Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism? Abortion Doctor Murdered

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Because other than highly radicalized hate groups like the church you linked to, pro-life people do not think that evil people should be killed. What is hard to understand about that? Are you beling deliberately contrary just for the sake of being contrary AMaster?

That his behavior wasn't criminal does matter to all but the complete nutters out there. I have family members (including my mother-in-law) who are extremely religious, and pro-life. They don't advocate killing abortion doctors. 99.99% of the pro-life crowd respects that we are a nation of laws. They further understand that just because they find an action morally repugnant does not authorize them to take the law into their own hands and kill the evil-doer.

Pointing out an example of a radicalized religious group does not in the slightest prove that that's how most people who are pro-life think. In fact, the reason they are radical is because they lie outside the mainstream pro-life crowd.

 

I think it is a mistake to call the Christian groups that support (or even don't condemn) this "fundamentalists", as their positions go directly against the fundamentals of Christianity. Extremists, yes, but not fundamentalists.

 

The abortion doctor and I disagree -- strongly -- on a topic. But I am a member of a country with rule of law. I follow the law, and I respect the fact that other people can come at an issue from a vastly different perspective than I do. The fact that we strongly disagree on a topic wherein the people who are having the service provided are there voluntarily does not give me the right to go out and commit violent acts against the doctor.

In the rape case it's not an issue of many people having a different yet socially acceptable / valid opinion of what's going on. Rape is a crime no matter what part of the political or social spectrum you look at. Someone who goes to great lengths to stop a violent crime against an unwilling victim (there's a pleonasm for you) gets my sympathy and understanding.

Put another way, if there was a fellow going around and dragging unwilling pregnant women into dark alleys and aborting their babies, I would argue that it's a citizen's duty to do what is necessary to stop that sort of behaviour. But disagree with Tiller though I may, that was NOT what he was doing. His death was a murder, and if they catch whoever pulled the trigger, that shooter should be prosecuted fully, just like any other murderer.

As for this:

Well said, my friend.

 

The thing I'm wondering is really not about wether or not you follow the law but when you accept someone elses breaking of the law. You stated you applaud a father who tortures a junkie in order to get information to save his daughter but yet you don't accept stopping the massacre of infants in a similar fashion. The torture is no matter from which political specturm you look at it, still a crime in this case.

Is it just because it's his own daughter or is there another reason?

 

Still a crime? -- yes, very likely. Understandable under the circumstances? Yes. Is a reduced plea bargain in that case a fair deal, considering the imminent danger to his daughter? Yup. We strike plea bargains for much less reasonable excuses -- I'll give an example later.

This is significantly different from a stranger who is voluntarily at a doctor's office for a procedure. I may disagree with the morality of the procedure. I may lobby through legal channels to have it changed and the participants charged with a crime. But legally speaking, a violent act is not being committed against a victim known to and close to me. I will have very little luck convincing a jury that I was in an excited emotional state and that my actions were critical to saving a life being threatened by an obvious criminal group.

Any father would understand what I'm saying about the first case and would show clemency. In the second case, the differences are so severe that I doubt anyone, including yours truly, would show much clemency.

 

I would say the title should be "Christian Extremist Terrorism? Abortion Doctor Murdered" -- this is the act of extremists, not fundamentalists.

 

And as a father, I tend to agree. Granted a lot would have to do with the specifics of the case, but I would have a very hard time finding a father acting in an effort to save his child fully culpable for his crimes. It would be a huge mitigating factor. Any parent would go to extreme lengths to save a child, and would do so regardless of the consequences of their actions.

 

While I am very solidly Pro-Choice I take offense to the Pro-Choice crowd trying to paint the Pro-Life supporters as terrorists or some other sort of whackjobs because of the acts of a murderer.

I feel the same thing about hate crimes. There is no such thing. The only thing that matters to me is that Tiller's murderer be found and brought to justice.

 

Operation Rescue's Randall Terry, in a Mother Jones interview replied, when confronted with the criticism that the pro-life movement's highly charged rhetoric was partly responsible for the murder of Dr. George Tiller:

Maybe I am reading to much into this, but it eerily sounds to me like doublespeak for 'horrifying divine retribution'. But he can't say that aloud. The killer as a vessel of God's wrath?

The article closes:

Is it?

Where's the dividing line between legitimate activism and demagoguery? Perhaps there where fundamentalism turns into violent extremism?

 

No argument from me there -- the smugness of his words just jumps off the page. I really hope that one day he's caught with his fingers in the money jar and sent to jail for a long time.

 

Tal,
eighth circle, bolgia six or nine.

 

The crux of the debate centers around the word "infant." Some see the unborn as a fetus, others see it as a infant. Murdering an infant is murdering a baby, but if it is a fetus, it is NOT an infant. My wife has carried three babies to term, and she says that at a certain point, even before birth, the fetus becomes a baby, but that it is the mother who senses this transformation. No law, no science can really define this with a degree of satisfaction, IMO. That is why we leave the choice between the mother and the doctor, and not to the know-it-alls in government. The decision is a doctor/patient decision and the government and activist/political organizations need to butt out of it. It's great that some people are "pro life:" I believe that everyone should get a "life" of his or her own and stay the hell out of everybody elses.

 

You misunderstand. Perhaps I've been unclear. Let me try again: from the perspective of the assassin, an abortion doctor is one who regularly murders infants. This is a view shared by a substantial segment of the pro-life crowd. It seems to me that if one thinks that one's own nation is murdering a million infants each and every year, turning to violence--yes, domestic terrorism--is not only perfectly understandable but damn near mandatory. I for one would certainly go do my bit to refresh the tree of liberty with the requisite amount of blood if my country were killing a million innocents each year.

What I don't understand is how anyone can on the one hand think that Americans murder a million infants each year and yet value the rule of law more than they value stopping that ongoing atrocity. I do understand that the majority of the pro-life crowd thinks this way, but I would dearly like for one or more of our resident pro-lifers to explain why the rule of law is more important than halting the mass murder of infants.

The assassin makes sense to me. I get him. I think he's evil, but if I believed what he believed I'd be doing the same damn thing he did. Well, no, I'd probably choose a different route than shooting one doctor in a church, but you get the idea. LKD, NOG, etc; they don't make sense to me. I don't understand them. I would like to.


ETA: Actually, that's not entirely true. this guy's view makes sense of the stances of LKD, NOG, and the bulk of the pro-lifers. But it only works if LKD et al don't really think that abortion is murder.

 

Having been pro-life for most of my 31 years (my stance on abortion has only softened over the last 2 or so years), I feel I may be qualified to answer this. The short answer is that while one may consider abortion to be morally equivalent to murder (for my part, I still consider third trimester abortions performed without legitimate medical reason to be morally equivalent to murder), that is not to say that using murder as a means to stop it is justified. To step for a moment back into evangelical Christianity (yes, I was once an evangelical), one need only look to the Song of Moses to see that God is rather specific about the fact that he is the one who gets to mete out vengeance.

OK, yeah, sure, there are a million other instances where God orders his people to commit genocide (which in my mind totally countermands this and other passages like it), but the apologists and the devout tend to interpret things a little less cynically.

Now, if I put on my Catholic hat (I was raised and confirmed Catholic -- and my mother was a music minister), I would point out that committing a mortal sin yourself is not exactly the most productive way to deal with a murderer.

 

Thank you, Drew.

 

Yes, it is a lot about the meaning of the word infant, or more legally precise, murder. Our code of law has two crimes, one is infanticide i.e. abortion and the other murder. Such nuance is alien to the anti-abortionists who cannot express their outrage in any other but the starkest terms. For a reason, who can be indifferent towards murder?
Overuse deflates the meaning of murder, until it becomes just one more polemic. That doesn't do the evil inherent in murder justice. It's the same with neocon overuse of 'Munich 1939' or the word 'holocaust' in the context of Iran or Iraq or the like.

So anybody wants to tell me that five cells, a heap of protoplasm are already a baby, only because nine months later it will be? Sanctity of life is important to me as well, but that is absurd. The morning after pill - murder? Nonsense. What I do think is that there is a point after which the cells in a woman's womb becomes a baby. Our law says that is so after twelve weeks. One might disagree with that, and will, but it is a workable compromise. Abortion is a crime in Germany, but within those twelve weeks it is generally speaking not being punished, as long as the woman can confirm that she got counselling that encouraged her to keep her child or if she was raped.

In Germany, if there is a danger for the health, physical or psychological, of the woman, abortion is allowed without timely restrictions. The reasoning is that there is little point in sacrificing the health or life of the mother for the life of a child. That very reasoning would also be behind Tiller's late term abortions. It is just so that the anti-abortionist who have been hounding Tiller simply flatly deny that that there is anything that could possibly justify a late term abortion. To say that they must be wilfully blind toward the reality of such situations. Or I could put it starker and say they are near callous in their indifference. It turns from near callous to absurd when the point is being raised, sincerely, that they want to help the woman by forcing them to do the right thing now so that they won't regret it later - tough love. Probably, it also hurts them more than it does the mothers.

Bill O'Reilly scorned the notion of late term abortions in case where the mothers were suffering from depression, which is one of those instances of 'psychological harm' to the mother. He mockingly put it as 'because the mother was being depressed'. Depression is no laughing matter, quite literally. It is certainly an easy opportunity for posturing. He, conveniently, will never find himself in such a situation.

I loathe those anti-abortionists who suggest that woman are promiscuous about abortion, who dare question their motives, or who suggest that those doctors who perform late term abortions under the above mentioned considerations are murderers and interested not in helping woman in need but have ulterior motives like money, or blood lust. That is utter bullsh*t, to put it mildly. I know woman who did have abortions, and they are very different. About the only thing they have in common is that the decision to abort did decidedly not come easy. It was during very difficult situations in their life. The last thing woman need in a time of distress is some pompous prick pontificating to them about the sanctity of life, and perhaps, for good measure, their rightful place at the cooker, and beat them over the head with the Holy Bible.

 

That is some of the best alliteration I've seen yet in prose. You rock, Ragusa!

And Drew, thank you for stating so eloquently the position of the vast majority pro-lifers -- who do not murder nor would even consider it.

 

To add a point to this I view abortion as a violation of human and civil rights.

I say this because the time the organism we will later call human if allowed to develop and grow up starts physically developing as an embryo post conception. It is this development that means it will likely continue as a living being. It is the potential in the process of being fulfilled that is cut off mid-process with an abortion.

There has been a history in the US of denying groups rights until the law has changed to combat said denial (yes it can continue beyond that, but in a less legally recognized form).

The potential for women to be just as good workers and managers needed legal protections to be as secure as it is now. Ditto for minority groups (the case is especially strong in relation to black people who, as slaves, weren't legally viewed as working for themselves). The potential for gay people to get married is being denied in many states-not every gay person wants to get married but many do and would make use of the potential/possibility if it wasn't denied them.

Denying people their potential is a way of harming them. And abortion does this to humans.

I would argue that the idea of saying abortions done before or at this point are fine is drawing a line that is at least somewhat arbitrary and doesn't appear to include much of a voice (if any) of or on behalf of the organism (human to me) most effected.

I'm sure many women are affected by the decision to have an abortion or not but their physical beings and lives are not affected as much as the people who are aborted. And it strikes me as unfair that decisions are made without regard for or the input of those most directly affected.

And, just to restate it, that is one of the many reasons gay marriage bans are also unfair.

 

OK, I think I get you now. First of all, it should be pointed out that it is not "the nation" that is doing the abortions, they are all being done by doctors, most of whom own private practices. Also (although it probably goes without saying) there is no one individual doctor who perfroms a million abortions a year, nor is there evidence that Tiller frequently performed late term abortions (as the vast majority of abortions occur in the first trimester). In the court case which Tiller won in March, he was charged with 19 counts of performing illegal abortions, over a span of several years. It's not like he was doing this every day.

But for the moment, let us give the pro-life arguement the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume that even though when this case went to court a jury determined that in each of the 19 cases the fetus was non-viable or that if the pregnancy continued there was risk of permanent harm to the mother, that these acts still constituted murder. Is it any private citizen's responsibility to mete out justice by killing someone? Say you know someone that has killed someone else, but he claims he did so to save the life of a third party. He admits that the person killed was not guilty of any crime, but he maintains that if he is placed in a similar situation, he would do the same thing again. You also know that it is highly likely that at some future point he will find himself in the situation again. Are you morally obligated or personally responsible for stopping him? - even going so far as to kill him?

I'm not pro-life either, but I think that you really answered your own question. Since it is morally indefensible to say that the rule of law is more important than murdering infants, it stands to reason that the vast majority of people do not consider all - or even most - abortions to be the murdering of infants. It is really hard to get accurate polling on people's views on abortion, because most polls simply ask whether someone is pro-life or pro-choice. The problem with that polling method is that the vast majority of people are in the "mushy middle" as it is called. Almost everyone finds abortions justifiable in some cases and unjustifiable in other cases. Therefore, most people will be pro-life in some circumstances, and pro-choice in a different scenario.

The reason that the Tiller case kicks up such a fuss is that not only does Tiller perfrom abortions after the legally sanctioned 13-week limit, he is in some cases (like the 19 he went on trial for) performing the abortion well after the 20th week of pregnancy, when there is an issue of whether or not the fetus would be viable outside the womb. This is where the majority of the mushy middle turns against Tiller, as most people feel that in the case where the mother's health is at stake but the baby's is not, a C-section should be performed if there is a reasonable chance that the baby would be viable outside the womb.

However, given that a jury found the abortions legally justifiable, and practically no one thinks it was OK for this guy to kill Dr. Tiller, it stands to reason even here that the vast majority of people do not consider Tiller's actions tantamount to murder.

I would go one step further and say that it's completely arbitrary. In the US, we break down pregnancies into trimesters, and as the law currently stands, if you're over 18 and you want an abortion in the first trimester of your pregnancy, you can get an abortion.

The thing is, there is no reason why you have to break down a pregnancy into trimesters. A full term pregnancy is 40 weeks - a number that is not evenly divisible by 3. Why not break down pregnancy into semesters? Or quarters? Or tenths? So there is an element here that is arbitrary. If, on the other hand, they wanted a not-as-arbitrary (although somewhat moveable) standard at which abortions could be restricted would be when the fetus reached the stage of being viable outside to womb (the current record for this is 23 weeks).