So, when I ask this, I am asking about those prolifers that truly believe that:
a) Life begins at conception
b) The conceptus is no less a human being than a newborn
While I realize that this might not apply to all prolifers, my guess is that quite a few (and possibly a majority) would agree with those assumptions.
Abortions would, to such people, be no different than newborns being slaughtered. If newborns were being murdered, I would consider it my moral obligation to stop that from happening nomatter what it took.
Don’t prolifers therefore have an obligation to act by any means necessary, including violence, arson and murder to stop that from happening*?
*I am not pro-life myself, but would like to understand the mindset better. I am not advocating this position.
I don’t understand your use of the word obligated, nor your attempt to understand another mindset.
From your post, if an abortion clinic opens, a pro-lifer is ‘morally obligated to stop that from happening no matter what it took’.
So it would be fine for them, using your reasoning, to explode a nuclear device, destroying the city and all people therein?
Most of even the most staunch pro-lifers recognize a concept called “vigilante justice.” After all, how many of them go out and murder people who kill adults? If that were a non-significant number, do you think that OJ, Robert Blake, or maybe even most major politicians, would be alive right now, given their treatment in the media?
I think a key difference here is between revenge for a murder, and prevention of a murder (perhaps that second ‘murder’ should be in quotation marks). I think a lot more people would be more willing to use vigilante justice to save a life than they would be to avenge a death.
Put it this way. If a law was passed making it legal for parents to kill their children, so long as that child was younger than, say, twelve years old, what would most people be willing to do about it? I imagine there would be a lot who would use force to prevent such killings, because they feel an obligation to save the life of the child, given the legal system isn’t going to. Given that some pro-lifers presumably believe this situation to be equivalent to abortion, as per (a) and (b) in the OP, why wouldn’t they feel the same obligation?
I don’t think the OP literally means “whatever it takes” - obviously it’s crazy to kill multiple innocent people to save one, etc. But if I saw one person murdering another, it’s not out of the question that I’d consider killing the attacker if it were the only way to prevent the victim’s death (and even if I’m iffy on this question, I’m sure a lot of people aren’t). I apologise to FiveYearLurker if I’m putting words in his/her mouth, but it’s a question that I’ve often wondered about myself.
Arguably a lot of people are obligated to that, like, for instance, police officers. I see your point though, in ethics, most people generally recognize acts as having an obligation to be moral, but while we might look with disdain on lack of actions, we generally don’t feel they are worthy of punishment: even if lack of action can have the same effect as an action (killing someone, vs. letting them die for lack of a trivial exertion of effort on your part, or letting die because saving them would require killing their murderer). It’s the old you could stop a genocide by shooting Pol Pot. I think lack of actions are as much up for grabs as actions and would be willing to argue the point, but I don’t think that’s the particular debate the OP wants to have.
Would it be easier if the argument was merely that such people were justified in killing in order to save?
I liken these sorts of questions to the one I think if more illustrative: the burning fertility clinic. You can save either a young boy, or a vat containing any number of fertilized embryos slated to be implanted: however many you want there to be in there: one, a thousand, ten thousand, a million, etc. Either one you leave behind will burn in the fire. Which do you save?
I killing or letting die a human being no matter what it’s life stage is is wrong, then this should be an easy call. If it’s not, then perhaps the rhetoric of the pro-life side is less than entirely honest.
I’m not really sure of the answer (I’m not pro-life, and I don’t understand the mindset either) but I’ve often wondered that myself. Actually, this is a big part of the reason I think that pro-life people really don’t believe that a fetus is equal to a baby; I think they fudge it a bit for drama’s sake. If they really believed it, it seems like of course they’d be out murdering abortionists.
I know I’ll probably catch all kinds of hell for saying that though.
Nitpick here: but killing someone who is about to kill someone else in order to prevent them from killing is not vigilante justice. It’s justified self-defense.
Let’s say that your nextdoor neighbor declares to you that they are going to slit the throats of his seven children one by one out on the lawn. You call the police, but they say, inexplicably, that they aren’t interested: the guy is of a racial minority and the less of those people the better, they say. Disgusted, you get back from the phone to see him having killed two children already, and already putting his knife across the throat of the next. You shoot him.
Are you saying that what you’ve done at that point is illegal in any way?
No, that’s exactly why I started this thread. I want to understand the mindset, because I’m starting to believe that what you wrote is pretty accurate.
Perhaps, but we can be reasonably certain that absent any action, the abortion clinic will be aborting more babies in the near future. So, I think the knife held to the baby’s throat, while overly dramatic, is an appropriate comparison.
One abortion doctor can peform several thousand abortions during his career. If killing him meant 5,000 babies will live instead of die then it seems morally just if you believe an abortion is equivalent to murdering a child.
The problem with this is that on the order of 1.5 or so million abortions are performed per year, roughly. Killing one doctor won’t affect this number much; someone else will simply double up. They’ll have to kill all or a large majority of the doctors to result in a decline in abortions.
But that would be moral, too, as far as I can see. Some say we are in the middle of a holocaust, having killed off some 30-40 million fetuses since Roe. How could one not act, especially if you believe a supernatural entity has your back in regards to eternal salvation?
Along these lines of discussion, here’s a youtube clip from a Richard Dawkins special which includes an interview with a laywer who defended an abortion doctor killer and also a liberal Bishop. I found it somewhat interesting.
I don’t think this is such a far-out question. Although I agree with the two premises you list in your OP, I think that the fact is, when so many people do NOT agree with them, it is out of the question to treat the situation the same as a murder, either by the law or by vigilante justice (not that I necessarily think that murder is justified to prevent a murder, as John Mace points out…I guess it partially depends on the circumstances.)
As often as prolifers are perceived as extremists, I think the majority prefer the battle be fought at the polls and political debates. Why spend the time/money/risk blowing up an abortion clinic? It may save a few fetuses, but it only be a drop in the bucket. Besides, it would only serve to reinforce your political opposition. Operation Fetus Rescue would be a lot more effective if they could overturn Roe v. Wade. As a bonus, no one dies.
Here’s the thing…abortion foes who have killed abortionists are called monsters by the general public, and tried & perhaps executed for murder. I guess if a pro-lifer really wants to feel free & clear of hypocracy, they should be willing to risk this, but not everyone is cut out to be a martyr. They make people saints for that because it is so extraordinary. Besides, as Charger points out, it would probably be more likely to be detrimental to the cause than anything else.
Right, but the problem is the rhetoric. The rhetoric is that this is a Holocaust: WORSE than the Holocaust, in fact. I’m not trying to call Godwin on that, because if you really believe the full force of the idea that fetuses are no morally different than other people, that’s really a pretty logical comparison.
But try to transfer your situation into what that rhetoric says is logical and see how it sounds.
Let’s say that there are centers opening up all over your city in which the ruling political party is taking children to be killed by the millions.
How do your arguments sound then? Is using violence to shut even some of these centers down all that crazy? Would you describe it as counter-productive? Is this the advice you’d give to people? Just wait wait, let the political process do it’s work? After this had been going on for a decade or more? I mean, to me, that barely passes the laugh test.
