In comments, Metavirus takes issue with the proposition that Tiller's murder being unjustified implies that abortion is not murder. I attempt to explain further, and your thoughts would be welcome; I'd like to find some consensus.
Mark Thompson has an interesting related post at the League, where he explains Megan's position: believing abortion=murder does not justify the Tiller killing, but does make it understandable.
(Maybe it's interesting that the libertarians [Mark, Megan, and I] at least have that understanding and are interested in its implications for the political process, whilst the liberals [hilzoy, publius, Metavirus] are busier being outraged and wanting to deploy armed brigades to protect abortionists)
For the justified vs. understandable question, I think this depends on your assessment of the political process and alternative courses of action. Mark and Megan go on to discuss how the Roe-Casey regime leaves anti-abortionists with virtually no political recourse.
So the question becomes: at what point, if any, does having virtually no viable recourse justify using violence to protect innocents?
Unless you're a nonviolent pacifist like Gandhi, I don't think the answer can be "never". Most of us believe in self-defense: if someone is going to kill an innocent, we understand we would be justified in using deadly force to protect that innocent.
If you can get the law to do the protecting for you (via e.g. an official police force), that's preferable to vigilantism. But when that's not available, most of us will consider taking matters into our own hands. (and in particular we libertarians, being stauncher individualists and civil disobeyers, are more likely to be willing to do so than a statist or collectivist would be)
Activists press for EU-wide abortion right
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A petition calling for an EU fund to help women access abortion care in
countries with more liberal laws gained 100,000 signatures in its first
week.
2 hours ago
oh gherald, you paint me as a LIBERAL! i guess in some ways i am these days but i still have my independent/libertarian leanings. we'll see in 4 years how i ultimately come out.
ReplyDeleteas for this: "if someone is going to kill an innocent, we understand we would be justified in using deadly force to protect that innocent."
technically, you are only justified to use deadly force to save the life of another if you are in the immediate vicinity and witness to an act that is about to occur. you are never justified in killing someone to prevent some death in the future.
and, of course you have the problem of the fetus not being a legal person, etc. etc.
overall, i still haven't seen anything in the argument that convinces me its a good one. appealing, yes. logically coherent, no.
> only justified to use deadly force to save the life of another if you are in the immediate vicinity and witness to an act that is about to occur
ReplyDeleteSo the cut off point is that the act is going to occur within, say, minutes? Isn't that arbitrary?
> you are never justified in killing someone to prevent some death in the future.
If there is no other recourse to stop them, why not?
Let's take another example... in time travel hypotheticals, the obligatory suggestion is to kill Hitler. At what point in Hitlers life would killing him be justified? Is your answer truly "not unless you're near him and he's minutes away from ordering the deaths of more innocents" ?
And a follow up: Is it your contention that someone who believes that abortion=murder would be justified in killing an OB-GYN if they were minutes away from performing an abortion on an unborn innocent?
ReplyDelete(Let's suppose it's both a healthy fetus and a healthy mother, to keep complications out of the equation)
And if your answer is no, how is this different from killing someone who's minutes away from harming a born innocent?
First: "So the cut off point is that the act is going to occur within, say, minutes? Isn't that arbitrary?"
ReplyDeleteThat's the law. As a hypo, if someone next to you says "Hmm, I'm gonna go drive over and kill Mary right now", you are not legally permitted to kill him to stop the murder. You may not like the law but that's the way it is.
Second: "Is it your contention that someone who believes that abortion=murder would be justified in killing an OB-GYN if they were minutes away from performing an abortion on an unborn innocent?"
No, because the key thing in a "defense of others" defense is that the person you are trying to protect must in fact have been justified in using self-defense to protect himself. A fetus is not a person and would not be legally justified in using self-defense on its own behalf. As a result, defense of others in unavailable.
I am getting really uncomfortable with this conversation and will probably not engage any further on this topic.
> You may not like the law but that's the way it is.
ReplyDeleteSure, but this is a question of vigilante moral justice, not legality. If the killer feels constrained by the law, then of course the killing would already be unjustified, because abortions are legal.
> A fetus is not a person and would not be legally justified in using self-defense on its own behalf. As a result, defense of others in unavailable.
But the person who believes abortion=murder obviously believes the fetus to be a person, and will see this differently.
> I am getting really uncomfortable with this conversation and will probably not engage any further on this topic.
Yes, it's certainly an uncomfortable topic. I've tried to suspend my emotions and play devil's advocate, but things get dicey when discussing hypotheticals about a tragedy so close to the event.
What you say makes some degree of sense. I don't really have an answer for you, though I suspect that a pretty large chunk of pro-lifers either haven't thought through the implications of their worldview or don't really think that life begins at conception, but that we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt or some such. My past experiences with pro-lifers suggest explanation (1), but there are no doubt some of both, and many who have other reasons altogether.
ReplyDeleteBut you do have an inescapable point--as I said in my blog, there is something about the abortion issue that makes otherwise sane liberals go absolutely crazy, that turns thoughtful progressives into absolutist, frothing conspiracy theorists. I guess I'm unusual among liberals in that I don't have that thing, whatever it is. I guess all political "teams" have one issue like that or another.
"But you do have an inescapable point--as I said in my blog, there is something about the abortion issue that makes otherwise sane liberals go absolutely crazy"
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by "absolutely crazy"? Absolutely crazy like walking into a guy's church and murdering him in from of his congregation and wife? I've been around a lot of abortion rights activists in my life and i wouldn't describe any of them as crazy. They can sometimes be justifiably terrified at the horrific things the anti-choicers do in the name of their cause.
"that turns thoughtful progressives into absolutist, frothing conspiracy theorists."
Being a recent convert to quasi-neo-ultra-pseudo-liberaltarianism, I have no idea what "conspiracy theories" you're talking about. The "conspiracy" involving 6,100 separate acts of violence, property damage and murder since the 70s against abortion providers?
I think he's referring to publius and hilzoy going off the reservation, as explained in Mark Thompson's post.
ReplyDelete