to save a “human life” from frozen death-by-use-by-date.
Megan, how ‘bout chu step up?
And the prolife movement has done this to themselves….with their tacit approval of hate speech and terrorism campaigns directed against doctors, and most particularily, with their reaction to Dr. Tiller’s murder.
Even “Dr.” George cant stop himself—
“Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. No private individual had the right to execute judgment against him. We are a nation of laws. Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence. Rightly or wrongly, George Tilller was acquitted by a jury of his peers. “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” For the sake of justice and right, the perpetrator of this evil deed must be prosecuted, convicted, and punished. By word and deed, let us teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion. Every human life is precious. George Tiller’s life was precious. We do not teach the wrongness of taking human life by wrongfully taking a human life,” – Robert P. George, current theocon-in-chief.
the…blood….George…Tiller….had…on….his…..own…..hands.
Even when the right MUST, ABSOLUTELY HAS TO, disconnect from a trifecta terrorist like Roeder (right out of the DHS report), a bomb-maker, tax-protestor, terrorist murder, they just can’t.
They have to say, yeah, that was awful but….. Tiller deserved it.
And that is why they are done.
Game over.
— matoko_chan · Jun 1, 09:57 PM · #
I have a list written up in anticapation of the day when Moral Outrage becomes an affirmative defense in capital cases. Alan Jacobs is right up near the top. Jame Poulus a little further down. Don’t worry Conor. You’re not on it (yet.)
— Tony Comstock · Jun 1, 09:58 PM · #
How Damon Linker fails to realise the obvious stance of the pro-life movement despite it being bleated from every anti-abortion PR person in the country amazes me. The pro-life movement has always opposed violence and consistently denounced anyone who uses violence to end abortion. Linker isn’t a stranger to pro-lifers at all (he did work at First Things for a few years) so I’m deeply suspicious of what I think is his feigned ignorance of the pro-life response.
Rod, for me, is exactly right.
Ezra Klein needs to remember that this is the fourth murder of an abortion provider in 17 years, and the first since 1998. As concerning amd disturbing as Roeder’s murderous actions were, they’re nonetheless hardly indicative of a growing trend in America that suggests greater security is needed for abortion clinics and their staff.
— CEK · Jun 1, 10:36 PM · #
One more thing: Where’s the outrage, rage, concern, alarmism in response to the killing of a soldier outside a recruitment centre? Unless I’m greatly mistaken, there have been many more murders linked to the anti-war movement than to the pro-life movement.
— CEK · Jun 1, 10:51 PM · #
Poulos, really? I don’t really associate him (ie, his writing) with “moral outrage.”
— Josh · Jun 1, 11:18 PM · #
I’m pro life and I feel that the man that killed Dr Tiller was just a nut.
I have a feeling that we are going to see more and more of these types coming out of the woodwork.
Like the president says, “You aint seen nothing yet”
— Rich Carter · Jun 1, 11:33 PM · #
Poulos, really? I don’t really associate him (ie, his writing) with “moral outrage.”
Who said it has anything to do with his writing???
— Tony Comstock · Jun 1, 11:59 PM · #
You suck.
— Obama · Jun 2, 12:17 AM · #
CEK the shooter was a muslim convert with a beef against the military.
He has been charged with murder and 15 COUNTS OF TERRORISM.
Has Roeder been charged with murder and COUNTS OF TERRORISM???
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 12:35 AM · #
1) Roeder should probably be charged with terrorism. I say probably because I don’t know enough facts, but from the bare minimum I do know, it looks like terrorism.
2) As far as I can tell (as a pro-lifer), there’s no moral imperative to kill abortionists. To go back to slavery, do we really think that committed abolitionists who didn’t kill anyone were morally worse than John Brown? Speaking personally, I think slavery was a fantastic moral crime, but I also think that James Brown was a counterproductive nut whose actions were morally wrong.
3) I am always amazed by people who think that the point of the pro-life movement is “slut shaming and control of female sexuality.” Have you guys taken the effort to get to know any pro-lifers? It’s easy to demonize the other, but it’s not often conducive to accurate understanding.
— J Mann · Jun 2, 01:59 PM · #
J Mann, why would we want?
We see you clear now.
The mask has slipped.
The face of the prolife movement isn’t thoughtful intelligent Ross Douthat….it is terrorist LIFE!-jihaadi Scott Roeder.
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 02:05 PM · #
Whoops – I meant to say that John Brown was a morally deranged nut, not James Brown.
Matoko, you are often delightful, bur the current effort to bait pro-lifers is tiresome. I know you’re smarter than you’re letting on.
— J Mann · Jun 2, 03:09 PM · #
Ramesh would say, I think, that abortion can be morally repugnant without rising to the level of what the law recognizes as murder, so committing murder to stop abortion is indefensible.
— Blar · Jun 2, 03:22 PM · #
Indulge meh, Mann.
What do you see as the projected status of prolifers ten years out?
And also, why doesn’t Operation Rescue picket fertility clinics and cryostasis facilties?
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 03:29 PM · #
“3) I am always amazed by people who think that the point of the pro-life movement is “slut shaming and control of female sexuality.” Have you guys taken the effort to get to know any pro-lifers? It’s easy to demonize the other, but it’s not often conducive to accurate understanding.”
Count me as amazed that you’re amazed. From opposition to birth control to meanful sex education to full citizenship rights for homosexuals, to support for anti-sodomy laws, there is a strong thread running through Social Conservatism that sees the suppression of sex outside of marriage and procreation as the right and proper use of state power.
I am personally abivelent about abortion; with deep misgivings about the idea of using abortion as a form of birth control and deep misgivings about those who would make it illegal. I know people from all sides of the question, including a family member who was faced with the prospect of aborting a late-term pregnancy and friends who have been active in the anti-abortion movement for 20+ years.
If you find yourself “amazed” that people associate anti-abortion politics with anti-sexual liberty politics I have to conclude that you either a) need to get out more; or b) are being fascile.
Neither of these is sufficent to make the list along with Alan or James, but don’t be discouraged!
— Tony Comstock · Jun 2, 03:43 PM · #
Motoko – Consider yourself indulged, but be aware that you’re drawing down the credit of prior delightfulness.
1) Prolifer status ten years out: Depending on the Supreme Court (a) about the same (frustrated and upset by the Court ruling, and staging a peaceful protest in front of the white house once a year), assuming that the Supreme Court continues overturning all abortion restrictions, or (b) somewhat marginalized, assuming that the court lets state legislatures reach centrist/majority positions and restrict late term abortions, require notification, etc., which would drain off about half the membership.
2) Why abortionists and not reproductive technicians?: A lot, but certainly not all, of Americans have a moral sense that a fetus is entitled to more moral consideration the more it develops, from a little (but not nothing) as a fertilized egg, to a lot (but maybe not as much as a post-birth baby) 20 minutes before birth.
At the lefty extreme, there are people who say no moral consideration at all, so you could morally fertilize eggs and consume them as food, or set up a “destroy fertilized eggs” arcade where people so inclined could destroy them the way Dick Cheney hunts grouse, or could tear apart a fetus without anesthetic 20 minutes before birth.
At the righty extreme, there are people who say that once an egg is fertilized, even accidentally, it is entitled to the exact same moral consideration as a human life in being, which presumably would include heroic medical rescue if possible.
In between, as I said, there’s a continuum of people who think that fetuses deserve more moral consideration the further they develop. Eating fertilized human zygotes as a food seasoning might be immoral even if allowing some zygotes to die so that otherwise infertile parents can raise some is ok. Tearing apart a 9 month old fetus without anesthetic for the convenience of the mother might be wrong, even if killing the fetus without pain might be ok if there was no alterative that does not present serious risk to the life of the mother. And so on. (These are extreme examples, but since we’re testing whether there is any moral interest in a fetus, I think they’re worth considering).
Why is this significant? Abortion clinics are where the largest coalalition in support of pro-fetal moral consideration can be gathered. It’s like the anti-war marches – you got communists, actual anti-american types, and everyday people who were opposed to the war, and the reason they were protesting the war instead of something else that the fringe might like, like the Milosvic trials, was because it was the war where their coalition could form.
Tony – With all due respect, you’re changing the subject. You are right that many abortion protestors believe that sexual liberty is subject to the state’s control, and that in some cases, it should be controlled. But it’s a long way from there to saying that the abortion protestors don’t want to protect fetuses, but instead have the limitation of sexual liberty as their primary goal, which is what Chet’s first comment argues.
I agree that people who want to restrict abortion obviously believe that the moral interest in the fetus outways some of the moral interests in sexual liberty, at least in some cases, but if you argue that pro-life citizens don’t have a sincere concern for the fetus, but instead are masking some kind of desire to control female sexuality, you don’t know any of them as well as you think you do.
— J Mann · Jun 2, 03:51 PM · #
“Tony – With all due respect, you’re changing the subject. You are right that many abortion protestors believe that sexual liberty is subject to the state’s control, and that in some cases, it should be controlled. But it’s a long way from there to saying that the abortion protestors don’t want to protect fetuses, but instead have the limitation of sexual liberty as their primary goal, which is what Chet’s first comment argues.”
I haven’t changed the subject at all. The “protection of children” is a common agrument used by those seeking to surpress sexual liberty. As dear mako and Alan have both pointed out repeated, people’s “concern for the children” has a funny way of evaporating once the argument moves out of the realm of sexuality.
And how presumptuious of you to suppose you know anything about my friends or friendships.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 2, 04:09 PM · #
Sure. There’s a bunch in my family.
That’s how I know it’s about slut-shaming and control of sexuality – I know pro-lifers. What’s your excuse?
— Chet · Jun 2, 04:12 PM · #
“Anyway, I mostly posted all this to see what those in comments think about the debate aired above. Please keep in mind, as you post, that Rod, Ezra, Megan and Damon are owed civility — all are intellectually honest writers doing their best to grapple with the morality of an exceedingly thorny issue (and I’ve been forced to strip their posts of nuance by the need to excerpt, so due read their comments in full, especially if you plan to criticize them). An objectively correct conclusion is beyond mere logic, and it is only through conversations like the one they’re having that humanity can grapple toward the best conclusions we have the capacity to reach.”
— Very nice and proper sentiments, Conor. Given the drift of this thread, how would you say your exhortation to commenters to use civility and the presume intellectual honesty was working out for you?
— Kate Marie · Jun 2, 05:10 PM · #
I agree with Tony. Fertility clinics and the thousands of in vitro embryos doomed to the icy genocide of terminal cryostasis are uninteresting to the morality police. Of course they won’t group there.
So what you are saying is that you can’t scam the low-information base into believing terminally cryostasis’d embryos are “human lives” while they are perfectly thrilled to believe that a non-viable genetic anomaly (in the case of most late term abortions) is?
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 05:31 PM · #
Tony: With all due respect, you present one side of the kulturkampf (should pro-lifers call it slut-encouragment?) as if it’s not already part of an state-sponsored ideology of sexuality. So sex-ed classes to kids in elementary school are suddenly not part of what you call ‘state control of sexuality’? Most pro-lifers want the state to back away from anything to do with sex in the public realm, not the opposite.
matoko: Last I heard this shooter had not been caught, but whatever. He’s probably about as connected to the mainstream anti-war movement as Roeder was to the mainstream pro-life movement. Which is to say, by your metric, the entire anti-war movement has been discredited by that one man’s crime.
— CEK · Jun 2, 05:35 PM · #
Lies.
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 05:39 PM · #
CEK, Malkin now wants recruitment centers now to be cordoned and protected like targetted abortion clinics.
Do you suppose she also wants Scott Roeder’s contributions to Operation Rescue audited like Muhammed Bledsoe’s contributions to CAIR surely will be?
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 05:42 PM · #
And….J Mann.
There are books about ectogenesis that were published in 2006.
8-10 years is a conservative estimate.
Won’t human ectogenesis make the prolife movement obsolete?
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 05:59 PM · #
“Tony: With all due respect, you present one side of the kulturkampf (should pro-lifers call it slut-encouragment?) as if it’s not already part of an state-sponsored ideology of sexuality. So sex-ed classes to kids in elementary school are suddenly not part of what you call ‘state control of sexuality’? Most pro-lifers want the state to back away from anything to do with sex in the public realm, not the opposite.”
Half the girls in my daughter’s fourth-grade class are quite obvious in the first stage of puberty. If not now, at what age would you think it appropriate and serving the general welfare to ensure that they have some basic understanding of the their bodies, most espeically the risks and responsibilties that they will now have to bear as sexually developing females?
Opposing sex education is pro-teen pregnancy. Opposing sex education is pro-vernerial disease. Opposting sex education is pro-abortion.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 2, 06:02 PM · #
Also, yesterday I followed an intriguing comment here at TAS and found this post:
The Gospel and Sex
There is more room for common ground than I think is supposed by the punditsphere. I am begining to think they ignore the ever-growing fatigue with unlivable ideology because they know that when people like me and Matt start talking, the solutions we’re going to find our way to are going to put them out of their jobs.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 2, 06:19 PM · #
Tony, this is interesting.
“Unwed pregnant teens and 20-somethings who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools, according to research in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.”
I have to wonder if the lack of sex-education is the hidden variable.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 06:35 PM · #
I agree with Cole
The right has become a cohort of bizzybodies.
They want to not just be the Domestic Morality Police on abortion, sex-education and SSM, but the Superawesome World Police, whining about Saddam terminating large chunks of his fungible civilan population as IF that was a legitimate reason to involve us in a costly war of choice.
I think the right should just collectively step on and MTOB.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 06:50 PM · #
As a pro-lifer, I think Rod’s comments are spot on, but at the same time Megan really makes some good points. To my mind, where Rod and Megan meet is the question that no one has yet addressed. Exactly how long does prudence dictate that those who believe that abortion is murder rely only on peaceful, non-violent protest tactics, and the political process to stop it? If the civil rights movement of the 60s (or as a better example, the abolition of chattel slavery) was stymied by a Supreme Court decision, subsequently reinforced by another SC decision 20 years later, and continuing with minimal restrictions today, would we accept that the only tools prudentially fitting consisted of the same tactics we had been using for the past 40 years? Or would we demand something more drastic? If so, what should that something look like—secession, civil war, refusing to pay taxes, or moving to Vatican City? An interesting corallary question is whether, when that day comes, the right course must consist of organized defiance, or whether each individual should be led by his or her conscience. In other words, who gets to decide when that day has arrived? Personally I don’t have principled answers to these questions, only the intimations of my own personal moral compass, but I would be interested in hearing some others’ thoughts.
— Jeremy · Jun 2, 07:53 PM · #
“ Personally I don’t have principled answers to these questions, only the intimations of my own personal moral compass, but I would be interested in hearing some others’ thoughts.”
In the end there is only the bullet and the ballot. Chose the bullet and the winner alone will write both history and the law.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 2, 08:00 PM · #
Jeremy
The chattel slave analogy applies to women’s reproductive rights, not the non-existant rights of differentiated cell clumps.
Do us all a favor and emigrate.
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 08:01 PM · #
Asking what the law should be is equivalent to asking what’s good for the State. Clearly it’s not good for the State to have a law that pushes more than ‘x’ number of people to violence, to defend values and beliefs that ‘y’ number of people have a strong affinity to — with ‘x,y’ denoting a critical point along function ‘F’, after which the the system is driven toward the instability historically defined as “loss of legitimacy.”
I’d define “good for the State,” but I doubt that you guys want to get into it.
— Sargent · Jun 2, 08:32 PM · #
“Asking what the law should be is equivalent to asking what’s good for the State. Clearly it’s not good for the State to have a law that pushes more than ‘x’ number of people to violence, to defend values and beliefs that ‘y’ number of people have a strong affinity to — with ‘x,y’ denoting a critical point along function ‘F’, after which the the system is driven toward the instability historically defined as “loss of legitimacy.””
For most people most of the time, opposing or supporting abortion rights entails precious little personal risk or sacrifice. As it stands, the ballot seems to support the status quo. I’ll be very surprised if destabalizing numbers of abortion opponents are willing to risk life or liberty for their beliefs.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 2, 08:42 PM · #
Tony, me too.
— Sargent · Jun 2, 08:48 PM · #
Since I brought up Ramesh earlier…
— Blar · Jun 2, 09:43 PM · #
Tony, I completely agree with you that the status quo currently is in favor of the ballot, and I don’t see much evidence that this will change any time soon (nor personally do I hope it does). But isn’t the bullet where the logic of Rod’s position, and that of any other like minded pro-choice person, ultimately leads him? Megan thinks so, even if she doesn’t agree with his presupposition about the personhood of unborn humans. If you take the issue out of the abortion context and into one where the vast majority of Americans agree that the act is the unjust taking of human life (i.e., the euthanization of certain individuals on the basis of their race as in Nazi Germany), how long do you think that individuals are morally obligated to work within the confines of the existing political order before they decide to take stronger measures? And who gets to decide when we reach that point? Can we exculpate all the Germans who disagreed with the acts of the Nazi state if they were committed to working to bring to power a different regime? Or do we require that they exercise more drastic action before we accord them innocence? It seems to me that this is the unhappy result of pro-life logic (including my own), but a result that I also intuitively shy away from. My question is simply how do I justify my moral intuition, or is it even justifiable?
Matoko Chan — you say potaeto, I say potahto. I only wish the consequences of our current disagreement were as trivial.
— Jeremy · Jun 2, 10:14 PM · #
Nope, Jeremy.
Prolife fundamentalist terrorists are exactly the same as Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in America.
In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t Nazi Germany, the difference being we do have the rule of law.
If you can’t deal, and your “moral intuition” leads you to break the law…..gtfo.
Or prepare to be dead or incarcerated.
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 10:28 PM · #
“It seems to me that this is the unhappy result of pro-life logic (including my own), but a result that I also intuitively shy away from. My question is simply how do I justify my moral intuition, or is it even justifiable?”
Having had some experience here and there with tyrany and/or the very real threat of tyrany against myself and my loved ones, I have had the chance to contemplate this and hone my marksmanship in accordance with my conclusions. Fortunately my resolve has not been test. I trust we are all better off.
At the risk of further sounding like some Montana militia seperatist lunatic, if you seek counsel, try reading the Declaration of Independence. Its signatories risked hanging. Contemplate that level of resolve, then learn to shoot.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 2, 11:41 PM · #
Tony and Chet are right though…..if the prolife movement genuinely cared about protecting teh Unborn they would try to dissuade women contemplating aborting.
I don’t understand why any sapient being would hold Dr. Tiller responsible—after all, he didn’t run around kidnapping pregnant women and aborting them, or hypnotizing them.
The women having abortions all sought Dr. Tiller out, paid his fee, and lay down on the table.
Rather than demonizing and assassinating abortion providers, prolifers should be persuading women not to abort. Because there will always be providers, legal or not.
Conservatives treat women like sub-sapient fleshdolls incapable of rational independent thought.
We are still slaves in their subconscious lizard brains.
— matoko_chan · Jun 3, 02:44 AM · #
Matoko — you’re a WOMAN?!?
Kidding.
“That ain’t no woman! It’s a man, man!” — A.P.
— Mason · Jun 3, 03:46 AM · #
Um, it’s right there in the name, dude…
— Chet · Jun 3, 05:26 PM · #
I think the same way. :)
— Yurtdisinda universite · Jun 10, 11:15 AM · #