Abortion and liberalism
When is murder justified?
The murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller has put the anti-abortion movement into sharp relief. In particular, it highlights a certain argument that, simply stated, goes like this:
1. Anti-abortion activists frequently state that abortion is murder.
2. Since the murder of innocents is to be abhorred, their protection is validated, even if that protection involves violence. This is indeed the thinking of at least some anti-abortion activists. Via Salaten: “[The murder suspect] admired the Army of God’s “Defensive Action Statement,” which endorses the murder of abortion providers on the grounds that “whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child.”
3. All legal alternatives had been exhausted.
4. Violence against certain people, like George Tiller, would almost certainly create a net decrease in the number of abortions performed; there is little elasticity in the market because Tiller was willing to provide abortions later than almost any other doctor.
5. Violence against George Tiller is justified.
Variations of this argument have been popping up throughout the blogosphere (with perhaps the most blunt assessment coming from Saletan: “If abortion is murder, the most efficient thing you could have done to prevent such murders this month was to kill George Tiller.”) Damon Linker and Andrew Sullivan have at it too.
Is this argument reasonable, and, if so, what does it prove?
Rod Dreher has one possible response:
The answer, I think, has to do with prudence. We live in a society and a culture in which there is wide disagreement about the moral personhood of the unborn child (or, if you prefer, “fetus”). Taking another human life is the gravest crime imaginable. If one is prepared to do that, one had better believe that one has no other choice, and that the stakes are radically high. The consequences for introducing lawless violence into a society, even in a righteous cause, are unpredictable, and stands to bring about a worse evil than the evil the violence is designed to fight.
While arguments for prudence are always welcome here, Dreher’s argument is not fully compelling because, for many, his criteria have indeed been met. While there is indeed wide cultural disagreement about the nature of personhood, there is a fairly large subset of the population who believe that abortion should never be allowed (22% would be one number). While there is certainly some subset of this that explicitly value the life of a person higher than the life of a fetus (to Sullivan’s argument), there are certainly those who do not see such a distinction. There is a contradiction here in the beliefs of many.
But of course the conclusion has to be, so what; that portions of the American public have not fully thought out their beliefs is certainly not news. It is interesting to note, via Linker, that no less an authority than Robert George has denounced Tiller’s murder. Perhaps it’s a feather in the cap of procedural liberalism that even the strongest of believers are willing to put the civic order ahead of their substantive worldviews.
-John
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- Liberalism and the burqa
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The nature of the beginning and ending of life is one of the most vexing problems for our society. From the very simple view of “Tiller is killing babies, I must stop him” to the conversely simple view of not being alive until delivered. The problem is there is little ground for compromise with these folks.
Thankfully, as you pointed out, the extremists on both sides are a minority. I think the country would be well served in its politics by leaving both extremes behind and working on compromise.
The problem with compromise, though, is that few people would be happy with whatever policy is developed. Furthermore, due to the just the simple nature of our policy making process, any compromise will inherently be inelegant, muddled, and inconsistent.
For this reason, single-issue voters vex me to no end, losing any number of good policies in search of a perfect solution and limiting the scope of our politics to narrow policy corridors.