To turn things around, if someone considers it their moral responsibility to protect abortion providers, would it be perfectly appropriate to kill Army of God activists?
How is stopping a person from killing “someone else” self defense? 
Stopping someone from killing ME is self defense. Stopping someone from killing someone else is another thing entirely, and I don’t think it’s as universally justifiable as self defense.
No. I can be reasonably certain that no individual member of that group is going to actually kill an abortion provider. On the flipside, I can be reasonably certain that an abortion provider is going to kill (again, a loaded word but used from the perspective of the person involved!) a fetus.
Or opponents of the war in Iraq morally obligated to kill George Bush and his pro-war advisors? (Or at the very least remove them from office with force if necessary?)
Or colonial opponents of the British Crown morally obligated to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them?
Oh…wait…
Hey, I’ve got a great idea!
The pro-lifers and the pro-choicers could join together to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare,” through sex ed that wasn’t a farce, and by making contraceptives easily available to those most likely to seek an abortion if pregnant - i.e. teens.
I bet the abortion rate could be reduced considerably. Too bad almost nobody on the pro-life side is interested in that approach.
To flip this around the other way, if the subset of pro-choicers who believe that a fetus is not in any way, shape or form a baby, are being honest then why should we worry if abortion is “rare”?
I always thought that was for the benefit of the woman; not the fetus. On account of inherent risks and all.
Well, if you believe people in Darfur are being killed by Sudanese militias, aren’t you obligated to hop a plane over there, pick up an AK-47 and start shooting militia members, Rambo-style? Aren’t you obligated to go down to Compton and start killing drug dealers? Aren’t you obligated to go over to Afghanistan and start killing Talibs? Aren’t you obligated to put a bullet in the head of every parent who doesn’t fasten the straps of a child safety seat securely? Aren’t you obligated to shoot the CEO of Nike, who exploits third world children in dangerous circumstances that surely lead to the premature death of at least some of them? Aren’t you obligated to shoot people who oppose vaccinations?
(Bolding mine).
Then why didn’t you?
I think a big part of the reason pro-lifers aren’t killing abortionists is because not everyone is cut out to be a martyr. If there were no consequences, maybe you would see more violence. But if you know you’re likely going to end up in jail, possibly executed, shot by police or decapitated by a Huutu machete, you might be more reluctant to be a hero.
I happen to feel that the reason why more people don’t violently protect the lives of fellow citizens who are being slaughtered by the thousands on a daily basis is that in their heart of hearts they don’t truly believe that a fetus is the same sort of entity as any other person.
If they did, then they surely ought to rise up against a government that allows the systematic killing of a certain class of citizen.
How could you sit by and feel that you were doing your part by voting?
As someone else mentioned, shouldn’t people who feel just as strongly about the death penalty or the war do the same thing? How could they sit by and feel they are doing their part by voting?
Depends on your system of ethics. A pacifist ethic would abhor both acts. A pacifist would not do violence to another, even in defense of a third party.
Enjoy,
Steven
Dangit, you stole my post.
Human beings acknowledge the humanity of many people they do absolutely nothing to save from inevitable death, often after a much longer period of intense suffering than even the strongest hypothetical scenario of fetal pain could posit.
No, I wasn’t saying you’re dishonest. But don’t you think “abortionist” is a loaded term?
Sailboat
Possibly, but it was not intended as such.
Only insomuch as it doesn’t mention all the other, more common, things that an OB/gyn does as a doctor. There are lots of services most of them provide, abortions often being the smallest in terms of time or number of patients seen.
It’s sort of like referring to the general contractor as “my housepainter” or “the deck-builder”. Accurate, but incomplete.
Do you honestly believe people in Darfur are human beings?
Then why the fuck aren’t you violently protecting them? Why are you content to sit back in your easy chair and tut-tut over how awful it is that those people on a far away continent are being systematically murdered?
Do you think Darfurians are human beings with human rights? If you don’t protect the Darfurian’s right to life “by an means neccesary”, then why the fuck would you expect a pro-lifer to do the same?
Your conclusion is the worst sort of hypocricy. If you won’t assume that people who disagree with you are arguing in good faith, why should anyone assume that about you? Especially when you demonstrate your bad faith all day every day on the Darfur issue? Have you sent even one dollar to help the Darfurians? Have you made even one phone call to your congressman?
Then you must believe the Darfurians are not human beings entitled to human rights. We’re not even talking about going over and putting bullet holes in Sudanese militiamen, we’re talking about sending one dollar to help. Why won’t you do even that amount?
Hypocrite.
Thanks, Lemur, that was a great post.
Let’s face it, none of us really have any leg to stand on in questioning someone else’s opinions or committment. There is a hell of a lot more most of us could do to help our fellow man, whether born, unborn, or whatever, and really have no decent excuses as to why we don’t. It’s easy to say, “if you really feel this way, you would DO SOMETHING,” but there are a hell of a lot of things that are morally abhorrent in the world, that each of us KNOWS are morally abhorrent, and we don’t PERSONALLY do a damn thing to prevent them. Maybe it’s because we are just complacent. Maybe we have picked one pet cause over all the others that we could have chosen from. Maybe we don’t know where to start. Maybe we think we can’t do any good, anyway. Whatever it is, our lack of attention doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t see the evil…we are just humans, and each of us has our own moral & ethical failings. I’m just glad that I live in a country where even a small action can make a difference, and that these minor efforts generally do not go wasted.
I don’t see anything wildly hypocritical here, but an element of truth.
I get the sense that a lot of people who are anti-abortion rights feel abortion is wrong but do not buy into the screeching murderer/Nazi/holocaust rhetoric of the extreme wing of the Cause. Add in an entirely reasonable quotient of self-interest (do you want to sacrifice your life or liberty over this?) and it’s entirely understandable that people do not feel “obligated to act” through violence.
If you do proclaim that your adversaries on the abortion issue are murderers and that unbearably heinous acts are going on all around you (as opposed to halfway around the world in Darfur) then there would seem to be an obligation to act in defiance of the law, either through overt action or explicit support for those who act. And you would be justified - provided, of course, that you are right beyond any shadow of a doubt. If on the other hand you are wrong, then your actions become deeply evil.
That little nagging uncertainty is what separates thinking humans from fanatics.
You’re right. I bet the cause is hurt even more when someone has an unwanted pregnancy.
Besides the reason RTFirefly pointed out, I thought his main thrust was to compromise as much as possible with the anti-abortionists in that sense that OK, let’s have less or no abortions like you want, so let’s do this and this…you know, a give and take.
I find it amusing how any argument can be made to sound unreasonable by just saying its proponents are screeching. I’m not picking on you, by the way – I see this all the time. Were the blacks during the civil rights era screeching? How about the woman’s suffrage movement? I think that was just a couple hundred years of nothing but screeching. I bet the Jews in 1944 or Tutsi in 1994 were really screeching about their plights…
But to the point, I think the holocaust comparison is pretty apt for their argument and I’m a pro-abortionist. I mean, sheesh, 1.5 million abortions a year! That makes the Nazis look like chumps. If it wasn’t for abortion there’d be something on the order of 30-40 million extra people wandering around the U.S.! That’s pretty crazy. But I’m not really morally outraged for a great variety of reasons (judging from the congested freeways, I think we could be better served by more abortions). The American electorate has certainly spoken.