I already covered this: I’m not willing to murder someone to achieve my goals.
I addressed this in my post #99. I don’t believe those tactics work. I think that most anti-abortionists don’t believe they work. There was discussion about this earlier in the thread: they tried that for decades and nothing changed.
If I honestly thought that I could effect social change by shouting at people in the streets, I might do that for a number of causes. But I don’t think that I can. Honestly, I tend to think that shouting at people in the streets is counterproductive in most cases.
This is clever language, attempting to frame them as hypocrites. But they don’t claim that it’s intolerable. They claim that it’s murder. I provided lots of other examples of murder that we seem to tolerate. Does that make the rest of us hypocrites?
I’ve pointed out that there are other reasons not to act upon ones convictions.
Action requires something that you are even more strongly opposed to (I’m not willing to be a murderer to stop murders)
Action seems to be ineffective. Either they think it won’t work, or the whole problem seems so overwhelming that they don’t know how to fix it.
You seem to agree that #2 is a reasonable reason why you and I don’t act in cases where I think we both agree that murder is being committed. Why don’t you think it’s a good enough reason for them?
And I think that people who claim that abortion is murder do believe that it is a humanitarian crisis. They believe we’ve lost our souls (metaphorically and religiously) and become callous to the sanctity of life.
Well, that’s just it, there aren’t any. Can you cite a bunch of solved murders of abortion doctors in the last decade (since Tiller)? However, you want me to cite that less than 2/3rds of murders are solved, I can do that.
Does it “prevent abortions”, no, but does it prevent an abortion, or two or ten? Probably.
To achieve your goals. Sure, I agree. But to defend another? If there was someone standing with a bomb to detonate and kill 10 children, and you could shoot him in the head and stop it, are you saying that you would not do so?
Absolutely they work. I’ve met people who were planning on getting an abortion, and were dissuaded by the mob of protestors outside the clinic. They ended up having the child. Impoverished, unwanted and unloved, but not terminated.
Do they stop abortion? No. Do they stop some abortions? Yes, they absolutely do.
If you thought you could save one life for every day that you spent shouting at people in the streets, how many days a week would you spend? (I’d spend 8.)
If they are not claiming that it is intolerable, then why are they trying to make it illegal? We only legislate against the things that we find to be intolerable.
If they can tolerate it, then they should just tolerate it and let people go about their business. By saying that they find it important for the government to get involved into the private medical decisions of women, they are claiming that they cannot tolerate it.
That’s just pacifism then. Are you saying that if someone came and tried to murder you or someone that you loved, you would not be willing to kill in order to neutralize the threat?
All action is ineffective in the end. We all end up dead after living lives that we can only hope contained more joy than misery. Actions are what we do because of what we believe in, and if we believe that killing fetuses is the same as killing 10 year olds, then some action is more than warranted.
Why become a doctor, when you know that not only will there be millions that you are not able to save, but even the ones that you do save also end up eventually succumbing to death?
But we do not agree that all these things are murder. They are unfortunate, and it would be great if we as a collective nation and world can do things to address them, and the things that I would like to see addressed are being addressed by people more capable than myself.
This is not the case with abortion doctors, who, if we were to believe that terminating a fetus is equivalent to killing a ten year old, are murderous serial killers who are not being addressed by anyone at all.
And I do not believe that they feel that strongly about it, or they would take more action than just putting up crosses on a university campus and then suing the campus because some stupid student kicked a couple over.
If we’ve lost our very souls, that’s even more dangerous than just tolerating the intolerable, you are risking your own immortal soul now. People do kill and even die in the name of their religion, that’s how we get martyrs and saints. It’s what people do when they truly believe in their cause. Which is why I do not believe that most anti-abortionists truly believe that terminating a fetus is the same as killing a ten year old.
Maybe they’re looking for a higher standard than “probably” to commit murder?
I would, but I disagree that that’s analogous.
But why would you think that? Do you think that? Do you think it works for issues other than abortion? How many days a week do you spend shouting in the streets now? I bet it’s zero, just like me.
This is silly. There are laws against all kinds of things that are merely inconvenient or non-optimal.
No, I am not saying that. I would defend myself or others in imminent danger. I would not go murder people who I think are bad because I think it would make the world a better place or save lives in abstract. Most people tend to agree with this sort of thinking.
I don’t understand how you can look at a problem and think “this is too big for me to solve, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to see it solved”, but also see other people who claim there’s a problem, but don’t act, and think “ah, they must not really think it’s a problem, or they’d be solving it.”
That said, we’re obviously not convincing each other here. I’m going to agree to disagree. I’ll let you have the last word if you want.
They would know that this murderer won’t be committing any more murders. How many abortions that prevents is an unknown, but it would at the very least, mean no more abortions at that clinic that day.
Strangely, I would disagree that they are analogous too, but that’s because I don’t see abortion as murder. If you see abortion as the equivalent of killing a ten year old, then I see them as precisely analogous.
I’m not accusing people of murder, calling people murderers, or trying to get them to stop committing murder. So, no, I don’t spend much time in the streets at all.
And those laws are put into place because people cannot tolerate the actions that are being prohibited.
If you think that a fetus is the equivalent of a ten year old, then they are in imminent danger from an abortion doctor. It’s not people who you “think are bad”, it is people who are actively murdering what is seen as the equivalent of a ten year old.
Because there are solutions to abortion at the individual level. There are no solutions to a geopolitical crisis at an individual level.
Sounds fine with me, though the point of a debate is very rarely to actually convince your debate opponent of an issue, but more to bring up ideas and subjects for others to peruse. That I cannot convince you that most anti-abortionist do not really consider an abortion to be the equivalent of the murder of a 10 year old, and I doubt that there is much you can say that would convince me that they do, does not mean that we have not presented our cases to anyone who is interested.
In my opinion, only as long as it would be a novelty. After a while, we’d get accustomed to it and wouldn’t care that much anymore. There are non-starving, non-ill people in these countries. Do you think that they agonize day after day about the fate of their neighbors and spend all their energy and money trying to relieve their suffering? Or that, as you put it, they manage to live normally, comfortably and happily despite all this?
Also, I don’t think that, in this day and age, with all the means of communication and information we have, things happening in the same town or on the other side of the world makes much of a difference, in reality.
You could already save the life of plenty of 10 yo by spending all your available income on relief programs. You’d live in poverty, but it would be a much better situation than spending the rest of your life in jail. Yet, I’m pretty sure you don’t. What are your excuses? Those 10 yo live too long away? They speak the wrong language? Sorry, but you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t care that much about the lives of 10 yo. You aren’t ready to put that much effort into saving 10 yo. As I wrote in my previous post, maybe you’d react if this 10 yo killing program was implemented tomorrow. But if you had lived all your life with this situation, I’m pretty certain you’d do about it exactly what you do for these other dying 10 yo : feel bad occasionally, bitch about it, and maybe give some money and time for the cause. You wouldn’t risk life in jail or the death penalty for them.
As in the famous quote : “we’ve already established that you’re a whore. We’re just arguing about the price”. Extremely few people are ready to do anything and risk anything to further the cause (whatever their cause is). Which might be a blessing, since a world where this wouldn’t be true would be a very dangerous and unstable place to live in. Unless you’ve proven already that you’re willing to save 10 yo at any cost, don’t delude yourself into thinking that you would in a world where a 10 yo killing program would exist.