No, I said “they”, as in “the movement”; the way most people talk. Like Dave Simmons said, what happens when such people take control is the most extreme commit the atrocities, while the great mass of believers just let them ( or, I’ll add, cheer them on without getting thier own hands dirty ).
Der Trihs:
First of all 4 bombings and one attempted boming does not a generalisation make. And even then some of them are from more than 6 years ago, and at least one of them is a white supremicist, who can hardly be called either tranditionally pro-life or Christian.
Second of all the claim that “Some people bomb abortion clinics” is not the claim that you originally made. The claim you made was that of they could get away with it pro-life people in general would torture non pro-life people making them all out to be some sort of sadist. There is NO evidence of torture in your links, and there is no evidence of sadism.
And I agree the raindog. The “logic” that you employ against religous people is the same as that typically used by racists. One small sub-set of a group does something, therefore they all must do that. Some black people steal, therefore they are all thieves. Some Jewish people are rich therefore they all love money. Some (ie: an insignificantly small number) pro-life bomb clinics therefore they must all be sadists.
David Simmons:
Yes there is a big difference between bombing an abortion clinic to torture. Torture involves a complete indifference to the suffering of others that is not there in a bombing. In a bombing you don’t have to see the suffering that you cause. In torture you do.
Besides the number of people who bomb clinics is so small that using them to try and make conclusions about the whole pro-life movement is asinine in the extreme, especially since some (like the white supremicist in one of Der Trihs’ links) do not fit the pro-life mold anyway.
As for religions controlling nations, I posit that the problem is with leaders having too much power, not religion. Look at what happened when all those countries went communist. Religion was outlawed but the state still fell apart. The problem there was not too much religion, but the leaders had too much power.
Fry.
No. I reject this step in your argument.
Here’s the reason: the slaughter arises not out of a desire to do evil, but out of a mistaken belief of fact. The abortion supporter believes, wrongly but in good faith, that he is acting correctly. The correct approach is to show that the better path is eschewing abortion, not “bring[ing] the entire culture to the ground.”
OK, so now you have back-pedaled from ALL pro-lifers are torturing sadists to the extreme ones are the torturing sadists while the others stand by or cheer on. OK, so do you have any evidence of this claim either? Care to provide any cites of mainstream (ie: not 2 man extrimist organisations that represent no-one) pro-life organisations encouraging abortion clinic bombings? Better yet got any proof that these organisations have provided help to bombers?
Considering that pro-life people make up a huge percentage of the American population, and most abortion clinic bombers are in prison or executed, it doesn’t seem like the pro-life organisations are doing a very good job at helping or ignoring.
Fry.
Your experience isn’t much like mine. Most of the women that I know that have had miscarriages take it pretty hard. My mother had a miscarriage at 6 months and she still takes it pretty hard. There are some large support groups for that type of thing. Many people start to view it as their child very early in development and that feeling grows from there. This doesn’t apply to everyone of course but that is the way I have always seen it. It generally gets worse the farther along you go.
ITR champion:
One thing that you have to remember is that law != morality. There are plenty of things that are immoral, but not illegal (ie: adultery) and some that are illegal but not immoral in of themself (ie: not wearing a seatbelt while driving a car).
You posit that in a case where society is killing a large number of innocents, then the people have no responsibility to follow the law. This may be true, but regardless of legality people should still act morally. So if a large number of innocents were being killed, that does not give me carte blanche to break whatever laws I like. In the presence/absense of law I still must act morally.
And this is the point. Most pro-life people feel that regardless of law:
- Killing abortion doctors is immoral
- It is not OK to do immoral acts so that good will result
Whether or not you agree with that position it is at least consistent. It is possible to believe that a feotus is a person and still believe that killing abortion doctors is wrong.
Fry.
I strongly disagree! You’re speaking as though the killing of abortion doctors is the only means of stemming the abortion tide. In effect, your statement presents a false dilemma.
The obligation is NOT to kill abortionists. Rather, the obligation is to prevent abortions. Killing abortionists might be one way of doing so, but it is not the only way. In fact, I daresay that it’s not even a particularly effective approach. It might prevent some abortions in the short-term, but it would ultimately undermines the pro-life cause. For these reasons, there is no inherent hypocrisy in condemning abortion while simultaneously refusing to kill abortion doctors.
Do I believe that there are times when one absolutely must take a life to prevent others from being killed? Certainly. In fact, except for the most extreme pacifists, everyone believes that such circumstances can occur. The abortion battle is not one of them, though.
There are times when there is no choice but to take a life, but this is not something that should be done lightly. It’s not merely that the killing of abortionists would hinder the pro-life cause – although that is certainly a legitimate concern. Rather, there is also the obligation to pursue peaceful means if possible. Furthermore, one must also weigh the negative effects of such vigilante justice. Vigilante killings are bound to undermine the system of law and justice in modern society. They can lead to anarchy and can ultimately cause more damage than good.
So no, there is no hypocrisy in the pro-life refusal to kill abortion practitioners. Opponents of the pro-life cause often make that assertion, but their accusation rests on a false dilemma.
Fair enough.
I was responding to the logic in the OP that:
- Pro-lifers are against abortion
- Killing pro-choice people results in fewer abortions
Therefore
Pro-life people should kill pro-choice people.
I was assuming that premises 1 and 2 were correct, but adding that in most cases to explain the logic of pro-life people the argument is better stated as
- Pro-lifers are against abortion
- Killing pro-choice people results in fewer abortions
- All actions must be intrinsically moral
- Killing pro-choice people is not intrinsically moral
Therefore
Pro-life people should not kill pro-choice people, even though fewer abortions may result.
You point out that premise 2 in both arguments may not be true, and that too is a good point. That would also invalidate the argument of the OP.
I think we can both agree that the conclusion of the OP, that pro-life people are hypocrites because they do not kill pro-choice people is false.
FWIW I do believe there are some (very very few) instances when killing another person is justified. I believe that it is justified not because the ends justifies the means, but that it is not intrinsically immoral to kill people in these circumstances. So for instance if I was a soldier in a war defending my country I would kill enemy soldiers, not because I think that the immorality of killing the soldiers is justifed by the freedom that is won by it, but because I think that killing enemy soldiers in such circumstances is not immoral in the first place.
Fry .
Go back and read your first post. You said that the majority would commit the atrocities, not that they would simply cheer the nutjobs on. If you want to retract that, fine. I think you should.
I don’t think I said anything about any experience with the reaction of others in my post, only my opinion. And I suppose you think that people skip lightheartedly into abortions?
The pro-lifers here have made many great points. Let me add another thing.
Abortion, no matter how bad you think it is, does not directly hurt society–simply because no one knows the fetus, no one depends on him/her as a colleague, family member, worker, etc. Any many cases, on the mother and clinic staff ever know what happened.
If you kill an abortion doctor, you hurt society. There are people who care about and depend on the doctor. If you kill him, people are going to get pissed and want revenge. That starts a war.
Wars have been fought, of course, over the treatment of others, the Civil War springing directly to mind. But if pro-lifers were to kill doctors on a wide scale, they’d be, in effect, committing an act of war with the expectation that the doctor’s supporters (and for that matter, the government of the United States) would join in the fight.
So, really, the OP is quite naively stated. Pro-lifers don’t want a war.
And the more subtle point is that you can abort fetuses all day long, and it won’t affect the functioning of society (until you depopulate it, of course).
I’m a pro-lifer; I think abortion is a sickness of our species. But I don’t know what to do about it.
Even if this were true, wouldn’t this make us cowards, not hypocrites?
I have nothing to add to JThunder’s post. If you’re looking for practical reasons not to use violence to stop abortions (we’ll ignore the moral implications for just a moment), you need go no further than the fact that it undermines the pro-life cause and will ultimately lead to more abortions.
In response to Der Trihs: Since we’re just flinging unsupportable statements around, I’ll offer that pro-choice people, to a person, hate Jesus and think all men should be herded into concentration camps for extermination. It’s true, I tells ya! Now call me on it and watch me backpedal without really retracting the statement.
The term Pro-Life is a misnomer…for most it is Pro-birth. Think about it, some say they are pro-life but do not worry that war kills unborn,ready born, old and young alike. They justify self defense, but disregard a woman’s right to self defense. No one can know the heart of another or the motive. They do not worry about the millions of born children who die a slow death of starvation in Africa or other countries. They do not want to pay taxes necessary to provide for families who cannot afford to raise the many children who come about for lack of proper birth control methods. When I see a pro-Life person who is willing to go without the unnecessary things in their life to help support a family to raise all born children to and through Adult hood then I will say…yes, they are pro-Life. Throwing in a few dollars a year is not enough to support them. they need food, clothing, a decent home, childcare, healthcare,and education. Pro-life to me means just that.
Monavis
How’s that straw? Itchy?
Obviously it’s ridiculous to say that the majority of prolifers would torture abortion providers to death. That’s just silly.
That said, I had an eerie experience in college. As part of a project, we videotaped interviews with both the protestors outside a local abortion clinic and the volunteers who escorted women inside the clinic.
The volunteer escorts were, frankly, lame. They hadn’t had enough coffee, and they could barely string two words together into a platitude.
The protestors were led by the local Christian Coalition coordinator, a well-groomed, grandmotherly figure who was extremely eloquent. She answered our questions well and with grace and compassion; she categorically rejected violence as a means of stopping abortion.
At the end of the first day of interviews, I left the clinic feeling troubled. Here I’d been expecting a bunch of wackos (at that point, I had very little exposure to conservatives, and I had an unfair stereotype of them), and I’d ended up with someone I’d be happy to have as a relative.
We hadn’t gotten enough tape, so we went back a couple weeks later to ask a few follow-up questions. The grandmotherly lady wasn’t there this time, and so we talked to the other protestors.
And they were fucking nutty.
Most of the nuttiness I won’t go into. Two of the three of them, however, blatantly advocated murdering abortion doctors. One of them said, with a sly smile, “All I’m saying is, who would you rather come home at the end of the day: a baby, or a man who makes his living killing babies?” Shocked, I asked a follow-up question to try to get a clearer answer, but he just smiled the same sly smile and repeated the statement.
So, I don’t think that most abortion opponents would torture abortion providers. I do think they’re out there. The gleam in that guy’s eye has stayed with me.
Daniel
Abortion protest can be a nice crowbar into a general undeclared war on humanistic values for the fucking nutty who are so inclined. They don’t just daydream about killing abortion doctors to stop abortions. Those doctors are stand-ins for women, minorities, lefties, anyone who stands up for particular rights or issues over the absolutism that they believe is the only morality.
I wish we would stop reducing political debate to challenging each other with hypotheticals like a bunch of pseudosocratic law school snots. But I guess it’s easier than trying to parse each other’s values.
Well, now that you point out these irrefutable facts, you have completely turned me around. It’s just that simple. Abortions all around! On me!
Really?
Do you have any evidence that these people do indeed “daydream about killing abortion doctors”? And while we’re at it, do you have any evidence that they would also daydream about torturing women, minorities or lefties?
Or is all this mere speculation on your part?
I don’t know that not killing abortion doctors is hypocrisy, but to me, the apathy about abortion reveals many people’s true feelings about it.
What do most pro-life people do about all those “murders”? Well, some of them send money to groups like Right-to-Life. And some vote Republican. That pretty much covers it for a large number of pro-life people.
If they truly believed there was that much murder going on, surely they’d be doing something more about it? I’m left thinking that for most, it’s just lip-service. Just as I’m left thinking that for most Republican politicians it’s just lip-service.
It would hardly be unique among political issues if that’s true.
Not sure I agree with your logic here.
What do most people do about massacres around the world? Send money and vote. Or do nothing.
That is the typical response to massacres in which one can be sure one will not herself be a victim.
If abortion is a massacre, surely it is one in which nobody feels they are a potential victim, and thus the response is consistent.