One conservative blogger I read likes to toss out the claim that “More abortionists have been murdered on the TV series ***Law & Order ***and its spinoffs than in real life.”
I’m looking for factual confirmation or rebuttal of this assertion.
So, does anyone know if that is, in fact, true?
How are we defining “abortionists”? Do the two clinic receptionists killed by John Salvi count?
Here is a wiki link for “Anti-abortion violence in the United States”
Going through an episode guide for all the Law and Order shows would probably take a while. Wiki lists 4 series as well as crossovers and adaptations so I guess we would first have to figure out which of those would count:
The blogger is wrong. No abortionists were ever killed on Law and Order.
At the most, they were actors portraying abortionists, and I’m pretty sure they actually lived. Last I checked, snuff films were illegal in the US.
As far as I can tell 5 abortion doctors have been killed in the US and 4 support personnel. As best as I can tell from wikipedia there were 3 abortion doctors killed on Law and Order, 1 on Criminal Intent, and 1 on SVU. So if you count all the shows there have been the same amount of abortion doctors killed in real life as on the various Law and Orders.
Here’s a cite to back that up (PDF): http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/assets/files/Abortion-Access-to-Abortion-Violence.pdf
It lists 4 doctors and 4 others who have died, and seems to have been compiled before the murder of Dr. Tiller.
:smack: Now he tells me!
Excuse me, I have to make some phone calls.
No abortionists have been murdered in the USA.
Some doctors who perform abortions have been murdered.
I’d say a bigger distortion is that of the race/class profile of the criminal class in any city. Law and Order is a straight-faced depiction of what Tom Wolfe called “the search for the Great White Defendant.”
Annie-Xmas:
Oh, give me a break.
“No abolitionists raided Harper’s Ferry. People who supported the abolition of slavery raided Harper’s Ferry.”
“No suffragists were arrested for voting illegally. Women who advocated equal suffrage were arrested for voting illegally.”
“No prohibitionists raided saloons and broke their liquor bottles. People who supported the prohibition of alcohol raided saloons and broke their liquor bottles.”
Is this either necessary or productive?
While L&O has been keeping up fairly well with the murder rate among physicians who perform abortions, I think they’ve fallen behind real life when it comes to portraying intimidation at clinics and acts of overt violence such as bombings.
“Abortionist” is a pejorative term that has historically been used to describe physicians who performed illegal abortions. In today’s society it also may be inaccurate in the case of some physicians who provide other medical services (“abortionist” implies that’s all you do).
As I understand the term ‘abortionist’, this is impossible, as it is a set of people that includes both doctors who perform abortions, and those who advocate for the legal right to abortions.
If nothing, I would suspect that some abortionists have been killed in the USA in murders that have absolutely nothing to do with their activities or beliefs with respect to abortion.
But - if you’re using the term in a different way, then please tell me who you would consider to be an abortionist. And if you just object to the use of the word in general, then you could make that point too, but the above rephrasing is not IMHO the right way to do it.
Jackmannii: That’s a good point, and something along the lines that I was fishing for. Incidentally, do we know for certain if any practitioners of illegal abortion were murdered in the US?
Jackmanii:
I thought that was back-alley abortionist.
Does “abolitionist” or “suffragist” or “prohibitionist” imply that the people so described have no thoughts or opinions on any other subject?
chrisK:
I imagine there are few doctors who oppose the legal right to an abortion who will also perform abortions. It’s probably safe to say that one who is an abortionist in medical practice is one in political opinion as well.
Exactly!
Excuse me? I am pro-legal abortion. That hardly makes me an abortionist.
Anti-abortion people absolutely hate to use the word “doctor” to describe someone who performs abortions.
And that is why I don’t use that term.
And the number of top-level executives, CEOs, and politicians who commit murders is waaaaaaaaayyyyy overrepresented.
And the number of children kidnapped by strangers in a single year… just in New York City… is roughly analogous to the number of children kidnapped by strangers in the entire country in a year.
The fact that L&O has been more or less restrained when it comes to abortion doctors is amazing.
I compiled some rough Murder, She Wrote statistics: the first 132 episodes (and presumably their 132 murders, with a few extra here and there) were nominally based in Maine. The total number of murders in Maine over roughly the same period (1985-1990, inclusive) is 202.
I was surprised. I’d kind of expected the fictionalized total to be higher.
Annie XMas:
Fair enough. But the word still fits, and is useful if describing someone who’s killed specifically because of the abortions he’s performed. If the OP were to have referred to “doctor killings” that would hardly convey the meaning of his question, which was about killings motivated specifically by the victim’s performance of abortions.
I find it strange that the blogger didn’t provide numbers. If he’s so sure this is true, he must have counted them.
But even if it is true, so what? More meteors are stopped by Superman than have threatened the earth in real life.
Bolding added. Female doctors perform abortions too.
Don’t use the term killer; use the term “murderer.” And I’d say “a docor who was a victim of anti-abortion violence, murdered for performing the legal act of abortion.”
I would also say according to the show, a significant percentage of murders in NYC occur in and around the New York Supreme Court building at Foley Square.