scriptbabe451 's List: Abortion

• Earlier, I argued that we ought to take steps to assure that late-term abortions are available to people who need them, and that one reason to do so was to make it clear that terrorism does not pay. In response, Megan McArdle writes:
• I did not advocate "using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes". There are things I could have advocated that would have met that description: criminalizing certain forms of anti-abortion advocacy, for instance, or loosening the standards that RICO prosecutions of them must meet. Or I could have advocated stomping on them more directly: for instance, by deploying on them the tactics they use on abortion providers and their staff: large trucks parked in front of their houses with pictures of the bodies of murdered doctors; repeating tape loops of women describing what it's like to try to find a doctor to remove their stillborn fetuses from their bodies; asking neighborhood children how they feel about the fact that their neighbors try to keep mommies from seeing a doctor when they're sick...
• Trying to ensure that they do not succeed in achieving their goal of depriving women of a right to which they are entitled under our Constitution, as presently interpreted, is not. If, say, a group of anti-immunization fanatics had succeeded in terrorizing doctors to such a degree that almost no one offered children immunization, would trying to ensure that kids had access to their measles vaccines count as "stomping on" anti-immunization groups?
• "We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders--had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer's actions.
• In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions.
• Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court.  If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action?  
• The law is not "powerless" in this case. It is not trying and failing to prevent abortion. On the contrary: our Constitution, as presently interpreted, grants women the right to seek an abortion. In order to conclude that killing people is justified in these circumstances, you need to think not just that the lives of innocents are at stake, but that this is the kind of situation in which you should take the law into your own hands, and thereby undermine our system of law and government.
• I do not think that it would be OK for people who oppose the death penalty to kill the people who carry it out. I opposed the war in Iraq, but I did not conclude that it would be OK for me to kill soldiers who were shipping out, policy makers with blood on their hands, and so forth. In that case, many more innocent lives were at stake than could possibly have been at stake in Tiller's.

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• "In a way, conservatives now face a choice similar to what liberals in the late 1960s and early 1970s faced during the hayday of the Weather Underground. Some on the New Left defended them as legitimate-albeit-excitable members of their broad coalition, while other more traditional liberals attacked them as extremists who violated liberal ideals. My sense of the history is that enough on the New Left defended extremists to tar all of liberalism. Will that happen for conservatives now?"
• Despite that, I think the Weather Underground was wrong. Because the fact that lives are at stake is not enough to justify giving up on democracy. And be clear: when you think that when you lose out in a political debate in which lives are at stake, that makes it OK to kill people to get your way, you have given up on democracy.
• f someone has a problem with excessive certainty here, it's not those of us who think that when we lose politically, and the stakes are non-negligible, we are not justified in resorting to political violence.
• "For eight f*cking years anybody to the left of Pinochet had to kick back and watch while sensible centrists and the Coalition of the Involuntarily Committable got together and raped the country and f*cked up the whole world. For eight f*cking years we were told that marching in the streets with giant puppets was the most horrific form of treason imaginable, was demoralizing our troops and hurting the debate and making the baby Pope Benedict cry.
• Not once did I ever in that time hear Megan McArdle or any of her other sensible friends discuss how maybe, just maybe, President Bush and his administration had PUSHED us to the edge, where we HAD to make those puppets because we felt the political process was closed to us.
• No, back then it was "elections have consequences" and "you lost" and "look upon my works, ye mighty, and f*ck off," and anytime anybody had the temerity to say, "erm, dude, if you don't mind I'll be over here with this sign on a stick" they might as well have been plotting to shoe-bomb Air Force One the way the whiners in the nuttersphere howled and shrieke
• That is, in fact, the way I felt for much of those eight years. And I had a lot more excuse for feeling that the political process had been closed to me: after all, my candidate for President actually won the election in 2000, for all the good it did him. And yet, somehow, I managed not to kill anyone. Funny thing, that.

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• First, the most significant error she makes is the assumption that “the law” was “powerless” here.  The fact that “the law” is different from what you might prefer is conceptually distinct from saying it’s “powerless.” 
• Right now, we let the Supreme Court remove several issues out of the legislative process – that’s the nature of a constitutional right.  You may agree or disagree with Roe on the merits, but it’s the law.  And for the record, the privacy right underlying Roe (1) extends much broader than abortion, (2) has a century of precedent behind it (beginning with Pierce and Meyer), and (3) enjoys widespread support from the public. 
• A better example of when the law was “powerless” is the Reconstruction and Jim Crow era South.  There, you had laws and amendments on the books protecting civil rights.  These established rights were widely ignored and invalidated by extralegal violence.  In these types of circumstances, violence may well be morally justified.  In fact, I think it is.
• But that’s a completely different universe from an established, popular constitutional right that has been reaffirmed for decades by Republican-appointed Justices.
• Next, McArdle brings out a slavery analogy:
• it justifies anything.
• It’s a premise that can’t really be refuted.  But it’s also a dangerous premise. 
• But anyway – the purpose of passing new restrictive laws against these “fringes” isn’t retribution – or a desire to prove how powerful we are.  It’s to prevent political violence aimed at undermining an established constitutional right (as Hilzoy also noted).
• Whether you agree with it or not, we as a country have decided to protect a woman’s right to be free from forced childbirth.  Similarly, we as a country made a commitment to protect a racial minority’s civil rights.  The violence we saw yesterday – just like in the “Redemption” period – is aimed quite directly at eliminating those rights. 

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