You’ve probably already heard that an abortionist was murdered in his church this morning in Wichita, KA. Before the suspect in the shooting was even caught, Andrew Sullivan was already accusing the Right and Bill O’Reilly of complicity in the murder.
See the last line at the bottom of that screen capture? “Christianist terrorism is no more defensible than Islamist terrorism.” Who the hell said it wasn’t?
See, I don’t wade into the abortion discussion often because of the irrational conversations that it spawns. Abortion is wrong, and you know what – everyone on the planet knows it’s wrong, regardless of their religious beliefs or the lack thereof. That’s why the pro-abortion side gets so irrational – they know there’s no real defense for killing unborn babies. But I also oppose the death penalty – I don’t believe in government sponsored killing and abortion has become government-sponsored killing.
Because I oppose the death penalty, it follows that I don’t support the murder of abortionist Dr Tiller, either. He was engaged in a legal practice, no matter how much I don’t approve of what he was doing, it’s not up to me or anyone else to pass judgment on him and take the life he was given by his Creator (he was in a church when he was murdered after all).
Sullivan calls it terrorism, which is a stretch to begin with, but to blame Bill O’Reilly (who also opposes the death penalty, I might add) and the Right is borderline insanity. I’ve never heard a rational Conservative that wanted anyone dead because of their legal occupation.
Notice the Sullivan post was written before we even know who or why the murderer did what he or she (yes, at this point we don’t even know the sex of the accused) did. Yet, the same people who cautioned us about jumping to conclusions about the motivations of the 9-11 perpetrators are jumping to conclusions left and right. The same people who call rioters in Europe “Asian youths” have already decided why Tiller was killed and who is responsible – the folks who don’t agree with them. All because of the guilt they feel for supporting the unsupportable.
Thanks to Gateway Pundit and American Power for the links.
At the least abortion is an act of violence. Raise any wishful thinking, or any effort to couch it in other terms and one would needs to consider that.
And I DO support the death penalty. I do not support every implementation. This one is easy to include.
Vigilantly justice is hard to agree with, and yet…
As for Sullivan, it must be great to be omniscient. Maybe next, he can tell us exactly when the 0 will bankrupt the country?
This is a horrible act, regardless of the reasons the shooter had.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28817
Also, I will believe that the right wing truly wants the abolition of abortion when they support widely available, cheap, freely distributed birth control. Because you’re right-no one wants abortions. But because of some people’s lack of access to proper birth control/morning after pills, they happen anyway.
If the murder was by an anti-abortion protester who was motivated by his/her opposition to abortion, it is definitely considered to be terrorism (at least according to what I got out of the criminal justice course on Domestic Terrorism that I took recently and got an “A” in). Our textbook for that class (which was Domestic Terrorism and Incident Management: Issues and Tactics) covered quite a bit on anti-abortion issues and terrorism, actually.
Personally I am longtime pro-lifer (and a consistent one who is also against capital punishment). Some people don’t seem to understand the difference between morally opposing the killing of unborn children and the advocacy of violence to stop it and almost seem to insinuate that if you’re opposed to abortion, then you’re culpable for the death of this abortion doctor. I say that because of a disturbing editorial I read today:
http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/18662
I think what many will find (Army Sergeant) is that the vast majority of us pro-lifers have no problem with birth control, i.e. condoms, the pill. The notion that we are not is a manifestation of the MSM, because hey, “intolerant radical right wing Christians” makes a good news story. All you have to do is ask around, and stop believing the crap spewed by the MSM. And trust me, birth control is VERY readily available to those who are responsible enough to want it. Years ago when I was stationed in Pensacola we were having a blowout party. Two of the girls who were going to be in attendance went to the local health department to acquire contraceptives. They requested “a case” of condoms (they meant “a box”). They arrived at the party with a gross; yes, 144 condoms (yes, they were blond). Don’t tell me that contraceptives are not readily available. Having said that, while I do not agree with what the good doctor was doing for a living, I disagree just as much with what happened to him.
The Alan Guttmacher organization, which tracks abortion statistics notes that fully 75% of the women and girls who have abortions were well aware of birth-control methods and had access to them, but failed to follow up due to the “heat of the moment”. Those pro-lifers who believe that life begins at conception and who are against any ARTIFICIAL birth control, are also being consistent, but in any case are a minority in their views viv’a’vis birth-control. As for the death penalty and abortion being in any way comparable, I can only shake my head.
Well – FWIW – I see a tremendous difference in someone terminating this scumbag, who has made a career of infanticide, partial birth abortion and even maintained his own private death-camp crematorium to burn the bodies of the innocent children – and in aborting a child who has no means of defense, no choice, has never been accused of a crime, never done anything at all except to be conceived by the acts of other people.
For all the people who will now whine, moan, sniffle, wring their hands and wail at the cosmic tragedy of this bastard being on the receiving end of what he has dished out for decades – they may as well also feel sad and shed a tear for Charlie Manson, Hitler, Eichmann, Stalin, Mao and all the rest… because what they did was no worse than what Tiller did. Gee – if ONLY we had ‘reached out’ to them, perhaps held candles and sang kumbayah…
PS – I have already heard two people wonder if Miz Sebelius had him whacked so he would not pressure her for favors now that she is one of Obama’s ‘chosen’… fascinating thought, brings back memories of Ron Brown, Vince Foster et al.
Athena,
In response to your comment, without going into a long philosophical discussion regarding the finer points of consistent life ethic, I think the relevant point here is that a person who has a consistent life ethic is not going to support capital punishment even of a convicted murderer much less that of someone acting outside of the law to commit a vigilante killing of a person who has been committing unjust homicides of unborn human beings.
Perhaps I should have spelled things out more clearly with my posting of the link to the Kansas City Star editorial. I felt the editorial was basically condemning pro-lifers as being complicit in the murder of the doctor based on anti-abortion rhetoric. That got me to thinking about where that kind of thinking could potentially lead based on where things have led in the past with other types of domestic terrorist killings (and it does appear to be a case of domestic terrorism).
One of several reasons that violent right-wing racist terror groups declined since the 1980’s was because of civil law suits brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center which resulted in court decisions forcing hate groups, such as KKK-type groups, to assume financial responsibility for hate rhetoric which resulted in deaths of others. I don’t want to write a whole essay on this – I know I write too much – but I was just kind of putting two and two together in the direction that this could potentially go in with regard to the terror killing of the abortion doctor.
Of course anybody on the left contemplating that direction, i.e., lawsuits against pro-life groups who teach that abortion is murder, thus leading to the killing of abortion doctors, might want to think through the ramifications of that very carefully before proceeding. As the old saying goes, what goes around comes around. But alas, you know how those lawyers are…
Of course, I’m getting ahead of things with my speculations on possibilities. I’m just saying I was very disturbed by the editorial which basically seemed to me to be blaming all pro-lifers for the murder of the abortion doctor.
The relevance of my mention of consistent life ethic is simply the fact that the very existence of people who hold this philosophy within the pro-life movement shows that the moral opposition to abortion as the unjust taking of human life cannot rightfully be said to be the trigger for the vigilante killing of an abortion doctor (in case any extremist pro-abortion choicers might argue that, and I felt the Kansas City Star editorial suggested that) since there are those who are pro-lifers who are also opposed to the taking of human life EVEN for moral retribution.
In my own case, my position on consistent life ethic is motivated by what I regard as the highest calling to protect innocent human life rather than by the position that capital punishment of a murderer is unjust. I don’t argue that it’s unjust, actually, but that it places innocent human life at risk since it is well documented that mistakes can be and are sometimes made.
Anyway, this is getting far too long and deep for a short comment on someone else’s blog…sorry…)