In Which I Disagree With Megan McArdle Some More

225 thoughts on “In Which I Disagree With Megan McArdle Some More”

1. “If 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 justified in resorting to political violence.”
   Should that be “we aren’t justified”?

2. Well, again: you’re giving McArdle credit for an intellectual honesty she does not in fact possess. Of course it’s appropriate to start off assuming your political opponents are arguing in good faith, but when they’ve done the rhetorical equivalent of shouting “That’s DIFFERENT and NANANANANA CAN’T HEAR YOU,” I think it’s safe to say you don’t need to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore.

3. Re Megan McArdle, I have followed her blog since she was independent, and until recently on the Atlantic site. I stopped reading it because almost every argument she brings out against the left is based on a caricaturish straw man. She has some interesting economic analysis sometimes, but I wouldn’t be so surprised about her obtuseness in social and political domains, and trying to get her past it is a waste of time.

4. imnotetc: gack! thanks!

5. Is it not possible that there were not too few negatives that were not removed from that sentence?
   🙂
   I have to make the joke, it’s almost the only time I have seen you make that mistake. I’ll never get another chance.
   Amusingly, in the department of “Great Minds Think Alike,” while you were writing this post, I was making the same point re Bush v. Gore on a comment thread a few posts down.

6. “We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders” Megan McArdle
   So I guess the recent murder of an Army recruitment officer was justified, in Megan’s view.

7. Is the Athenae quote supposed to convince anyone to her side? It sounds like the half-mad rantings of someone mad with “victory” and “power.” Really no different than the trimphalism of Limbaugh ’03.
   She says “they” shot up “lobbies” targeting “doctors.” Best I can tell, it was one guy.
   Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.

8. (a) We have a system for resolving political disputes in this country. We elect people, and those people make laws. When those laws are within the limits set by the Constitution, they are binding. When not, a court can strike them down. When we want to, we can change the Constitution, though it is (rightly) rather difficult
   …
   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
   Not by your standards, he didn’t.

9. It sounds like the half-mad rantings of someone mad with “victory” and “power.”
   Well whether you agree with it or not, that is almost the exact opposite of the point. The point is that the attitude toward government of those who were recently the winners has changed, now that they are on the losing end. Athenae makes no argument at all about any change in attitude among progressives. Indeed, in congruence with hilzoy’s point, the idea is that progressives are perfectly accepting of the right to protest in the way that many on the right, and particularly McArdle, were not. The objection is to the use of violence and those who incite and defend it. Again, whether you agree with this assessment or not, I have no idea where you find triumphalism in that statement.
   She says “they” shot up “lobbies” targeting “doctors.” Best I can tell, it was one guy.
   I am actually not sure what your complaint is here. If it is that the statement employs hyperbole, then that is not a very serious objection. It is quite obviously intentionally hyperbolic.
   If it is that Athenae uses “they,” it seems clear that this is in reference to the people who would defend, with whatever qualifications, the gunman. “They” are part of a group because “they” share the belief that abortion is murder.

10. Way too invested in a abstracted sovereignty of the state. Social contract as categorical imperative, “an absolute, unconditional requirement that asserts its authority in all circumstances, both required and justified as an end in itself” …Wiki. No, Democracy is not formally binding, but only instrumentally justified.
    I am not subject to the General Will.

11. What we see here is an example of conservatives’ immense sense of entitlement on display. McArdle apparently believes that failing to convince a majority of people she’s right is equivalent to having the political process closed to her. Because I guess she thinks that she DESERVES to get her way, regardless of democracy?

12. So you would have sided with the slavocracy over the abolitionists?
    You just can’t solve things with abstract principles. They’re equivalent to mnemonics.

13. So you would have sided with the slavocracy over the abolitionists?
    Damn those Slavs!
    (I always wanted to make that joke.)

14. (e) If you are committed to our form of government, you must leave some room between (1) the claim that some policy it adopts is wrong, even very wrong, and (2) the claim that you can kill people to prevent this wrong thing from happening.
    Your arguments here are extremely reactionary and could be used almost word for word to apply to peaceful acts of civil disobedience. Surely those who helped run the Underground Railroad, who refused to sit at the back of the bus, who sat down at segregated lunch counters should have left some room between the claim that some policy was wrong and that the claim that they could break the law to keep that wrong thing from happening, right?

15. now_what: “break the law” does not equal “kill people”. There are other ways to do it.

16. She says “they” shot up “lobbies” targeting “doctors.” Best I can tell, it was one guy.

    Well, no, they’ve been average a murder a year for the last 20 years, 2-3 burglaries a month, 3-5 vandalism, 2-3 assaults a month, and so forth. This is just the latest event.

17. “break the law” does not equal “kill people”. There are other ways to do it.
    But that’s not what the argument says. It says that out of respect for democracy we must obey the law even when we think it is wrong.
    If the state must be obeyed when innocent humans are being murdered with its approval, why shouldn’t it be obeyed someone is being asked to use a specific section of a public bus? Or when someone is merely being asked to refrain from using a particular drug?

18. Your arguments here are extremely reactionary and could be used almost word for word to apply to peaceful acts of civil disobedience.
    Almost word for word, except for the part about killing people?

19. “But that’s not what the argument says.”
    Actually, it is.
    Assuming you’re referring to what hilzoy actually wrote, that is.
    Just a heads up to conservative readers of this blog. You need to get the fringe elements of your demographic to stop shooting at the rest of us. If they don’t, there’s gonna be hell to pay.
    I don’t really care how you go about doing that. Just get it done, please.
    That is all.

20. But that’s not what the argument says. It says that out of respect for democracy we must obey the law even when we think it is wrong.
    Nope. To rework your formulation, it says that out of respect for democracy and unless we have decided we no longer have any use for democracy, we must obey the prohibition against murdering people. The resort to deadly violence is quite distinct in its effect on democracy from any larger case against protesting or acts of civil disobedience. Several others have pointed this out and hilzoy made a point of specifying exactly where she believes the line is crossed and it is not at any mere lawbreaking.

21. Almost word for word, except for the part about killing people?
    She is not arguing that we stop killing people. She is arguing that we must let the state decide the rules of who can be killed and who can not (and who can kill and who can not) because to do otherwise is contradictory to a certain form of government. There is no reason given why this does not apply to the other acts, and if you agree that we must accept the power of the state to decide that one person might kill another person even if we think the decision is wrong it is strange to then decide that we may freely ignore much lesser evils without it being contradictory to that form of government.

22. now_what: I wrote:
    “you must leave some room between (1) the claim that some policy it adopts is wrong, even very wrong, and (2) the claim that you can kill people to prevent this wrong thing from happening.”
    “Leaving some room” between the two claims does not mean leaving an infinite and unbridgeable abyss, which is what I would have had to have meant in order for your reconstruction of my views to be right.
    I think there are times when violence is acceptable. (Killing Hitler leaps to mind.) I just think they are a lot fewer than “whenever we, as a country, make a choice so wrong that someone dies.”

23. The resort to deadly violence is quite distinct in its effect on democracy
    That is exactly what abortion opponents have been arguing for years.

24. Some folks seem to be missing the point of civil disobedience. Yes, you break the law — but with the full willingness to accept the penalty. The people like McArdle who are trying to justify Tiller’s murder are trying to rewrite the law “on the fly”.
    Doesn’t help that the antichoice fanatics have adopted the most extreme position possible — unjustifiable by law, biology, theology, or philosophy.

25. now_what, virtually no opponents of abortion actually propose applying the legal penalties for murder to abortion. Nor does the argument hilzoy made demand that we obey all of the laws, only that we refrain from killing people.

26. I think there are times when violence is acceptable. (Killing Hitler leaps to mind.)
    I agree. Which is why I think it’s clear that the ‘pro-life’ movement does not believe its own rhetoric.
    If every fetus, embryo and blastocyst carried equal moral value as a Jew in a concentration camp; if you really believed that Hitler lived next door and murdered people every day; if you believed that the government was so corrupt and incompetent as to be complicit in genocide – from that perspective, some pretty drastic action seems appropriate and proportional.
    The fact that pro-lifers aren’t all rejoicing, the fact that they don’t consider Dr. Tiller’s assassin a righteous martyr, means that they don’t believe their own propaganda (i.e. that abortion = murder).
    This is a good thing. I just wish they’d drop the invective – it’s clearly confusing some people.

27. Well, again: you’re giving McArdle credit for an intellectual honesty she does not in fact possess.
    Even this misses the point.
    I think the chief problem with attempting to argue with McArdle is that it tends to give her credit for intelligence that she does not possess.
    The incoherence of her argument is not indicative of bad faith, but rather of a simple inability to make a coherent argument. It’s really not worth going there.
    The larger point at issue in this discussion, however, is worth discussing. If a large chunk of conservatives really cannot distinguish between political violence and civil disobedience, we really do have a problem.
    The way now_what attempts to frame the issue is particularly telling:
    [hilzoy] is arguing that we must let the state decide the rules of who can be killed and who can not (and who can kill and who can not) because to do otherwise is contradictory to a certain form of government.
    In fact, a monopoly of (legitimate) violence is Max Weber’s very definition of a state. This isn’t even about maintaining a particular system of government, but rather about maintaining government at all.
    Were a committed anarchist to make now_what’s argument, we might have the basis for an honest discussion.
    As it stands, what seems to be happening is that some conservatives are claiming for themselves a permanent monopoly on legitimate violence. When they control the state, then state violence is A-OK. When they don’t, then their violence against the state is legitimate and the state’s violence is not. Rather than anarchy, this seems closer to a rather bloody minded declaration by conservatives that l’etat c’est nous.

28. As those who start bringing up Hitler and slavery are carefully trying to avoid noticing, Hilzoy is talking about the limit of acceptable tactics in a democracy. Nazi Germany was not a democracy and nor was a slave-holding USA.
    I have a (very limited) amount of sympathy with terrorist organisations which operate in non-democratic situations (such as the IRA pre-1922, the PLO in the occupied territories (not for any terrorist acts by Israeli Arabs), the ANC in South Africa etc. (Even here, I think non-violent action is preferable). I have no sympathy whatever for terrorist organisations who operate in democracies, such as the recent IRA, the Basque separatist group ETA etc.
    What a resort to terrorism says is that your group has lost the public argument, and is not able to persuade people of the rightness of your cause. If the ‘pro-life’ believe in the moral rightness of their cause, let them argue and persuade people for the next 100 years, if it takes that. (How long did it take to get gay and black and female rights?) To say that violence is OK because you can’t get your way is to admit that your political cause is otherwise a failure.

29. hilzoy, on a political level I generally tend to agree with many of the points you make, but since you are an ethics professor I find it a bit disconcerting that you often refuse to take matters to an abstract, philosophical level and instead rely on common sense justifications of the established consensus.
    Philosophical debate should take nothing for granted and radically question all our assumptions, not in order to translate directly into political action, mind you, but rather to investigate if our deeply held ideological preconceptions will stand up to scrutiny. Now this might be considered a dangerous activity, but to me it is the essence of free thought and a necessary process if we don’t want to simply rely on our more or less unexamined moral intuitions.
    In this case, you simply put democratic procedure above all other ethical considerations and claim that the actual results of this process are merely secondary considerations. This leads to the extraordinary claim that killing a million people in Vietnam or hundreds of thousands in Iraq has to be tolerated by the citizenry, because it was backed up by the democratic decision making process, while killing a politician would be an intolerable affront against our democratic values.
    One wonders exactly when you would deem political violence justifiable. What if the government had not killed 1 million Vietnamese, but 1 million US citizens? Would you then still have had enough patience with the democratic process to resolve the issue eventually, or would that have been enough of a reason to take up arms against the government? Either way, you are left with a bit of an ethical problem here.
    And why do we keep going on about the Weather Underground or the RAF in Germany being so terribly wrong, when they killed maybe 35 people altogether, while the US government with the help of German chemical companies managed to kill a million or more?
    Now there are all sorts of practical and consequentialist arguments against political violence and I’m not here to advocate it, but I think your absolute faith in the democratic process is not warranted and we’d all be better off being a bit less sure of ourselves.

30. Not at all. It very much does not have to be tolerated by the citizenry. The citizenry can and should throw the bastards out, elect new leaders and, if the previous ones violated their trust, see them on trial to answer for it.

31. Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language”:
    Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
    “While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”
    The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
    He did not foresee the modern right and its move to make brutality explicit.

32. It very much does not have to be tolerated by the citizenry. The citizenry can and should throw the bastards out, elect new leaders and, if the previous ones violated their trust, see them on trial to answer for it.
    Yeah, that worked great in Vietnam and Iraq.
    Goering made some valid points in this regard.

33. Philosophical debate should take nothing for granted and radically question all our assumptions, not in order to translate directly into political action, mind you, but rather to investigate if our deeply held ideological preconceptions will stand up to scrutiny.
    This is why it is absolutely necessary that the participants in such debates have agreement on the terms and their meanings. That is not going to obtain on a blog where people are participating with various levels of knowledge and experience. It is naive to suggest that on a group blog where people are participating with various levels of commitment and who have various motivations for participating, hilzoy can set forth a philosophical argument in a fully rigorous manner. You seem to be suggesting that it is somehow deficient (whether professionally or morally, I’m not really sure on which aspect your criticism is focussed) because her argumentation is not at the appropriate level of rigor, but with a little thought, and realizing that this is not a specialist blog directed at an audience of philosophers, I think you might reconsider what you ask for.

34. “ You need to get the fringe elements of your demographic to stop shooting at the rest of us … I don’t really care how you go about doing that. Just get it done, please.”
    Although preferably not by killing people . . .

35. There is no reason given why this does not apply to the other acts, and if you agree that we must accept the power of the state to decide that one person might kill another person even if we think the decision is wrong it is strange to then decide that we may freely ignore much lesser evils without it being contradictory to that form of government.
    The whole point of civil disobedience isn’t ignoring the law, it’s putting the government in the position of actually to enforce the law in order to demonstrate that the law is unjust. If you can’t see the difference between that and killing people to make them stop doing things you don’t like with no regard for the law at all, there isn’t a heck of a lot else I have to say to you.

36. Pillsy nailed it; it’s putting the “civil” in disobedience that makes it an acceptable form of protest.
    But it’s pointless to argue with these people because they have no internal coherence. If it’s really murder, the women involved are far more responsible than the doctor.
    But it’s not murder, and they know it.

37. McArdle’s update to this post further proves that:
    1. She really doesn’t know how to construct analogies that fit the case. She now compares abortion opponents living in a culture and nation that grants them the ability to change the law, but which disagrees with them–to Palestinians in the occupied territories that have no such rights–and not being allowed to have such rights unless they give some of them up in exchange– trying to deal with Israel. The glaring difference in quality of these two situations makes the analogy spurious. The fact that she doesn’t see this just goes to reinforce the fact that McArdle’s biggest character flaw is that a lot of times, she is just DUMB.
    2. The second problem–and major chararcter flaw of hers–is that she has an inordinately hard time realizing when she’s been pwned–and admitting “Aw fuck it, I lost this round”–and she keeps fighting and getting further out on a limb, for no good reason other than she doesn’t want to lose.
    This trait just reinforces the “dumb” of above. It also leads to the kinds of incidents like her stating that anti-war protesters should be beaten by 2 by 4’s for their opinions and then barely getting off a half-assed, very defensive apology like 5 years later after it was made clear that these protesters were correct and she was wrong.
    Keep up the good work, Hilzoy! (and others here!)

38. One wonders exactly when you would deem political violence justifiable. What if the government had not killed 1 million Vietnamese, but 1 million US citizens? Would you then still have had enough patience with the democratic process to resolve the issue eventually, or would that have been enough of a reason to take up arms against the government? Either way, you are left with a bit of an ethical problem here.
    Like novakent, I’ve been wondering what the answer is to this line of questioning.

39. The attachment conservatives have to the idea that abortion should be illegal has always confused me. Given the political philosophy of our founders, which the conservatives seem to like, shouldn’t we be providing the most freedom possible in situations in which there are complex moral questions, rather than by law asserting that one side is right. While I can slightly understand the idea that it is hard to accept reason when you think someone is being murdered, it still confused me that the same people who go on about being true to the founders intent are the one who want to legislate their side in a complex moral, and religious, issue.

40. The incoherence of her argument is not indicative of bad faith, but rather of a simple inability to make a coherent argument. It’s really not worth going there.
    Word. She’s also petty, occasionally mean-spirited, unable to admit a mistake in a timely or gracious manner, and a poor writer to boot. She also once dubbed herself “Jane Galt,” which may be the lamest piece of wanking in the long and storied history of wankage.

41. I’m not sure why Megan McArdle promotes so much visceral hostility from so many people. She may well be mistaken about some things, but she is unfailingly polite, and she tries to explain her views without resorting to insult. If you can’t have civil discourse with Megan McArdle, well maybe civil discourse is impossible.
    But on to my main point: all this talk about “democracy” ignores the fact that democracy is exactly what we don’t have in the abortion context. Democratic majorities are systematically frustrated.
    Yeah, yeah, I know you say Roe v. Wade and all that. When liberals tell me they think that the Constitution prohibits restrictions on abortion, my reaction is pretty similar to the reaction I have when Catholics insist that the wine and wafers actually turn into the body and blood of Christ. I mean, really?
    And that’s where the analogy to the Weather Underground or to those who opposed the Iraq War breaks down. No Supreme Court edict said that the United States had to remain in Vietnam. Those who opposed the war were free to run for office, and had enough strong anti-war candidates won, they could have withdrawn immediately.
    Oh and as to Bush v. Gore: precisely! Yes, I think that it was wrongly decided and that doing so undermined the political process. But in that case the Supreme Court at least pretended it was trying to interpret the written Constitution.
    This is not to say, just to be clear, that I think that Tiller’s killer was justified. In fact, I think that the guy should be given a fair trial and if convicted sentenced to the most severe sentence available by law.
    But the claim that he could have effected change by political means is not precisely true.

42. lj, I think you have misunderstood me here, at least in part.
    I wouldn’t want ObWi to turn into a philosophical seminar, god forbid. What I meant with “philosophical debate” is a state of mind or a spirit of discussion, rather than anything professional philosophers might do. Any intelligent and eloquent person is capable of what I was asking for, you don’t have to be a specialist in the field (and I myself am not one).
    As for hilzoy, I wouldn’t want and don’t expect her to turn into Zizek over night, but I found her argument that the democratic process is sacrosanct rather simplistic.

43. Perhaps when a piece of abortion-related legislation works its way down the pike, pro-lifers wont make it so uncompromising (for example, no exceptions even when the mother’s life is at risk) it gets struck down by the courts.

44. One wonders exactly when you would deem political violence justifiable …novakant
    Well. Let’s take Weber’s “monopoly” as not normative or prescriptive, which would be very authoritarian, but as descriptive and definitional. In that case, logically, when the state no longer has a monopoly of violence, it is no longer a state.
    “No longer a state” means it has lost its legitimacy. Legitimacy is granted by and for the people blah blah by the people’s acceptance and recognition that their collective will is manifested in the legitimating processes. When the people, in whole or much more likely in part, take unto themselves the right to declare the state of exception outside of the due processes…blah blah. I got lost.
    In any case, there are two mistakes here, besides the fact that that bourgeois bureacrat Weber may have indeed deified his job description.
    1) The state is not a good in and of itself. The people do not serve the state, nor is the state identical in any way withe the people.
    2) As the sole source of legitimacy for the state (the state is not legitimated by the religion of reason, is not a transcendental, is not a god that the people must worship and serve), the people, in whole or in part, always do have the right* to declare the state of exception and withdraw their exclusive grant of legitimacy.
    *”Right” is not the proper framework. It’s about power. When the people, In whole or in part, have the power to remove legitimacy from the state, it means the state by definition, tautologically, has already lost its legitimacy. If the (the dissenting part of) people are wrong, the state will squash them like a bug.
    Most liberals who have this abstracted worship of an idealized and transcendental state become authoritarian. Since the state can never be wrong, any failure is the fault of leaders (like Bush/Cheney) who have corrupted the state;any successes are due to good leaders(Obama) who serve the state well.
    The indivisible sovereign state is really little different than the divine right of Kings.

45. To echo the minority view here, Roe was not the result of the democratic process, it was the result of the judicial process deciding what many believe to be a question reserved to the people. Roe creates a fundamental right that is by no means explicit, and even today cannot achieve a viable, lasting consensus. To those who would have liked a vote on the subject, the constitution has been amended outside the express amendatory process.
    Hilzoy and others suggest, in effect, ‘well, just pass a constitutional amendment.’ Or, put differently, we got what we want by judicial fiat, now you go out and try to get 2/3’s of congress and 3/4’s of the states to overrule it. Kind of like Ross Perot’s “Simple as that.”
    Two other problems with Hilzoy’s argument: first, the Iraq analogy. Maybe Hilzoy felt marginalized by the fact that her side lost the debate and the vote, but focus for a minute on the fact that there was a debate and there was a vote–not even close to being the same as Roe. Second, Hilzoy conflates ‘lives at stake’ with lives actually and inexorably being terminated, not just for the duration of a conflict, but into perpetuity. According to CNN, in 2005, there were over 800,000 abortions. That is more than double all US deaths in WWII.

46. “I wouldn’t want ObWi to turn into a philosophical seminar”
    Aww, c’mon.
    In many ways, the liberal conception of the state as self-legitimating is much worse than absolute monarchy.
    The Emperor, if he for instance could not feed his people, could lose the Mandate of Heaven. The “State” is God.

47. giving up on democracy
    There are three things here: giving up on the forms of democracy, giving up on the heart of the people, and having some clue as to what will move the heart of the people.
    Now I believe that (even a democratic) state has no more a monopoly on the legitimate use of force than I do, and I believe that the state we live in is a plutocracy hiding behind a mask of democracy, so in two senses I’ve “given up” on the forms of democracy; but I do not believe I’ve given up on the heart of the people.
    I don’t know whether Dr. Tiller’s assassin had given up on the heart of the people; certainly the Weather Underground had given up on the heart of white North America. But Dr. King never gave up on the heart of the people even as he broke the laws of this alleged democracy.
    Still, knowing what will move people is difficult. Alexander Berkman was attempting to act for striking workers when he tried to kill Henry Frick; but his actions caused the strike to collapse.
    Looking at modern history we see that non-violent direct action generally works better for those who don’t own the heavy artillery than killing. (My guess is that it would work better for those who do own the heavy artillery, but they rarely try it.) That doesn’t mean that George Bush’s war is less immoral than Alexander Berkman’s attempted assassination; it’s just an observation about what works.

48. On a completely unrelated note, any grammatical suggestions for this sentence:
    It’s not like they could vote, or convince other people to listen to them, or organize, or do any of the damn things I feel like we’ve been doing since before there was dirt in order to get a not-entirely-crazy in-another-life-he’d-be-a-moderate-Republican dude finally elected so a third of the country could act like Satan just put his feet up on their mother’s white-clothed dinner table.

49. All these claims that if Roe v Wade was removed then the violent anti-abortionists would go away is unconvincing. If they think it’s OK to kill doctors performing abortions legalized by the federal government, they’ll think it’s OK to kill doctors performing abortions legalized by the state government. States’ rights don’t mean two hoots to right-wingers if it’s rights to do things they don’t like.

50. Pillsy and WereBear really both nail it. Civil disobedience is *civil* not *criminal*. It is non violent. And furthermore in the majority of leftist cases it is aimed directly at the government and not at private citizens. I say the majority because our local pecksnifferwoods will always dredge up some fringe person. But this is not a fringe lone wacko. The fact that he and the murder are being roundly supported and applauded by mainstream figures like MacCardle and Carlson (both of whom have demonstrated in their private lives that they would happilly kill their own grandmothers if it got them either a better ipod or a better tv slot) makes this absolutely not a fringe behavior. If we don’t push back, as a people, against these hateful crimes of political passion we will lose our civil rights and our democracy to these sore losers/violent criminals.
    aimai

51. Hilzoy and others suggest, in effect, ‘well, just pass a constitutional amendment.’ Or, put differently, we got what we want by judicial fiat, now you go out and try to get 2/3’s of congress and 3/4’s of the states to overrule it. Kind of like Ross Perot’s “Simple as that.”
    Or, how about attempting to pass reasonable legislation? Granted, I am working off of memory here, but it seems to me that each time anti-abortion legislation is passed, it’s done in such an extreme way (no exceptions, period) that it usually gets squashed by the courts.
    The polling I’ve seen seems to indicate that most Americans want to keep abortion generally legal, but with some “reasonable” restrictions. Pro-lifers tend to take “reasonable” to mean a complete ban and then when it gets struck down they pretend that they’re minority view is actually the will of the voters and you see arguments like the one mckinney made.
    A similar thing often happens when it comes to gun control laws.

52. If 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.
    I <3 Hilzoy. Best blogger I know of.
    Seeing Ms. McArdle taken to the cleaners is just an ancillary benefit. She really dug herself into a deep hole this time.

53. magistra: “As those who start bringing up Hitler and slavery are carefully trying to avoid noticing, Hilzoy is talking about the limit of acceptable tactics in a democracy. Nazi Germany was not a democracy and nor was a slave-holding USA.”
    Exactly. And my basic point, in a nutshell, is: when you go in for political violence, you have to have reached the conclusion that our democracy is so utterly lost or corrupt as not to be worth saving, at least not at any price currently available to you.
    Megan writes as though this was not a cost: as though once you see the innocent life at stake, that settles things. I think there is something more to be taken into account: commitment to democracy. I do not think that this can never be outweighed. But I do think that it’s value is not zero.

54. bob,
    Do you believe zygotes, blastocysts, and embryos inside a woman, are people deserving human rights?

55. I don’t think that Hilzoy’s post here is about some sacrosanct nature of the democratic process (though she is welcome to correct me), but rather looking at the assassination of Dr. Tiller and discussing it and what it means, to which Jane Galt argued a number of stupid things, and hilzoy had to take her to the woodshed. The fact that Megan went meta-democratic on her requires some explanation of principles to Jane Galt, but doesn’t somehow mean that she is making a philosophical argument about the eternal goodness of the democratic process
    Also, Turb reflagged your question
    What if the government had not killed 1 million Vietnamese, but 1 million US citizens?
    But 1 million vietnamese were killed precisely because they were unseen and unheard. To imagine 1 million US citizens killed, you would have to imagine a situation where there was a population of 1 million American citizens who were isolated enough from the rest of the population for the government to kill and dispose of. There are populations that were isolated enough to be abused in various ways (think Pine Ridge, MOVE in Philadelphia, or Waco) and there are populations that are definitely at-risk now, and I certainly don’t believe that the government is restrained by some sort of inherent goodness that exists within itself, It is, however, restrained by the knowledge and interrelationships that people create. This is not to deny that there is some 1 US life = X non-American lives calculus, but I imagine that 1 middle class American citizen = X incarcerated US citizens, etc, etc. To demand that hilzoy explain why that takes place seems like you want an explanation for human nature. And it’s obviously that way because God was having a bad day…

56. Speaking of incoherence, having read Meghan’s response, this jumped out; it could summarize her point:
    “I am accused, in the comments of Hilzoy’s post, of loving violence and terror. Well, call me a terrorist sympathizer, but I believe that most terrorists do what they do because they, at least, genuinely believe that there is no other way to seek justice. Indeed, they are usually right, for all that I radically dissent from both their idea of justice, and their right to seek it through violence.”
    The argument, as I understand it here, is “it is unforgivable to seek to achieve political ends through violence, and legislation is needed to discourage it”, against “yeah, but what are you gonna do?”
    It may be here that getting burned on Iraq has made Meghan a futilist on terrorism.

57. On Megan McArdle’s logic: Ms. McArdle’s comment that “…if Africans are not people, then slavery is not wrong” avoids the obvious evidence for the full personhood of Africans. We can confidently say that all but the least aware and thoughtful of those slavery advocates who denied the personhood of Africans did so in bad faith.
    In the case of a developing fetus, on the other hand, people of good will can and do disagree as to when the nervous system develops sufficiently to accommodate the first flicker of conscious thought, which marks, for most of us, the line between potential and actual humanity. To suggest any analogy between that great and abiding mystery, and the clearly manifested humanity of Africans and people of African descent seems to me to seriously abuse language.
    On the issue of democracy: has anyone NOT noticed that the anti-abortion movement just had their pet legislation slagged in two popular initiative votes in one of the most conservative states of the union? I have no doubt the majority of Americans would prefer it if abortions did not happen, or at least happened as seldom as possible, but you have to at least concede the possibility that Americans do not like actual bans. You also have to concede the near certainty that the vast majority of Americans would never vote for the kind of law that would result from the claim that all the rights attached to personhood date from the moment of conception or the moment of implantation.

58. “Second, Hilzoy conflates ‘lives at stake’ with lives actually and inexorably being terminated”
    Bzzt: begging the question. You’re assuming your conclusion to prove your conclusion. That your view is not the consensus view is the essence of the debate.

59. Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that Tiller actually was a murderer, a particularly wily one that kept being found not guilty in court.
    We generally accept in a democracy, in a society of laws, that we obey the laws even when they don’t produce results in our favor. Thus, if a jury is unable to convict a murderer, we don’t think then that it’s okay to kill him. But more importantly, even if our sympathies were with the vigilante, if someone were to avenge himself on a wrongly-freed murderer, we would not take that as a reason to legalize vigilante killings, or to stop having jury trials of murderers.
    And as I understand it, McArdle’s not arguing that murdering doctors is acceptable, but that it’s a sign that the laws need to change so they won’t be tempted to murder doctors. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to follow.

60. I patiently await McArdle’s plea for the nation to show understanding for this shooting, as well:
    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – A man with “political and religious motives” killed a soldier just out of basic training and wounded another Monday in a targeted attack on a military recruiting center, police said. The shootings were not believed to be part of a broader scheme.

61. Do you believe zygotes, blastocysts, and embryos inside a woman, are people deserving human rights?
    Absolutely irrelevant. On demand, no restrictions.
    After thirty years, it is perfectly clear that the state will not or cannot protect the right to chose. Arresting and convicting murderers after the doctor is dead does not increase the availibility of abortions. Allowing states to set onerous restrictions or enforce the right as they choose has not served women. It is unacceptable how difficult getting an abortion has become in large parts of America.
    The state has failed, lost its legitimacy, cannot protect its most valuable citizens, and doesn’t really even try. The state has forfeited its monopoly on violence.
    It is time the state learned the consequence of not protecting its citizens and the constitutional rights. The claimed monopoly of violence must be exercised.
    I understand the other side would characterize the problem in nearly identical language. That is why we are no longer doing politics, but engaged in a civil war.
    This civil war, like the last one, is the fault of the moderates and liberals for denying their responsibilty for violencMost likely someone(s) has to die. Too bad the liberals decided it would be Dr Tiller.

62. Yeah, yeah, I know you say Roe v. Wade and all that. When liberals tell me they think that the Constitution prohibits restrictions on abortion
    Roe v. Wade did not say that the Constitution prohibits restrictions on abortion.
    In the case of a developing fetus, on the other hand, people of good will can and do disagree as to when the nervous system develops sufficiently to accommodate the first flicker of conscious thought, which marks, for most of us, the line between potential and actual humanity.
    Yeah, I don’t know about that. Lots of people seem to think it has to do with when a fetus gets a soul, which has the problem of being something impossible to empirically determine, whether or not you believe in souls.

63. But the hundreds of thousands of foreigners, that many conservative advocate killing in other lands, have souls, however you rarely see them questioning the US governments right to destroy them.

64. Questions of souls get us into a religious debate, which the US constitution (and, in practise, most other democratic constitutions) separates from the law-making process. Some people believe animals, trees, and waterfalls have souls. All religious bodies have the right to legislate or decree rules for those who wish to remain members of these bodies in good standing. No religious body has the right to legislate for all of us.

65. We knew who Dr Tiller’s enemies were. We could have rendered those enemies impotent and ineffective. We did not render Dr Tiller’s enemies impotent and ineffective.
    And Dr Tiller is dead.
    Those who value an abstraction, love a process more than people are inhumane monsters.

66. First of all, Megan said that she doesn’t agree with Tiller’s killing, so hilzoy is kind of attacking a strawman:
    I’m not saying the violence is okay–I think Tiller’s murderer needs to go to jail. But like many contributors to Obsidian Wings, I can understand the structural forces that contribute to Palestinian terrorism without believing the terrorism is legitimate. Unlike them, apparently, I don’t find it all that hard to transfer that understanding to the fringes of our own democratic system.
    
    Megan’s point is that she can understand how some one who is pro life might think that he had no recourse than to do the John Brown thing.
    As those who start bringing up Hitler and slavery are carefully trying to avoid noticing, Hilzoy is talking about the limit of acceptable tactics in a democracy. Nazi Germany was not a democracy and nor was a slave-holding USA.
    On the contrary, Hitler came to power through a democratic process. And the CSA thought of itself as a democracy. The Confederates had a Constitution that was quite similar to the US Constitution, save on the issue of slavery. Read it at:
    http://www.usconstitution.net/csa.html
    The CSA thought of itself as upholding the original vision of the founding fathers, as indeed they were , since the original Constitution established the right to slavery and slave holding.
    I might add that in modern times, Sri Lanka was a democracy in which the Sinhalese majority passed all kinds of laws discriminating against the Tamil minority, through due and legal process. They stopped passing those laws and began to retreat on that when Tamil terrorists started blowing people up. The Sinhalese majority government was not making these concessions when the Tamils were using peaceful protest.
    For those who argue that this does not happen in the modern West, lets not forget the Protestant majority in Ulster passed anti Catholic discriminatory legislation and violently suppressed the peaceful “Catholic civil rights” demonstrations until the late 60s- leading to the “Troubles”.
    I think that one of the reasons why Hilzoy is so in favor of democracy is that she feels she is on the winning side. Its easy to support democracy when you are in the majority. But lets not confuse being on the winning side in a democracy with being morally right.

67. To echo the minority view here, Roe was not the result of the democratic process, it was the result of the judicial process deciding what many believe to be a question reserved to the people. Roe creates a fundamental right that is by no means explicit, and even today cannot achieve a viable, lasting consensus. To those who would have liked a vote on the subject, the constitution has been amended outside the express amendatory process.

    What about Bush vs Gore? What about the trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives it cost? (There is also the slightly annoying fact that, in the end, Gore did receive more actual votes than Bush.)
    Were you or any of the RTLer’s protesting that this was bogus? Or were you and/or they, the vast majority of them, telling us to suck it up?
    What about the ERA? If it wanted to, the Supreme Court could simply say that denying the text of the ERA is unconstitutional; it refuses to do so, and – what does it say? – oh yes: “Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. ” I don’t see anyone shooting Male Chauvinist Pigs (God, that seems old! Really was from a different era, though not so far in the past) ‘to make a point’ or ‘because they’re fed up’. And yet, surely this is an important issue, and apparently, a very contentious one.
    The bottom line, I think, and one which Megan and a lot of her claque don’t get is that it’s not the disagreement, it’s the contradiction: If you really feel that participation in the political process has been denied you, you should also feel the same way in similar instances. If you really feel that abortion is murder, then you should be foursquare for hard jail time for women who have abortions.
    If you’re not doing those things? The perception is, I’m afraid, that these people are dangerously immature and unreasonable.

68. “I think that one of the reasons why Hilzoy is so in favor of democracy is that she feels she is on the winning side. Its easy to support democracy when you are in the majority. But lets not confuse being on the winning side in a democracy with being morally right.”
    Not sure that’s accurate. Did you read the Athenae excerpt? Did you read how Hilzoy explained the duty to abstain from murder even and especially when a person is on the “losing” side of an issue/election in a democracy?

69. “First of all, Megan said that she doesn’t agree with Tiller’s killing, so hilzoy is kind of attacking a strawman”
    But Hilzoy doesn’t say that Megan “agreed with Tiller’s killing” so you’re actually creating a chain gang of strawmen.
    Read Hilzoy’s actual issue with Megan’s post(s). The issue is not that Megan “agrees with Tiller’s killing”

70. I’ll be the first to say it — as far as his last paragraph is concerned, stonetools is way out of line. Consider this a flag.

71. Megan writes as though this was not a cost: as though once you see the innocent life at stake, that settles things. I think there is something more to be taken into account: commitment to democracy. I do not think that this can never be outweighed. But I do think that it’s value is not zero.
    I don’t see that anywhere in Megan’s writings, Hilzoy.
    I thought that Megan’s original point was that your proposal to expand abortion laws in reaction to Dr. Tiller’s death would, more likely than not, lead to more violence rather than less. Which is probably correct (merits of expanding those laws aside). I think her subsequent posts make some unsupported (and unsupportable) points, but no where do I see an argument that “innocent life” trumps all other considerations and authorizes violence and murder.

72. I thought the U.S. was a democratic republic, and not a democracy.

73. Yeah, I don’t know about that. Lots of people seem to think it has to do with when a fetus gets a soul, which has the problem of being something impossible to empirically determine, whether or not you believe in souls.
    Posted by: Scott P.

    The problem here is that ‘personhood’ isn’t a determination that can be made scientifically or theologically. Personhood (somebody correct me if I’m wrong) is a legal status. I’m amenable to to legislation that will declare such and so to be a person . . . but there has to be a justification for it that’s not circular. You can’t simply declare a 12-hour-old embryo a ‘person’ because then abortion would be illegal, for example.
    Note that simply declaring a fetus at 30 weeks to be a ‘person’ does not automatically disallow abortions after that time.

74. I think that one of the reasons why Hilzoy is so in favor of democracy is that she feels she is on the winning side. Its easy to support democracy when you are in the majority. But lets not confuse being on the winning side in a democracy with being morally right.
    This is very unfair. As hilzoy has pointed out, when she was on the losing side for most of this decade she did not advocate declaring a civil war against the winners in the democratic process. She did not advocate the assassination of Bush and Cheney. One side and one side only in this debate is advocating civil war.
    While I disagree with bob mcmanus that we are now at civil war, I absolutely agree with him that Weber’s definition of the state is descriptive, not proscriptive, that particular states do not automatically deserve the allegiance of the people, and that people retain a right to revolt. (FWIW, I do believe that having a state is, in general, a good idea (I’m not an anarchist)). And I also agree with bob mcmanus that murdering abortion providers can only be justified as part of a violent attempt to overthrow the presently constituted state.
    Whether she knows it or not (and I strongly suspect she does not) McArdle’s semi-advocacy for Tiller’s assassination is an argument in favor of armed rebellion.
    What lurks at the bottom of this discussion, I think, is the odd place of the rhetoric of armed rebellion among conservatives these days. On the one hand, it’s distressingly common. On the other hand, I always sense that they don’t entirely take it seriously. They’re not actually trying to start a civil war; they’re trying to rally the base in order to win the next election.
    But calling for political violence while not really meaning it seems like a potentially volatile combination; even intended revolutions frequently create unintended consequences. I suspect that the foundation of this political strategy is the fact that our system of government has not been seriously threatened by violent revolt in nearly a century and a half, which is a pretty unusual state of affairs in world history. We all tend to take the stability of our system of government for granted. And that’s not a good thing.

75. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who, before Roe v Wade, thought that human life began at conception rather than birth. We don’t throw our kids Conception Day parties. We don’t calculate our ages from the day our mothers got pregnant. That’s why, for example, you don’t find a lot of anti-choicers who think that a woman who has an abortion ought to be prosecuted for first degree murder–there’s a lingering recognition that a nonviable fetus is not the same thing as a human being.
    The theory that the fetus is a human being with the same rights as its mother was developed to provde a legal basis for arguing that Roe was wrongly decided. I don’t think there are very many anti-choicers who really beleive that in good faith–those who do are dupes of the movement’s leadership.

76. Whether she knows it or not (and I strongly suspect she does not) McArdle’s semi-advocacy for Tiller’s assassination is an argument in favor of armed rebellion.
    Where do you see this advocacy (semi- or otherwise)?

77. ScentofViolets: You can’t simply declare a 12-hour-old embryo a ‘person’ because then abortion would be illegal, for example.
    Providing a woman is legally a person, abortion remains ethical (I originally wrote “remains legal”, but of course that’s not the point) regardless of what legal status the fetus has. Pro-lifers tend to argue as if once they’d established a fetus is a human being, that ends the argument: they take for granted that a woman does not enjoy full human rights, but has the status of an incubator in which a fetus has nine months hosting rights.

78. That’s why, for example, you don’t find a lot of anti-choicers who think that a woman who has an abortion ought to be prosecuted for first degree murder
    or that a miscarriage should be known as involuntary manslaughter, etc.. (though VA almost got such a law)

79. The whole point of civil disobedience isn’t ignoring the law, it’s putting the government in the position of actually to enforce the law in order to demonstrate that the law is unjust.
    Also, an act of civil disobedience violates the actual law that is claimed to be unjust, not some other law.
    No one can argue that a law against murder is unjust. To kill someone to protest some other law is not civil disobedience.

80. “I mean, I personally would not shoot an abortionist, but who am I to impose my morality on someone else? If you are against shooting abortionists, then don’t shoot one, right?”
    – Gingi Edmonds

    eew.

81. We have a system for resolving political disputes in this country. We elect people, and those people make laws. When those laws are within the limits set by the Constitution, they are binding. When not, a court can strike them down. When we want to, we can change the Constitution, though it is (rightly) rather difficult.
    (b) One inconvenient thing about democracies is that it is very, very unlikely that your own side will prevail all the time. You get a voice, but so does everyone else, and barring stupendous coincidences, this means that things won’t always turn out the way you think they should.
    (c) It would be naive to think that you will lose only on unimportant questions. Governments make hugely consequential decisions all the time. Sometimes, these decisions lead to the killing of innocent people, in ways that you think are deeply wrong.
    (d) If anyone who believes the government had adopted a policy that would lead to the killing of innocent people is justified in killing people to stop this, then we might as well just decide not to have a government at all. During the Bush administration, half the country would have been justified in trying to assassinate the President and members of his administration. Any corporate executive who works for a company that does not adequately protect its workforce from poisoning or injury would have to watch her back. Etc., etc., etc.
    e) If you are committed to our form of government, you must leave some room between (1) the claim that some policy it adopts is wrong, even very wrong, and (2) the claim that you can kill people to prevent this wrong thing from happening.

    And the reason Roe v. Wade was so nasty is that it short circuited that process. A huge portion of the population believes, and without at least a very large justification, that at or before that point many jurists seem to have decided that new ‘rights’ no longer had to go through the amendment process in order to strike down large numbers of laws. Something no longer needed to be in direct conflict with the Constitution, or even in direct conflict with the something alluded to in the Constitution, but could be in vague conflict with something that was hinted at in the Constitution.
    The problem with Roe v. Wade isn’t only its outcome. It is the fact that the method that liberals used to GET the outcome is at the very best super-questionable. And it has produced the rather troubling outcome where serious legal scholars like Balkin can write “Elections matter, but primarily because they decide who becomes President and who holds the balance of power in the Senate, thus affecting who gets appointed to the courts.”
    A Constitution with an elective amendment process almost certainly shouldn’t have that as a potentially correct analysis of the importance of elections. Yet we do. And that is a radicalizing problem.

82. I’ll say it again: the twaddle about “John Brown” and slavery really implies a boatload of insults against people of African origin. Any conscious person, anywhere in the world, should notice that people of any ancestry can comprehend and act on complex instructions, learn and use language, and make music. Those elementary facts take literally a second or two of observation to ascertain. Apart from anything else, a brief look at the actual colour of the American population makes it extremely clear that “white” Americans never really doubted the humanity of Africans, since masters (and others) regularly had sexual intercourse with slaves.
    Since a fetus or embryo manifests literally none of the complex behaviours which signal humanity to us, and most early embryos clearly lack the physical attributes necessary for these behaviours, the analogies to slavery or other evil social systems simply does not hold.
    You may, of course, decide you have a special insight into what makes for “personhood”, and you may choose to believe that someone else has such insights. But the analogy with slavery implies (and Ms. McArdle pretty explicitly states) that a person who disbelieves in the full personhood of a fetus could just as easily or honestly disbelieve in the full humanity of a person with a skin colour different different from their own. And (it shocks me that I actually find myself having to type this) that logic does not remotely hold. Without even working at it, I can think of half a dozen attributes of humanity that people from all cultures show, and all fetuses do not.

83. Well, I don’t want to make this look like a personal attack against hilzoy (as Point thinks) and I apologize if I am creating that impression. MY point is what a democracy decides isn’t always morally right-as many historical examples show.
    (Don’t know why point is flagging me for this when Gary calling me a supporter of Gestapo tactics was passed over in silence. But let that pass).
    Eric, I think Hilzoy is arguing as if McArdle is supporting Tiller’s murder. I mean, her whole argument is we should not be resorting to political murder/terrorism in on this issue.(which I agree with, btw).
    Some of her suggestions do seem to amount to a “doubling down” on the right to abortion-as she herself concedes.
    I think that calmness all round is the correct response to this tragedy- not some program to enhance abortion rights-which as Megan rightly argues (IMO) would only inflame the radical fringe.You actually couldn’t pass such a program, anyway, since the tenor of public opinion is against extending abortion rights.

84. Sebastian,
    In 1973, who were and where were the “conservatives” protesting Roe v. Wade?
    I know of the Roman Catholic’s position and the Mormon’s position, in the era….what were the leaders of Conservative Protestantism and/or The Conservative Movement when Roe happened?

85. calmness all round is the correct response to this tragedy- not some program to enhance abortion rights
    i haven’t heard of any such program. have you?

86. “Don’t know why point is flagging me for this when Gary calling me a supporter of Gestapo tactics was passed over in silence.”
    That was because you were supporting the Gestapo tactics of Verschärfte Vernehmung. That’s factually undeniable.
    If you don’t like that truth, quit supporting Verschärfte Vernehmung.

87. One wonders exactly when you would deem political violence justifiable. What if the government had not killed 1 million Vietnamese, but 1 million US citizens? Would you then still have had enough patience with the democratic process to resolve the issue eventually, or would that have been enough of a reason to take up arms against the government? Either way, you are left with a bit of an ethical problem here.
    No. You really aren’t. The time to take up arms against the government is whenever the evils of a violent coup and the civil war that would almost inevitably result no longer outweigh the evils of whatever the government is doing, (weighed by the risk that your violent coup attempt is going to accomplish nothing but making your side look bad). People may feel that balance shifts at different times, but it’s not hard to calculate when to revolt given whatever your values happen to be.
    Megan McArdle apparently feels we’ve hit that point now. The Weather Underground thought we were there during the Vietnam War. Hilzoy disagrees with both of them. I currently agree with Hilzoy, because I think abortion is okay and I suspect a civil war in the U.S. would kill more than a million people. If we nuke Tehran for no reason or something, I’ll probably head over to join McArcdle and Ayers.
    It’s a matter of opinion, but it’s not some sort of ethical dilemma.

88. “and most early embryos clearly lack the physical attributes necessary for these behaviours”
    By invoking this, you’re missing the point. We aren’t talking about early embryos. We are talking about late ones. Tiller wasn’t known for aborting early embryos. He was known for aborting late ones. (Which is not a justification for killing him, I’m merely noting the context of the debate).
    “Without even working at it, I can think of half a dozen attributes of humanity that people from all cultures show, and all fetuses do not.”
    But you’d have lots of trouble distinguishing between a late term fetus and a preemie. And the preemie gets full legal protection.

89. Stonetools, if you can say that “it seems that Hilzoy is arguing” a ceratain way, then it would be fair to say that is seemed that Megan was justifying Tiller’s murder. If one is straw so is the other.

90. And the reason Roe v. Wade was so nasty is that it short circuited that process.
    No it didn’t. Supreme Court rulings are part of our political process.
    Where do you see this advocacy (semi- or otherwise)?
    Far be it from me to claim that a Megan McArdle post on any topic is making a coherent point. But this is what I had in mind:
    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? To shrug? Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes? Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn’t seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right? We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it.
    McArdle’s out here is that she is not actually agreeing that Tiller was a murderer. She’s just saying that if one believes that Tiller was a murderer, assassinating him is not only acceptable, but possibly morally required. And that’s what I meant by “semi-advocacy.”

91. “But you’d have lots of trouble distinguishing between a late term fetus and a preemie. And the preemie gets full legal protection.”
    And in one case you’d violate a woman’s right to choose what she does or doesn’t do with her own body, and in the other you wouldn’t.
    You may feel this is an insignificant, or at least insufficient, difference, but it is the crucial distinction.
    “And the preemie gets full legal protection.”
    A popular view is that so should the mother as regards her body.

92. “But you’d have lots of trouble distinguishing between a late term fetus and a preemie.”
    Consider the potato crisp.

    […] In the Pringles litigation, three levels of British courts engaged in a classic debate over line-drawing, a staple of first-year law school classes. At some point, a potato-chip-like item is so different from a potato chip that it can no longer be called one — but when? Lord Justice Jacob invoked the wisdom of Justice Holmes: “A tyro thinks to puzzle you by asking you where you are going to draw the line and an advocate of more experience will show the arbitrariness of the line proposed by putting cases very near it on one side or the other.”
    In other words, sometimes you just have to call them as you see them.

93. what were the leaders of Conservative Protestantism and/or The Conservative Movement when Roe happened?
    They were in their garages, nostalgically dusting their “Impeach Earl Warren” posters from the last time the Supreme Court short-circuited the political process in a way they disapproved of with Brown. I don’t think the Griswold short-circuit actually registered with them immediately, either, given their more pressing concerns about other “civil rights” being imposed by judicial activists. Now, of course, Griswold is at least indirectly on their chopping block, given that it provided the practical basis for Roe.

94. “And in one case you’d violate a woman’s right to choose what she does or doesn’t do with her own body, and in the other you wouldn’t.”
    And if we were talking about merely cutting hair or something, you’d have an excellent point.
    If a woman, for example, wanted to voluntarily choose to amputate her arm when it was not sick, and not a serious threat to her health, she would face serious resistance from doctors and would be subject to much delay.
    “”And the preemie gets full legal protection.”
    A popular view is that so should the mother as regards her body.”
    You’re very careful with your words. I note you do not say ‘a majority view’. As to 2nd trimester abortions, a majority approve of much greater restrictions than are currently available. As to late term abortions in the 3rd trimester, a very large majority supports restricting them to only cases where the mother’s life is in danger, or in case of rape or incest.

95. ScentofViolets: You can’t simply declare a 12-hour-old embryo a ‘person’ because then abortion would be illegal, for example.
    Providing a woman is legally a person, abortion remains ethical (I originally wrote “remains legal”, but of course that’s not the point) regardless of what legal status the fetus has. Pro-lifers tend to argue as if once they’d established a fetus is a human being, that ends the argument: they take for granted that a woman does not enjoy full human rights, but has the status of an incubator in which a fetus has nine months hosting rights.
    Posted by: Jesurgislac

    Right. We got that one in undergrad philosophy as the ‘tethered violinist’ problem. This is all, quite literally, sophomoric stuff.

96. She’s just saying that if one believes that Tiller was a murderer, assassinating him is not only acceptable, but possibly morally required.
    yup.
    or, to generalize: if one believes X is immoral, immoral act Y is not only acceptable, but possibly morally required.
    i wonder if she’d still agree with that if it was written in Arabic ?

97. “A tyro thinks to puzzle you by asking you where you are going to draw the line and an advocate of more experience will show the arbitrariness of the line proposed by putting cases very near it on one side or the other.”
    In other words, sometimes you just have to call them as you see them. ”
    Yup, and a large majority of Americans call them as they seem them–late term fetuses should get at a large portion of legal protection.
    An in other news, I still have hair, but am definitely balding.

98. “If a woman, for example, wanted to voluntarily choose to amputate her arm when it was not sick, and not a serious threat to her health, she would face serious resistance from doctors and would be subject to much delay.”
    If your ideological opponents are accusing you of not respecting a woman’s ability to make decisions for herself, and you wanted to deny the charge, this would be an odd choice of metaphor.

99. And the reason Roe v. Wade was so nasty is that it short circuited that process. A huge portion of the population believes, and without at least a very large justification, that at or before that point many jurists seem to have decided that new ‘rights’ no longer had to go through the amendment process in order to strike down large numbers of laws. Something no longer needed to be in direct conflict with the Constitution, or even in direct conflict with the something alluded to in the Constitution, but could be in vague conflict with something that was hinted at in the Constitution.
    When Justice Sebastian persuades the rest of the Supreme Court of the correctness of this view of constitutional rights, and California reacts by passing a law mandating that all residents of the state become Scientologists, don’t come crying to me. After all, the 14th Amendment says nothing whatever about incorporating the Bill of Rights, and nothing in the constitution says that a state cannot establish a religion–there are even precedents of established state churches lingering on into the 19th Centruy. If you didn’t want to be come a Scientologist, you should have amended the Constitution.
    The point is, though I love Sebastian dearly, he doesn’t know much about Constitutional law, or history. James Madison opposed a Bill of Rights on the grounds that it would lead to claims that only rights expressly mentioned in the Constitution were protected or enforceable. The 9th Amendment makes it plain that there are all kinds of enforceable rights not mentioned explicitly. The basic premise of the Declaration of Independence is that human beings have inalienable rights not granted by the government. Sebastian, more worried about judicial tyranny than by the tyranny of the majority vote, thinks the founders were wrong, and should have written the Constitution according to a different scheme.

100. Abortion becomes a major concern of the conservative US Protestant world, when ERA begins to take off.
     When the body of the woman was still viewed as belonging to her husband, abortion was a “necessary evil,” once 2nd wave Feminism gains major steam and ERA is on the table, abortion became a threat.

101. “You’re very careful with your words.”
     Thank you.

102. Far be it from me to claim that a Megan McArdle post on any topic is making a coherent point.
     Aye, there’s the rub. After all this endless rumination, no one–including McArdle herself–can say with any certainty just what her point is.
     May I suggest Occam’s Razor? McArdle’s point in this instance, as in so many others, is “HEY! LOOK OVER HERE! I’M PROVOCATIVE, CONTRARIAN, AND CONTROVERSIAL! I’M WHAT EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT! WHAT DO I STAND FOR? WHO THE HELL CARES–I’VE GOT ZAZZ!”
     And boy howdy, has she been reaping the rewards these past few days.
     It’s so damn sad. As if one Camille Paglia in this world wasn’t already one too many.

103. Abortion becomes a major concern of the conservative US Protestant world, when ERA begins to take off.
     When the body of the woman was still viewed as belonging to her husband, abortion was a “necessary evil,” once 2nd wave Feminism gains major steam and ERA is on the table, abortion became a threat.

104. “As if one Camille Paglia in this world wasn’t already one too many.”
     brilliant

105. von: “Megan writes as though this was not a cost: as though once you see the innocent life at stake, that settles things. I think there is something more to be taken into account: commitment to democracy. I do not think that this can never be outweighed. But I do think that it’s value is not zero.
     I don’t see that anywhere in Megan’s writings, Hilzoy.”
     Megan: “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.”
     http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/06/the_war_on_the_war_on_abortion.php
     So: when “the law is powerless”, people can kill in order to prevent other murders, and the law is powerless when it is a law that has been interpreted in such a way as to permit what you take to be murders, even when the interpretation has taken place via the appropriate procedure.
     I don’t see how this is not equivalent to saying: when I believe that the law permits the killing of innocents, I am justified in taking it into my own hands. That settles things.

106. It’s a matter of opinion, but it’s not some sort of ethical dilemma.
     The dilemma I was presenting hilzoy with was structured as follows:
     If she didn’t think killing 1 million Vietnamese (or probably closer to 3.5 million) people was worth overthrowing the government, then she would either have to agree that the US government killing 1 million US citizens would not merit a revolt, or else come up with some formula that would explain why a Vietnamese life counts for less than a US life.

107. “The point is, though I love Sebastian dearly, he doesn’t know much about Constitutional law, or history. James Madison opposed a Bill of Rights on the grounds that it would lead to claims that only rights expressly mentioned in the Constitution were protected or enforceable. The 9th Amendment makes it plain that there are all kinds of enforceable rights not mentioned explicitly. The basic premise of the Declaration of Independence is that human beings have inalienable rights not granted by the government. Sebastian, more worried about judicial tyranny than by the tyranny of the majority vote, thinks the founders were wrong, and should have written the Constitution according to a different scheme.”
     If you want to go back to the “Natural Law” concept where rights are derived from discerning God’s moral code from the universe, I suppose you CAN. I’m surprised that you want to though. Citing Madison and the 9th amendment doesn’t get you to new rights unless you are willing to let Natural Law back in.
     The framers weren’t worried about judicial tyranny because they never would have considered that judges would take so much authority to themselves as to dispense with the need for amendments. They dealt with the problems they forsaw, not the ones they didn’t forsee.

108. uncle kvetch–
     i think that’s right; she’s basically a troll.
     the trouble is that she’s a troll with major support from the mainstream media. so not feeding her is not an option. if we don’t respond to her, if hilzoy does not smack her down and show the emptiness of her posturing, she will still get fed–indeed, she gets fed plenty.
     one of the central problems with discourse in america is that the media has a rule that no right-wing voice can ever lose its place in polite company. no matter how wrong it is. no matter how hopeless its predictions are. no matter how morally repellent its values are. see: billy kristol, rush limbaugh, tom delay, megan mccardle, karl rove, chuck colson, gordon liddy, and on and on.
     several of them are felons. several of them are war-mongers. several of them are outright unabashed racists.
     but they still get as much air-play, and as many column-inches, as their little hearts desire.
     the amazing thing is that many people on the left actually get their press-pass revoked. they not only lose their free access to the op-ed page, they lose all right to represent themselves in public discourse. they are only talked about: they may never talk themselves.
     i can peruse the newspapers and never fear that i’ll see an op-ed by ward churchill: he was banned from polite society. i never have to worry about seeing bill ayers on the tv giving news analysis: he was banned from polite society. i no longer have to worry about michael moore or al sharpton or jesse jackson or many many of the left-wing voices who were deemed to have gone “too far” and so lost their place in polite society.
     and, in my opinion, i’m just as glad not to hear most of the people on that list.
     but the amazing thing is that there is no comparable list on the right. no matter what trash you spew, if you are a right-winger, you have a guaranteed public voice, for life. felony convictions don’t tarnish it. utter imbecility doesn’t tarnish it. as long as you are “provocative”, you get a microphone and an op-ed page.
     so i’d say that we’re going to be hearing a lot of little megan’s easy-listening venom for many decades to come. she has a right-wing sinecure, the only kind that the media grants.
     and that means that we have to keep engaging her.
     thank you, hilzoy, for showing exactly how vicious and vacuous she is.

109. not that this horse is worth beating any more, but …
     I’m surprised no one has commented on just how irrelevant her analogy is. When someone goes on a shooting spree at a mall, it is not the case that the law is “powerless”; it is the case that law enforcement is not “present”. Which is why the act of shooting the shooter is a crime, to which there is a defense.
     Law enforcement was, in fact, present in Dr. Tiller’s offices. He had been charged with 19 violations of Kansas’s law on late-term abortions AND ACQUITTED.
     Sebastian: Kansas has precisely the kind of law you wish — late term abortions are difficult to obtain. Just how many abortions did Tiller do in a year that do not meet your standard?

110. “If you want to go back to the “Natural Law” concept where rights are derived from discerning God’s moral code from the universe, I suppose you CAN. I’m surprised that you want to though. Citing Madison and the 9th amendment doesn’t get you to new rights unless you are willing to let Natural Law back in.”
     the idea that natural rights must be grounded in god’s moral code, or even that they historically were always so grounded, is simply false.
     it is also false that “natural law” concepts are always tied to god’s moral code.
     there are all kinds of ways to ground substantive natural rights. divine command theory is only one of them.
     and you can bet that tom paine and tom jefferson, who both believed in natural rights, did not believe that they were based in special revelation via stone tablets.

111. kid blitzer
     Well, I suppose there’s Michael Savage, but even without polite society — and I think I can safely say there’s nothing “polite” about his society — he does more than ok for himself.

112. @ DB Cooper
     No, she is right.
     http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tiller_timelinejun01,0,3249738.story

113. Re: cleek @ 11:38
     Christ, cleek, how could you read
     to the bottom of that screed?

114. This just follows the pattern of denial they have been playing for the last 10 years: never admit anything, ever. Someone somewhere came up with the ridiculous idea that if you never admit defeat, then you never lose. They simply are refusing to accept the verdict. This and the teabags are their way of letting the rest of us know that we are not legitimate in their eyes. When the system says they lost, they reject the system entirely.
     That is until they win again, when they will return to insisting that the rest of us eat shit.

115. I think what McCardle was saying was “if you accept the premise that abortion is the taking of innocent human lives and if the law is unwilling or unable to prevent those lives from being taken, then–based on those premises and from that person’s perspective–shooting Tiller would be morally justified.”
     It is similar to positing: if you believe that killing a woman for having an affair is murder, and if the law is unwilling or unable to prevent that murder, then–based on those premises and from that person’s perspective, shooting the woman-killer would be morally justified.
     The issue lies in the first premises, equating abortion with murder and equating killing a woman having an affair with murder. Our country is split on whether the first premise, or a more diluted variant, e.g. abortion terminates a life that would be fully human if allowed to remain in the womb, but only a small minority (strict adherents of Sharia law) subscribe to the second.

116. Just how many abortions did Tiller do in a year that do not meet your standard?
     We can’t know for sure. Thanks to Doe, neither Mr. Bellmore nor Mr. Holsclaw is permitted to pry into these families’ private medical affairs and decide yea or nay. This is the result of obviously unsupportable judicial activism.

117. Well, let’s just agree on the point of Tiller’s murder. All of us agree that it is unjustifiable. Hilzoy is vehement on this point, calling it terrorism, and arguing for a program to enhance abortion rights. Megan is more like, “Well, its in the end unjustifiable, but I can see his point”. She argues that pushing for such a program would inflame the radical anti-abortion fringe further. I think she is exactly right on this, but let us agree to disagree on this. (The Obama Administration is not going to push any such program right now-take that to the bank).
     The real nub is whether there should be limits on third trimester abortions, which are actually allowed in Roe v Wade.
     This turns on your view of whether the fetus are to be accorded any rights. The pro-abortion rights crowd in effect argues that a late term fetus has no legal rights and that a woman should be allowed to terminate a third term fetus for any reason. I ( and Sebastian) would argue that a late term fetus is in some sense a human being and ought to be afforded some protection. I would argue that the majority of Americans actually agree with me and would pass laws limiting third trimester abortions. Sebastian sees Roe v Wade as obstructing a democratic solution to the abortion controversy, and deplores this. The ObiWings majority thinks that Roe V Wade should be read precisely to bar any restrictions on abortions, because a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason at any time is or should be an absolute right, guaranteed by the Constitution. Is this where we are ?

118. I think what McCardle was saying was “if you accept the premise that abortion is the taking of innocent human lives and if the law is unwilling or unable to prevent those lives from being taken, then–based on those premises and from that person’s perspective–shooting Tiller would be morally justified.”
     She gets paid to make a “point” that utterly, screamingly, jaw-droppingly banal for the Atlantic?
     “If you believe abortion is murder, then you might also believe the killing of a doctor who performs abortions is the preemptive killing of a murderer, and therefore justified.”
     Really? That’s it?

119. “see: billy kristol, rush limbaugh, tom delay, megan mccardle, karl rove, chuck colson, gordon liddy, and on and on.”
     I just don’t see Megan as being remotely in the same category as these others. Sorry. I have disagreements with her, but I think they’re honest disagreements. And all of the rest other than Kristol are simply thugs, of one degree of smoothness or another, while Kristol merely supples the rationale for their thuggery. I don’t see Megan as belonging in their company.

120. Megan: “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.”
     http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/06/the_war_on_the_war_on_abortion.php
     So: when “the law is powerless”, people can kill in order to prevent other murders, and the law is powerless when it is a law that has been interpreted in such a way as to permit what you take to be murders, even when the interpretation has taken place via the appropriate procedure.
     I don’t see how this is not equivalent to saying: when I believe that the law permits the killing of innocents, I am justified in taking it into my own hands. That settles things.

     Hilzoy, you are taking McArdle out of context. The following is the complete quote. I’ve italicized the part that you omitted, and bolded a particularly relevant part of your omission.

     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? To shrug? Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes? Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn’t seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right? We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it.
     As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect. The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one. Tiller’s killer is a murderer, and whether or not he deserves the lengthy jail sentence he will get, society needs him in jail for its own protection.

121. Stonetools: No. As I pointed out, Kansas already has restrictions on late term abortions, designed to limit them to those that are truly medically necessary.
     I am not aware of a single state that, during the Bush admin, took the opportunity to pass a law that sought to impose additional burdens on late-term abortions while still recognizing that in some cases such procedures are medically necessary.
     SH tends to make much of exceptions for the mental health of the woman. But where are the recent amendments to state laws that try to impose additional (but not “undue”) burdens on women who seek to invoke impacts to their mental health as a reason for obtaining late-term abortions?
     **crickets**

122. i understand your hesitation, gary.
     she’s so smooth, it takes a while to see what she’s up to.
     but just keep watching the views she advances and the people she gives cover to.
     like kristol, she supplies the rationale for others’ thuggery.
     she has earned her place in that list. while earning a lot of money doing it.

123. Hmmm…
     “The pro-abortion rights crowd in effect argues that a late term fetus has no legal rights and that a woman should be allowed to terminate a third term fetus for any reason.”
     and
     “The ObiWings majority thinks that Roe V Wade should be read precisely to bar any restrictions on abortions, because a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason at any time is or should be an absolute right, guaranteed by the Constitution.”
     Interesting, stonetools, that you began by criticizing a strawman argument, and then proceeded to construct a caricature.

124. But von, in your extended quote, Megan equivocates on whether Tiller’s killer deserves a lengthy jail sentence. As if there are mitigating factors that should reduce it. Only societal protection – and not necessarily the morality of the unerlying crime – justifies the lengthy sentence.

125. Von: Megan is wrong twice over. It is just wrong to say that “the law supported late-term abortions.” Supreme Court jurisprudence allows for regulation of late-term abortions. And the Supreme Court is part of the normal political process.
     Or were Griswold, Brown and Loving all also wrongly decided? Put more broadly, is it ever appropriate for the Sup. Ct. to defy the will of state legislatures and establish civil rights? What the f*ck do the words “equal protection” and the Liberty Clause of the 5th amendment mean? And why is your interpretation correct and the Roe court’s interpretation wrong?

126. The ObiWings majority thinks that Roe V Wade should be read precisely to bar any restrictions on abortions
     I doubt that very much, as Roe states rather plainly that the state has authority to restrict third trimester abortions, at tleast of the life or health of the mother are not issue.
     That is, after all, how Kansas could prosecute Tiller (unsucessfully, but not for constitutional reasons) on 19 counts of illegal abortion.

127. But von, in your extended quote, Megan equivocates on whether Tiller’s killer deserves a lengthy jail sentence. As if there are mitigating factors that should reduce it. Only societal protection – and not necessarily the morality of the unerlying crime – justifies the lengthy sentence.
     Eric: Whether McArdle equivocates or not, McArdle does not take the position that Hilzoy ascribes to her.
     (The Original) Francis: as I said above, McArdle’s piece contains some errors.

128. Citing Madison and the 9th amendment doesn’t get you to new rights unless you are willing to let Natural Law back in.
     I think Hilzoy posted on this a while back–certainly, it would be bold of me to start making assertions about the metaphysical basis of ethics on her site. 🙂
     But no, Sebastian, it is not necessary to believe in God in order to have a concept of right and wrong.

129. “Whether McArdle equivocates or not, McArdle does not take the position that Hilzoy ascribes to her. ”
     She does. Hilzoy is saying that McArdle argued that the killer would be justified in taking the life. McArdle says just that (first explicitly, then through a caveat), but then concedes that the killer should be subject to some prison sentence nonetheless.
     Your added excerpts don’t contradict that. They reinforce it.
     Although in your defense, McArdle is sort of all over the map on this one, and her follow up post only succeeded in muddying the waters further.

130. The ObiWings majority thinks that Roe V Wade should be read precisely to bar any restrictions on abortions
     I doubt that very much, as Roe states rather plainly that the state has authority to restrict third trimester abortions, at tleast of the life or health of the mother are not issue.
     I’m not so sure about that, rea, have a look at the comments in this thread.

131. Novakant, I don’t see anyone in that thread contending that either that Roe allows third trimester abortions when the life or health of the mother is not involved, or that a right to such abortions ought to be recognized. Maybe I’m missing something?

132. She does. Hilzoy is saying that McArdle argued that the killer would be justified in taking the life. McArdle says just that (first explicitly, then through a caveat), but then concedes that the killer should be subject to some prison sentence nonetheless.
     Your added excerpts don’t contradict that. They reinforce it.

     McArdle’s statement is directly to the contrary. McArdle writes: “As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect.” Who’s moral intuition? The people who assert that the “killer would be justified” in killing abortionists.
     But even if McArdle wrote “I think their moral intuition is correct” instead of what she actually wrote — “I think their moral intuition is incorrect” (emph. added) — it still would be contrary the position that Hilzoy ascribed to her, namely, that “when I believe that the law permits the killing of innocents, I am justified in taking it into my own hands.”

133. “But no, Sebastian, it is not necessary to believe in God in order to have a concept of right and wrong.”
     What does that have to do with it, I was talking about the roots of the 9th amendment. And you were suggesting that I didn’t understand what the framers were talking about. And Natural Law isn’t strictly about a religious God anyway (which is why your appeal to the deists among the framers makes no sense in context–the whole point of deism is that Natural Law can be derived from examining the universe to receive the creator’s framework).

134. “Novakant, I don’t see anyone in that thread contending that either that Roe allows third trimester abortions when the life or health of the mother is not involved, or that a right to such abortions ought to be recognized.”
     Really? What about the whole gist that under no circumstances whatsoever ought the government interfere in the woman’s right to choose?

135. Although in your defense, McArdle is sort of all over the map on this one, and her follow up post only succeeded in muddying the waters further.
     By the way, McArdle is all over the map on this issue, but not on this particular point. McArdle provides two specific reasons why Tiller’s murderer should be punished:
     1. The murder is immoral (“As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect.”), and,
     2. Even if the murder wasn’t immoral, the rule of law demands it (“society needs him in jail for its own protection.”).

136. Novakant, I don’t see anyone in that thread contending that either that Roe allows third trimester abortions when the life or health of the mother is not involved, or that a right to such abortions ought to be recognized. Maybe I’m missing something?
     If you need a target, I don’t think there should be any state restrictions on third trimester abortions, other perhaps than those that would make the procedures safer for the woman.
     That is not of course what Roe says, and Roe is wrong.

137. @Eric
     OK, Eric, prove that my characterization is all wrong. Give me a reason or circumstances in which YOU think that the state should restrict a woman’s right to a third trimester abortion.
     @(The Original) Francis
     The reason that states don’t pass those laws is that most restrictions on abortion tend to be struck down as unduly burdensome.Generally, all a woman has to do is claim that it adversely affects their mental health and if any doctor signs off on it, thatr’s the end of thje inquiry. Have you ever heard of a situation in which a woman could NOT find a doctor to claim that her mental health would not be adversely affected by continuing her pregnancy?
     (waits in silence, watches tumbleweeds go by)
     As far as Planned Parenthood is concerned, every unwanted pregnancy adversely affects the mental AND physical health of the mother, even if the fetus is eight months old and is completely healthy.

138. all of the rest other than Kristol are simply thugs, of one degree of smoothness or another, while Kristol merely supples the rationale for their thuggery. I don’t see Megan as belonging in their company.
     Gary, back in ’03, during the big protests before the war, she advocated beating antiwar protestors with 2X4’s. Rather thuggish, and why I find her so hard to take, even when she’s pretending to be reasonable.

139. As far as Planned Parenthood is concerned, every unwanted pregnancy adversely affects the mental AND physical health of the mother, even if the fetus is eight months old and is completely healthy.
     It seems to me that it would be a very rare case that being forced to carry a child to term and then going through childbirth with the attendant risk of death and substantial risk of c-section (major surgery) and other subsequent health issues did not “adversely affects the mental AND physical health of the mother.”

140. “OK, Eric, prove that my characterization is all wrong. Give me a reason or circumstances in which YOU think that the state should restrict a woman’s right to a third trimester abortion.”
     Wait, that’s not what you said. What you said was that us pro-choicers think that a woman should be allowed to abort at any time, for any reason, and that this is an absolute Constitutional right that cannot be restricted in any way.
     Thus, to disprove your point, I would not need to come up with restrictions that I FAVOR, but merely to acknowledge that a given legislature COULD come up with restrictions that would pass Constitutional muster.
     Which legislatures have. And which exist in law.
     And for the record, I am amenable to restrictions on third trimester abortions other than in cases of rape, incest and risk to the mother’s health.

141. @Eric
     Both Jesurgislac and Bob Macmanus clearly and proudly hold to the absolutist position , as judged by the comments on these threads. I’m sure that they have plenty of company, so I think my characterization is correct. i’d like to hear your response to my question, though. Thank you in advance

142. “McArdle’s statement is directly to the contrary. McArdle writes: “As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect.” Who’s moral intuition? The people who assert that the “killer would be justified” in killing abortionists.”
     Parts of that statement are as you say. Parts aren’t (the part where she suggests that there are mitigating circumstances). Also, the statement before that is as Hilzoy describes it. And as I describe it.
     The problem here is that McArdle says two seemingly contradictory things in two paragraphs (and actually contradicts herself within those two).
     So your quote supports your reading. Hilzoy’s supports hers.

143. I think there is a lot of unnecessary debate being provoked by the word ‘justified’. I’m pretty sure that Megan is using it to mean self-justified.
     Think for example of a sentence like “We can understand why Palestinians might become terrorists after generations of feeling attacked and oppressed by Israel.”
     ‘Understand’ could be “excuse” but it doesn’t have to be.

144. “Both Jesurgislac and Bob Macmanus clearly and proudly hold to the absolutist position , as judged by the comments on these threads. I’m sure that they have plenty of company, so I think my characterization is correct. i’d like to hear your response to my question, though. Thank you in advance”
     There are undoubtedly some pro-choicers that hold the view you ascribed to pro-choicers as an entirety. I would stipulate that there are others besides Jes and Bob. But that’s not my argument. My argument is that you took the positions of some, and applied them to the pro-choicers as a whole, and to a majority of ObWi readers/writers.
     Hence, my claim that you constructed a caricature.

145. Both Jesurgislac and Bob Macmanus clearly and proudly hold to the absolutist position , as judged by the comments on these threads. I’m sure that they have plenty of company, so I think my characterization is correct.

     Uh, you do realize that Bob and Jes are decidedly not in the ObWi majority, but constitute its lefty fringe, right?
     Note: this is not a slam at all on Bob or Jes, just an observation that their politics are generally at the leftmost extent of the range of opinions on display here.

146. Eric, I am a pro-choicer and have laid out in that thread a position that is standard in most European countries and would probably conform to a conservative reading of “Roe”. Considering the backlash my position provoked, I think it’s fair to say that I’m in the minority here and that the majority at ObWi would prefer a far more liberal reading.

147. Francis beat me to one of the things I intended to say: a fetus in the last trimester of pregnancy has protections under US and Kansas law, and Dr. Tiller (as a grand jury investigation affirmed) complied with them.
     I’ll clarify another point, which I alluded to earlier: I do not find Ms. McArdle’s comments on Roe v Wade relevant or persuasive. If you truly consider a fetus a full and absolute human being from conception onwards, you must logically want to see laws on abortion that (based on the results of the South Dakota votes among others) no state in the union will ever pass. The murderer of George Tiller, and those who condone that murder, do not have an issue with the nine justices who sat on the Supreme Court in 1973; they have an issue with the American people.

148. I didn’t see Eric or any other member of the silent majority come to novakant’s rescue in the earlier threads.

149. Where can I read more about the prosecutions of Tiller? Last I heard (2 maybe 3 years ago) Planned Parenthood was fighting the examination of the patient records in those cases. They had won the last battle that I read about.
     You can’t really use those as a vindication of Tiller if the medical records were never examined.

150. @Eric
     OK , I assume you won’t answer my question. Speaks volumes, Eric.
     I’ll amend my characterization of \from the majority of Obi Wingers to “many”. I’ll goi that far, although, I really haven’t seen ANY of the pro choicers here(hilzoy apart) admit to considering ANY restrictions on a woman’s right to abort in third trimester. hilzoy seems to want to make an exception for Down’s Syndrome fetuses, but the rest pretty much seem to say that if the woman wants an abortion, she gets one. THE END.
     What’s astonishing about this is when you contrast this to the First Amendment. Its in the Bill of rights in black and white-Numero Uno. Its the freakin’ First Amendment! But even the ACLU acknowledges restrictions on the First Amendment. You can’t shout ” fire in crowded theater”, you can’t defame, you can’t sell child pornography, etc.
     In contrast, the right to abortion sits huddled in the shadows of the Bill of Rights. You could read every word of the Constitution and miss it-as indeed everyone did till 1973.
     Yet this right is to be interpreted in an absolutist fashion. Well, OK…

151. I didn’t see Eric or any other member of the silent majority come to novakant’s rescue in the earlier threads.
     Indeed, our failure to engage Jes in a long, interminable discussion about the nuances of abortion is proof positive that we agree with her completely in all regards.
     Alternatively, people might have decided that it wasn’t worth their time to engage with Jes on this issue since they had little confidence that anything productive would result and, in any event, they agree with Jes on most aspects of abortion policy.

152. “OK , I assume you won’t answer my question. Speaks volumes, Eric.”
     Which question? I answered this one:
     “Give me a reason or circumstances in which YOU think that the state should restrict a woman’s right to a third trimester abortion”
     With this:
     “I am amenable to restrictions on third trimester abortions other than in cases of rape, incest and risk to the mother’s health.”

153. Well, this matter could have been resolved rather easily, if people would have simply said what exactly it is they want, instead of slinging mud.

154. “I didn’t see Eric or any other member of the silent majority come to novakant’s rescue in the earlier threads. ”
     What Turb said. Also: You didn’t see me comment on those threads at all.
     “Considering the backlash my position provoked, I think it’s fair to say that I’m in the minority here and that the majority at ObWi would prefer a far more liberal reading”
     To be honest, I didn’t read that thread or your position. But we have thousands of readers, and hundreds of commenters.

155. From what I can tell in cursory research, the records weren’t turned over, so the trial was solely on whether or not Tiller’s in-house secondary physician was an employee of his. The jury found that she was independent of Tiller in that sense which satisfied the narrow independence charge for a second signature required for the abortion.
     So far as I can tell, I wouldn’t use that trial to support the proposition for example that a jury found that those abortions were medically necessary, or that a court has investigated his abortions and found them medically necessary.
     The reporting is really sketchy however, so if someone finds a good case study or something I’d be happy to read it.

156. @Eric
     I’m sorry Eric. I missed it. You did answer. I’m running errands between posts, but I did miss it and you did answer. Mind you, I think your answer is somewhat coy, but OK.
     You are conceding more then just about pro choicer on this thread, though. Mind you get read out of church :-).
     I think Jes is preparing an anathema even as we type…

157. Notice how concepts of justice we feel in our gut tend to lead to radical conclusions about the legitimacy of laws and states?
     Preserving a dog-and-pony show democracy cannot logically be the highest ethical priority–democracy is just a means, not an end. political stability is perhaps an end, but only indirectly insofar as it prevents larger human travesties than would otherwise occur if there was instability fostered by political violence.
     Remember though, politics proper IS violence, or, more technically, coercion under threat of violence. The State is the gun we point at each other to impose our preferences when we’re too lazy to persuade.
     Worried about civil war? With the all-powerful state, democracy is already perpetual “cold” war between domestic interest groups, albeit in a contained and predictable theater.

158. But we have thousands of readers, and hundreds of commenters.
     Obviously I cannot see into the mind of ObWi’s hundreds of commenters, but maybe you want to take a look at the thread we were discussing.

159. “Gary, back in ’03, during the big protests before the war, she advocated beating antiwar protestors with 2X4’s.”
     Y’know (or maybe you don’t), she didn’t. This was a dumb post, but it didn’t advocate beatings, and I’m a big believer in the notion that everyone gets to stuff their foot in their mouth now and again, and not have that be the end-all of their life’s writing.
     She subsequently said it was a pretty stupid thing to write.
     I’ve written some dumb and regrettable things, myself, and I’d be very annoyed if people never let me forget them.

160. novakant: Considering the backlash my position provoked, I think it’s fair to say that I’m in the minority here
     No: the backlash was, as I recall, mostly me. I think it’s fair to say that I’m in the minority here. Your opinion is probably mainstream enough to fit in: Bob McManus and I are the two extreme “Don’t kill women for your morality” people, and I’m the one prepared to argue about it at length.
     (I’m from the UK, and while I appreciate the hard-won change that a woman can have an abortion pretty much whenever she decides she needs one, up to 20 weeks, I do object to the change in the law that cut 24 weeks to 20 weeks out of a misplaced idea about fetal viability, and the recent attempts by alarmingly many misogynist or misinformed MPs to restrict 20 weeks to 16 weeks.
     But at least the pro-life movement in the UK never developed into terrorism.
     And European women who live in countries with more restrictive laws on abortion have a right protected by law to travel to the UK and get an abortion here.)

161. novakant, I point this out not to take a shot at you, but given that (if memory serves), you had previously weighed in beside now_what on the problematic ethical nature of Memorial Day, your comments on abortion seemed like another excursion along those lines, where the point seemed to be to use logic to demonstrate some sort of moral superiority to everyone else. I mention this not because I think this is what your intention is, but because that’s the way it has come across.
     btw, I am most definitely to the right of Jes and Bob McManus on this issue. I imagine this is probably why some folks hang out at liberal blogs even though they don’t seem to agree anything on offer-there is no way they are going to get outflanked and find themselves attacked from the right.

162. I pretty much weigh in with Jes and Bob on this one. Even to the extent that I would personally be morally queasy about a late-term abortion, I don’t see a compelling reason to restrict people who are not me from getting them.

163. To be honest, I have a hard time finding a real point in McArdle’s article.
     Here’s my paraphrase:
     If you stipulate that abortion is murder, then killing abortionists makes perfect sense.
     But folks who are pro-choice are only making things worse because they’re stomping on anti-abortion folks.
     Except she doesn’t stipulate that abortion in murder, in fact she claims to believe the opposite, especially in early stages of pregnancy.
     And nobody’s actually doing anything remotely like stomping on the anti-abortion folks.
     So, whatever.
     I have friends who are Buddhists and who think it’s morally wrong to kill any sentient being. Some of them go so far that they will not kill a mosquito that is biting them.
     That’s their sincere, profoundly held religious belief.
     Even though their every day is, from their point of view, a parade of unending slaughter of precious innocent souls, they do not gun meat eaters down in the streets.
     They don’t do so because *that is also wrong*. No matter what John Brown did.
     If we’re going to start gunning each other down when we have profound disagreements, we are going to have a very, very big problem.
     I’d really like to see conservative people stop bitching about the arrogance of the Supreme Court and start getting their nuttier colleagues in line before some serious shit hits the fan.
     They can start by getting @ssholes like Savage, Coulter, et al off the air. I’m not talking about censorship, I’m talking about not listening to their damned shows and buying their damned books.
     Somebody’s ponying up for that swill. Those folks aren’t doing it for laughs.
     So far this year we have Unitarians gunned down because some gun crazy idiot believed the liberals were out to get him, and a doctor gunned down for performing legal operations in the interest of saving the lives of women with really, really problematic pregnancies.
     That crap will not stand.
     Speaking purely for myself as someone on the left, I’m not putting up any longer with the kind of bullying, poor-mouth, faux-victim crap that has been the regular form of discourse from the conservative movement for the last 30 years. I’m not putting up with it because it leads to this. The cause and effect is obvious, and if you can’t see that you either have a serious cognitive deficit or you’re engaging in some serious and willful denial.
     It’s on the conservatives in this country to knock this stuff off. Ain’t no liberals or lefties shooting people down in the streets, and hasn’t been for about forty years.
     Y’all need to get your act together. Dig?
     McArdle is a smart woman. Whenever I see her on the TV I’m impressed with her general thoughtfulness and unwillingness to chew the red meat.
     But her blog posts are frequently exercises in sloppy thought and moral idiocy. I count this most recent one among those.

164. My personal view, fwiw, is more or less as follows:
     Post-viability abortions should be limited to protecting serious impacts to the mother’s mental and physical health. The decision is to be reviewed by another ob/gyn who must both meet with the woman and have no financial benefit from the procedure.
     Was she raped & kept prisoner for 6 months, but the fetus is now healthy? Mental health exception applies. Did she knowingly and willingly commit incest and now wants the abortion only because she got caught and is embarrassed? I think the doctor should probably say no and talk about adoption.
     In all cases, the law should pretty much keep the DA away. These are not processes in which the heavy hand of law enforcement is likely to do much good. The law instead should act to force doctors to police themselves.

165. I’m to the right of the Jes and Bob McManus in theory but with them in practice. That is: I would be comfortable with a legal regime where third trimester abortions were heavily regulated if I thought there was a chance in hell that it could be administered fairly. Given how abortion restrictions were administered before Roe v Wade and given what we know about how fairly current abortion restrictions are administered, I can’t imagine that happening. No matter what happens, upper middle class suburban adult women will always have an unlimited right to procure abortions while other women will face a host of restrictions. As a society, we let the upper class suburban women face no restrictions because we don’t really think abortion is a big deal. Our need to control abortion access by the disfavored classes has a lot more to do with our own anxieties than anything inherent in the act.

166. These anti-abortion extremists are indeed much like the weather underground of the 60’s. They are self-rightous and out of touch with mainstream society.

167. The problem here is that ‘personhood’ isn’t a determination that can be made scientifically or theologically. Personhood (somebody correct me if I’m wrong) is a legal status. I’m amenable to to legislation that will declare such and so to be a person . . . but there has to be a justification for it that’s not circular.
     So we need to declare when legal personhood has been reached, and there has to be justification for that decision, but that justification can’t be reached via science, or theology, or circular reasoning. I believe you have set us a very difficult problem.

168. btw, I am most definitely to the right of Jes and Bob McManus on this issue.
     I would love to hear this one.
     I look like a reactionary Calvinist when it comes to TULIP, but look like a poststructuralist Marxist in my political strategies.

169. …and I’m the one prepared to argue about it at length.
     Oh, cause This is the kind of choice argument I like.

     You know, I’m so used to seeing conservatives claim that liberating women by limiting state control over our reproductive functions is a “power grab”, so I tend to gloss over it. But if you think about it, really, it’s quite possibly the most incoherent wingnut position to date, and that’s even when you take the “Obama’s got a jihad against car dealerships” into consideration. But reading Douthat, I have clarity. Apparently, conservatives understand the struggle as that between the rightful owners of uteruses (conservative men, who know how to use a firm and punishing hand against women) and illegitimate thieves (the federal government, which has stolen Douthat’s rightful uterine property and spoiled the silly women by allowing us to run around contraceptin’ and abortin’ in much the way a bad dog owner can’t stop his dog from peeing on the carpet). The idea of liberty for women just doesn’t compute.

     …Marcotte
     (checked for extreme PR violations, but minor ones may have gotten thru)

170. The problem here is that McArdle says two seemingly contradictory things in two paragraphs (and actually contradicts herself within those two).
     When you’re faced with an apparent contradiction, I submit that the first thing you should do is not to toss out one reading in favor of the other (or throw up your hands). You should see if the readings can be reconciled. And, in fact, a reconciliation is easy here.
     Megan is making an argument (I think this behavior is immoral) and an argument assuming arguendo (I will put myself into the shoes of the other side and show why this behavior is still incorrect). The apparent conflict is no conflict at all, but rather the effect of putting an argument and assumption-arguendo-argument (to coin an awkward phrase) next to each other. I actually think that’s quite clear from the text, but, even if there’s some ambiguity, Megan is crystal clear in her later posts (as well as elsewhere in this one).

171. I don’t get the assumption that defining a fetus or ferilized egg as a person therefore means its life should be protected and its abortion should be considered murder.
     What makes fertilized egg people and pre-born people so special that we can’t kill them? We execute innocent people all the time in ths country. Heck in the name of fighting terrorism we have tortured innocent people to death. We have killed all kinds of post-birth people who never attacked us or threatened us in any way in a whole bunch of unnecessary wars. We have killed lots of post-birth people in the necessary wars, too.
     Who really believes that human life is sacred? Not the self-proclaimed pro-lifers, that’s for sure. The truth is that almost everyone thinks it’s Ok to kill people sometimes. That’s why the whole question of when life begins is moot. So what if the pre-born are people? The question isn’t whether or not it’s OK to kill people. The question is under what circumstances is it OK to kill people.
     I don’t think the moral issues around the killing of a person who has no consciousness due to not having a brain yet are any where near as serious as the moral issues around killing a sentient post-birth person.

172. BTW in spite of the cynical glib tone of my comment I do think the moral issues around the death of a fetus or a fertilized egg are serious ( and i think it is obvious that life begins at conception). However, I also think that if we as a society really want to fight the human tendency to be barbaric and really want to create a more moral society, the place to start is with our arrogant disregard for the lives of the living.

173. We execute innocent people all the time in ths country
     No we don’t. How many innocent people have been executed by the government this year in the US?
     On the other side of the ledger, there are currently around 1,000,000 abortions performed per year in the US, with a total of around 50,000,000 since 1973.
     And yes I am opposed to capital punishment in most cases.
     The question is under what circumstances is it OK to kill people
     What exactly do you think has been under discussion here for the last month?

174. I do not much like third-trimester abortions. I suspect no one does. That said, I would also like them to be allowed in cases of serious problems with the fetus, whether or not the mother’s life or health is endangered. That fetus without a face, for instance. If it were my child and I knew that it would die a horrible death, I would want to anaesthetize and kill it before it encountered a world in which it could not breathe. And I would want this done as early as possible.
     At least, I think that’s what I’d want, putting myself in a position I hope I never encounter. If someone did want it, I would not want to say: no, your own health is not in jeopardy.

175. “McArdle’s out here is that she is not actually agreeing that Tiller was a murderer. She’s just saying that if one believes that Tiller was a murderer, assassinating him is not only acceptable, but possibly morally required. And that’s what I meant by “semi-advocacy.””
     — Ben Alpers
     Not a good “out.” By this logic people would be morally required to kill OJ.

176. Following on Hilzoy’s comment here I think that our policies regarding late-term abortions should be framed with the idea that it not place undue burden upon any woman who needed one — not place her in any further medical risk and not add a lot of bureaucratic hoops in the face of a person or family that is already faced with a terrible situation. I think that is the compassionate thing.
     I’m not going to throw over that compassion because I think that someone might use that loophole as justification for getting an abortion under circumstances I do not believe rise to my personal standard of risk.
     Functionally that comes out looking like what Jes and Bob want because I can’t trust the other side to value the woman’s life and health as highly as they value their own commitment to life-in-principle.

177. @ Wonkie @8:36

     I do think the moral issues around the death of a fetus or a fertilized egg are serious ( and i think it is obvious that life begins at conception)

     If you learn a little biology, this proposition becomes very hard to defend; and if you learn about how IVF is done, it becomes even harder to reconcile this notion with the policy aims of the anti-abortion movement.
     The question of just when the entity developing from a fertilized oocyte becomes a human being is a difficult one, which is why there is extremely little support for third-trimester abortions that aren’t necessitated by the health of the mother or the inviability of the fetus, and why I recognize that earlier abortions can be a thorny decision that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, even as I prefer to see it remain their choice. But the only way to argue that a totipotent cell is a human being is to rely on theology, not on any understanding of the science; and as regards such theologies, while I am a devout atheist I would nonetheless presume to declare that any theology whose ethical framework I could respect would surely provide protections for such innocent “humans”. As you really should already know, something like half of all fertilized oocytes never implant and progress to become pregnancies, and in the US and most of the world IVF clinics routinely make supernumerary embryos that they then consign to the slow death of permanent storage.

178. There is a weird, *sick* idea amongst some of these posts that we need to *force* women to care for their children, born or no. What crazy scenario are you imagining where someone will carry a child seven or eight months then seek to end the pregnancy on a “whim”?
     No, actually. Please don’t tell me what you imagine. Just.. You don’t have to legislate to make mothers to love their babies. If your argument assumes that we do, I think you’ve gone far, far astray and please reconsider.

179. someotherdude,
     I’m pretty comfortable with the caveats given by Turb, hilzoy and others, and the point that the debate position and the real-life effect of certain policies is not the same is something that I was trying to aim at. Nous’ comment of
     Functionally that comes out looking like what Jes and Bob want
     is really interesting, because it acknowledges that there is an Overton window effect, and perhaps, with this assassination, they have been proven more correct than me. Though I wonder if they heard Obama’s Notre Dame speech and said ‘geez, what a load of fascist codswallop’.
     With due respect to Bob and Jes, I don’t think they represent the solid center of opinion here at ObWi (and I think they would be offended if they were claimed to be), which is what novakant seems to think.
     The reason I said ‘on this issue’ is that I didn’t want to make a stronger claim that I am on the right of them on every issue.
     As far as the TULIP goes, I don’t think I’m Totally Depraved, but opinions may differ…

180. LOL, thanks, I totally misunderstood your meaning.

181. …while I am a devout atheist I would nonetheless presume to declare that any theology whose ethical framework I could respect would surely provide protections for such innocent “humans”.
     Not me. I think any respectable theology would disdain the wishy-washiness of those who merely champion the “unborn”, and would take up the cause of that far-more-vulnerable class, the unconceived!
     –TP

182. “Though I wonder if they heard Obama’s Notre Dame speech and said ‘geez, what a load of fascist codswallop’.”
     Well, I think only Mr. mcmanus would include the “fascist” part. And God bless him for it.
     And TULIP? Bah! TCURP all the way. Modified Arminianism FTW!

183. Sebastian: let’s try to apply Occam’s razor to the question of Dr. Tiller’s ethics. It only seems reasonable, since Dr. Tiller can’t defend himself any more. Occam’s razor, in this case, suggests that if we have no evidence for a proposition, we should not try to rely on evidence that “might” exist. As I understand it, a grand jury no-billed Dr. Tiller. Unless we have actual evidence that they did so in error, or evidence (beyond simple assertions by partisans) that the courts suppressed evidence unfavourable to Dr. Tiller on narrow partisan grounds, then that verdict has to stand.
     Likewise, unless unfavourable accounts of Dr. Tiller’s practices emerge to challenge the favourable accounts posted at web logs such as Andrew Sullivan’s, we should not infer that such unfavourable accounts exist.
     In other words, whatever you or I want to believe, I suggest we only rely on the evidence of Dr. Tiller’s character and willingness to abide by the law that we actually have.
     When it comes to the law, consider the case of Canada. In Canada, no criminal sanction prevents a woman from having an abortion under any circumstance. Even after a child has drawn his or her first breath, a special law covering infanticide means that a woman who kills her baby in the first year of life faces a maximum of five years, with no mandatory jail time at all. The result? Canada has a slightly lower incidence of abortion than the United States. If restrictive laws have an effect on abortion rates, the Canada-US comparison doesn’t show it.

184. I was thinking of theological protections, not policy protections; i.e. if you are going to posit a soul for fertilized oocytes, knowing that the majority don’t become people in any case, you’d better give those souls a fallback plan other than, say, baptism.
     But, yeah, it would be theologically consistent if some of the more religious anti-abortion activists were also to call for legislation banning onanism.

185. von – “McArdle writes: “As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect.” Who’s moral intuition? The people who assert that the “killer would be justified” in killing abortionists. ”
     Huh? On the contrary: isn’t it clear that the “moral intuition” McArdle’s talking about is the ordinary pro-life intuition that abortion is murder?
     She thinks assassination is fine if lives are on the line; she merely rejects the anti-abortion intuition that lives are on the line. If they were, McArdle thinks, the assassin would be justified.

186. Modified Arminianism FTW!
     You guys should just convert to the Papist side and be done with it!
     ;-}

187. Richard, your reading of McArdle is not plausible.

188. “As I understand it, a grand jury no-billed Dr. Tiller. Unless we have actual evidence that they did so in error, or evidence (beyond simple assertions by partisans) that the courts suppressed evidence unfavourable to Dr. Tiller on narrow partisan grounds, then that verdict has to stand.”
     I don’t think you read what I have already wrote. So far as I can tell the jury ruled ONLY on the narrow question of whether the 2nd doctor had too much of a financial relationship to Tiller. So far as I can tell they did not see any documents on the actual fetuses. If you have other information please feel free to link it.

189. “There is a weird, *sick* idea amongst some of these posts that we need to *force* women to care for their children, born or no.”
     Shane, this will shock you, but there actually are weird, *sick* people out there, and some of them are women. IOW, there really are some non-negligible fraction of women who do need to be forced to care for their children.
     Any argument about abortion which starts out with the premise that “no woman would seek an unnecessary abortion” is stark nonsense.

190. von – why do you think my interpretation is “not plausible”? It seems pretty obvious to me, and certainly far more consistent with the rest of her post than your weird interpretation (which seems downright inconsistent with the rest of her post).
     McArdle began: “Let me start off, in the obligatory way, by announcing that I am pro-choice… Now I can move onto the observation that if you actually think late-term abortion is murder, then the murder of Dr. Tiller makes total sense.”
     She then goes on about how “people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders.”
     Then she concludes: “As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect. The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one.”
     Notice the two features that conclusively establish my interpretation is correct:
     (1) The “as I say” indicates that she is merely repeating a disavowal already made earlier in the post; she’s not making a new claim at this point. This is consistent with my interpretation, and inconsistent with yours.
     (2) Even more obviously, she goes on in the very next sentence to indicate the ‘moral intuition’ she’s talking about, namely where to draw the line of personhood.
     How much clearer can you get?

191. Any argument about abortion which starts out with the premise that “no woman would seek an unnecessary abortion” is stark nonsense.
     An “unnecessary abortion” would be what, exactly? Perhaps an abortion in the absence of pregnancy? I don’t think women seek “unnecessary” abortions any more than men seek prostate surgery for the hell of it. The phrase “unnecessary abortion” is itself “stark nonsense”.
     Granted, you may have a different definition of “necessary” than a pregnant woman does. You’re entitled to your definition. But guess what: I may have a different definition. Shall the pregnant woman go by your definition, or mine? I mean, assuming you and I both agree that the woman hasn’t got the right to tell both of us to piss off, you and I still have an argument on our hands.
     If I happen to judge, from the way you construct your anti-abortion argument, that you are more concerned with OUTLAWING abortions than you are with REDUCING them, my inner libertarian comes to the surface, and we REALLY have an argument on our hands.
     –TP

192. “Granted, you may have a different definition of “necessary” than a pregnant woman does. You’re entitled to your definition. But guess what: I may have a different definition. ”
     This is an interesting argument in a thread about how a bad man defines fetus in such a way as to think there is murder going on….

193. your comments on abortion seemed like another excursion along those lines, where the point seemed to be to use logic to demonstrate some sort of moral superiority to everyone else. I mention this not because I think this is what your intention is, but because that’s the way it has come across.
     Well, I sometimes happen to hold positions that seem to diverge from those held by the majority of ObWi commenters. And while I’m generally a “live and let live / I might be wrong” kind of guy, I also sometimes believe that my position is superior to other positions, otherwise I wouldn’t spend so much time defending them. And yes, sometimes I even use logic, gasp, to defend my position and point out flaws in other positions. Sorry if that’s all a bit much for some.

194. Novakant: Well, I sometimes happen to hold positions that seem to diverge from those held by the majority of ObWi commenters. And while I’m generally a “live and let live / I might be wrong” kind of guy, I also sometimes believe that my position is superior to other positions, otherwise I wouldn’t spend so much time defending them. And yes, sometimes I even use logic, gasp, to defend my position and point out flaws in other positions. Sorry if that’s all a bit much for some.
     Well, this corresponds roughly to how I see my position. Which is probably why we were getting into such a fight.

195. I know at least one prominent woman (a co-founder of the German Green Party) that went on the record that she does not consider ‘convenience’ abortions to be illegitimate (and more or less implied that her own abortions up to that time belonged in that category). She definitely is in a tiny radical minority there but a single example suffices to disprove a rule.
     —
     I am a convert from the condition-based to the time-based abortion rights model as used over here because I had to realize that the restrictions were not applied fairly. Given the situation in the US, I would, for that reason, vote for a no-restriction rule as long as reasonable restrictions are widely abused.
     —
     The personhood debate does not necessarily change the situation for the worse. When the topic came up over here, I read a rabbinic argument that I found at least plausible and consistent: If a pregnancy/fetus threatens life or health of the pregnant women, then the fetus can be seen as a person with murderous (or at least harmful) intent against which self-defense is justified. This may include killing the attacker (abortion), if no reasonable alternative exists. That right to self-defense ends at the moment of birth (head of the baby out of the mother’s body).
     This does of course not cover non-medical reasons for abortion but it is an example how personhood of the unborn does not mean that the woman is without rights.
     —
     The debate about when the conceived human-to-be becomes a person is at least 2400 years old since Aristotle discussed it. The idea that only the moment of conception is that point, is rather new and, in Europe, closely connected to not medicine but theology (Mariology to be precise). Even in the Dark Ages the legal view on that were quite complex.

196. Sebastian, right now a fair number of the more extreme anti-abortion campaigners have embarked on an effort to trash Dr. Tiller’s memory. I find that highly inappropriate in general, but if you want to evaluate the facts behind their charges, you have to follow Occam’s Razor, which means you go with the simplest explanation and stick close to the evidence. The grand jury no-billed Dr. Tiller after an investigation. Fact. Did they see all of the relevant evidence? Unknown. Would the evidence they did not see have changed their decision? Unknown. You must not speculate, either implicitly or explicitly, about evidence that “might” exist, that “might” prove a point. If other evidence about Dr. Tiller’s practice surfaces, then point us to it and I will try to evaluate it fairly. Until then, the grand jury no-billed him. Full stop. Until and unless you have positive evidence that might have changed their decision, any reference to the possibility that other grounds for an indictment might exist (which the claim the grand jury only no-billed on “narrow” grounds implies) takes you an impermissible step from the evidence.
     Brett, let me suggest that if the women you posit do indeed exist, then legislation, or at least American legislation, does not appear to restrain them. Canada, which has no abortion statute has an abortion rate just under that of the United States.

197. Richard, I have no idea how you’re interpreting McArdle. I don’t see the point in further debate on this topic with you.

198. Anarchy and the Radicalized Left and Right

     There’s been quite a reaction from the political Right to the coverage of Dr. George Tiller’s assassination in church on Sunday — and understandably so. Much of the coverage included tarring and brushing and attacking entire groups of people –…

199. And yes, sometimes I even use logic, gasp, to defend my position and point out flaws in other positions. Sorry if that’s all a bit much for some.
     You may wish to consider that there is a difference between using logic to get at flaws in an opposing position and believing that pure logic ultimately and completely determines the best moral position.

200. von – to clarify, I’m interpreting McArdle as claiming that:
     (i) “people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders”
     (ii) abortion isn’t murder. (“I think their moral intuition is incorrect. The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one”)
     I’ve provided reasons why this is a natural and compelling interpretation. You haven’t provided any countervailing reasons. If you don’t want to support your position, I guess that’s up to you. But the fact remains that hilzoy was exactly right to interpret McArdle as she did, and nothing you’ve pointed to suggests otherwise.

201. “The grand jury no-billed Dr. Tiller after an investigation.”
     I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t know what charges you think he was cleared of.
     The only thing I know about is the trial (not a grand jury) in which the only issue was the extent of the financial relationship between him and the doctor who was second signing his late term abortions.
     So far as I can tell it was NOT a trial on whether or not the late term abortions were otherwise appropriate, and it did involve records that would tend to prove that one way or another. This doesn’t seem to be what you are talking about, but I can’t find out anything about this grand jury.
     If you have further information, please link to it. But you are responding to an issue that I did not raise, am not talking about, and which has limited if any connection to what anyone else was talking about.

202. Sebastian, do you think that if the prosecutor thought that the actual abortions were not appropriate (under the law) he would have hesitated to bring those charges against Tiller?
     The prosecutor has already stated that evidence indicates that the (real) murderer does not qualify for the death penalty. Since I am against the death penalty under any circumstances, that’s fine.
     But since Kansas does have the death penalty I am eagerly awaiting what evidence there is that negates the possibility of the death penalty being at least asked for in this case.

203. For a reference to the grand jury in reference to Dr. Tiller, see wikipedia under “Tiller”; look for “Controversies: Christin Gilbert”.
     In any case, the issue for me does not relate to one or other specific judicial proceeding. It relates to the use of evidence and logic in assessing Dr. Tillers practices and ethics, assuming you consider this appropriate. All of the judicial proceedings I have seen referenced so far resulted in Dr. Tiller’s exoneration. Now, if you have specific evidence that the court did not consider, we can evaluate it. But Occam’s Razor prevents the consideration of a general suggestion that maybe evidence existed that would have changed the verdicts in these cases, and maybe the courts wrongly excluded it.
     The grand jury no-billed him. The jury acquitted him. Without specific evidence that they did so wrongly, the sentence has to end there. Accounts that have surfaced on the web so far appear to suggest Dr. Tiller had a strong sense of ethics, and that many if not all of his late-term abortions addressed either real threats to the life or health of the woman involved, or non-survivable health problems in the fetus.
     If you have contradictory evidence, please post it or refer to it. But you can’t base an argument on the conviction that contradictory evidence has to exist.

204. believing that pure logic ultimately and completely determines the best moral position.
     How does my position derive from “pure logic”? I hope it’s for the most part coherent, and will point out incoherencies in the positions I criticize, but coherency is about the only logical criterion applicable in such discussions and it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with “pure logic”.

205. Setting aside these abortion discussions, I think that the Memorial Day thread was an example of letting logic and a demand for ‘coherency’ run roughshod over feelings and personal concerns. Again, it is only my impression, but comparing the US military to the mafia in a Memorial Day thread is precisely the sort of thing that gives me that impression. I always appreciate a desire for coherency, but a overabundance leaves the impression of a one person demonstration of logical ability rather than an actual dialogue.

206. Well, on a personal level Tony Soprano is actually a pretty nice and interesting guy. And I’m sure many of the US soldiers who killed a million plus in Vietnam and a couple of hundred thousands in Iraq are nice people as well. But that doesn’t make me condone what either of them do, nor is it enough reason to exonerate them. The flipside of your preoccupation with the feelings and personal concerns of the perpetrators is a disregard for the suffering of the victims. This suffering doesn’t just happen, it’s not simply a tragedy without guilty parties. Somebody gives the orders and somebody drops the bombs or pulls the trigger. And while the morality of each and every soldier or mafia member is impossible to evaluate, you can judge the actions of the collective they belong to.

207. Well, we are into the 3rd page, so it is rather difficult to follow this, but my preoccupation is with the content of the thread and the people who participate here. Accusing people of disregarding suffering because they honor service on a day that has traditionally set aside to honor such service is precisely what I mean when I suggest that you are unable or unwilling to make logic subject to considerations of feelings and seem more intent on showing everyone how logical you are. Accusing me of that when I didn’t weigh in on the thread and merely pointed out that this was part of the reason that I didn’t get involved rather than some robotic like agreement with Jes is a perfect example of how logic serves to obscure communication rather than clarify it.

208. LJ, I think I was the one who introduced the mafia aspect into the Memorial Day thread, so perhaps your argument is with me as well. I’d be curious how you distinguish the case of novakent being too obsessed with logic and you yourself letting emotion override your judgment.
     I don’t see any clear contradiction between honoring the service of veterans and acknowledging that the US military has been used to kill millions of people for no reason. I don’t recall you explaining this contradiction in the Memorial Day thread. After all, in every army that has every committed atrocities, there have been many soldiers who served with honor. I would say that many soldiers in the Wehrmacht served with distinction and honor and I have no difficulty honoring their service while at the same time pointing out that volunteering was unethical.

209. Brett,
     It doesn’t shock me.
     I’m not making that argument.
     I’m not sure we do, or can, force women to care for their children. Sometimes we take the children away, or punish a mother after the fact.
     The procedure is performed by doctors. Given that they’re professionals, with very serious professional sanctions, who chose the maternity sector, and who I’d generally trust to do their best for both patients. That’s actually enough assurance for me to handle the hypochondriac or “unnecessary” abortion seekers. But if you think there’s a wave of medical malpractice going on, you’d know better than I about how to bring the lawsuit.

210. “The flipside of your preoccupation with the feelings and personal concerns of the perpetrators is a disregard for the suffering of the victims.”
     This simply doesn’t follow, unless you mean something by “the flipside” that’s different from what I understand it to mean. Let me ask, so as to clarify: are you saying that concern about U.S. soldiers, or their friends, or relatives, means that one has “disregard for the suffering of the victims”? Are you saying that LJ has “disregard for the suffering” of people killed in Iraq and/or Afghanistan?
     I’d like to think I’m misunderstanding you.

211. are you saying that concern about U.S. soldiers, or their friends, or relatives, means that one has “disregard for the suffering of the victims”?
     I would say that this phenomena clearly can happen; whether it does happen in any particular case depends on the details.
     I don’t see why you would even find this unusual. People like their friends and family, including those that serve in the armed forces. People are not used to thinking of their friends and families as killers. So to the extent that they love and empathize with soldiers, it becomes much harder to accept or internalize the impact of the war on Iraqis. It is hard for most people to understand systemic effects of something as big and complex as a war or a military industrial complex. This doesn’t make people bad, just human. As you know, Americans have, on average, an extremely good idea of how many American soldiers have died in Iraq and an extremely bad idea of how many Iraqis have died.
     I do think though that if the US government used the military to prosecute a pointless conflict that killed a million Americans, many more people would be discussing the ethics of (re)enlistment. The fact that a million Iraqi lives don’t move people to the same extent that a million American lives do no doubt stems from many factors, but one of them is likely the affinity and empathy Americans have for military service in general.

212. “I would say that this phenomena clearly can happen”
     Well, of course it can happen.

213. Turb,
     I don’t recall you explaining this contradiction in the Memorial Day thread.
     I didn’t say much of anything in that thread, I merely took novakant’s comments there as an example in order to illustrate the pattern of rhetoric by novakant, a pattern of rhetoric that seems to make purely logical argumentation the be all end all of discussion. I’m sure that one could argue to someone who is mourning over the death of their great grandmother that the energy and time spent doing so is misplaced when there are so many people who are dying young and there would be a logical point there. When he followed up with his disappointment that hilzoy wasn’t talking about abstract principles, I thought there was a point to be made about the over reliance on logic in discussing some subjects.

214. Given all the talk about Doe v Bolton by anti-abortion people on this thread and others, I looked it up http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0179_ZO.html.
     I’m not a lawyer, or even an American, but two of the basic legal points seemed clear. For abortions in general (rather than late abortions), it was excessive restriction to demand that you got three independent opinions on the abortion and that a hospital committee then reviewied the decision. (For late abortions it’s obviously still legal to have some review demanded by states, as the case against Tiller shows).
     So why did it decide that for (early) abortions the decisions could be made by one doctor? Because there wasn’t a committee before any other kind of surgical operation that tried to second-guess a doctor’s judgement, and because there was professional regulation of doctors, if there was suspicion of them behaving unethically. (Unlike prison officers, for example, the analogy one person has made here).
     So anti-choicers have to explain why the normal level of review of a doctor’s conduct suddenly isn’t adequate for this one specific area. Because a serious crime might be committed? But there are lots of other cases where this might be the case. For example, I understand selling organs is generally illegal. Should there be a hospital committee deciding whether every operation removing an organ is medically necessary, in case the surgeon’s trying to harvet organs (with or without the patient’s collusion), for example?
     I can’t see anything in the Doe v Bolton judgement that prevents legal or professional investigation of specific cases where there is some evidence of illegal/unethical behaviour by the doctor. Just because not all organ removal surgery is vetted, doesn’t mean specific allegations can’t be. There was an investigation of one late abortion case in the UK, for example, but no prosecution http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/4354469.stm
     What I suspect the anti-choice people really want in this case is fishing expeditions, to go through multiple cases of late abortion in the hope of finding something that will stick. The intrusive nature of that is evident – and maybe they should think about the publicity element of it as well. We’ve read the harrowing stories on websites about couples who decided on late term abortions for entirely justifiable grounds – terrible deformities in the fetus. Imagine how they would read if these accounts then add: ‘But our ordeal wasn’t over. Now we had to face a court appearance, had hostile cross-examinations in which it was implied that we were heartless killers of the child we desperately wanted.’ How vicious and vindictive would that make anti-choice people look?
     And anyhow, suppose we were in an alternative world in which Doe v Bolton restrictions were still allowed? Does anyone think that would stop the anti-abortionists’ claims? An independent doctor or two agreeing to the abortion (as in Kansas)? Irrelevant. A committee of six doctors reviewing the case? The anti-choice people would be insisting that the committee would have been packed. There is no review that would be enough for them, once you understand their basic belief that abortion doctors and those who associate with them are by definition unprincipled and not to be trusted.
     After all the justified criticism of Megan McArdle, she did have one line that seemed rather relevant to this case (but from her comments on Sotomayor)http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_problem_of_affirmative_act.php:
     “I’d frame the critics as suffering from the terrible, pervasive fear that some brown person, somewhere, is getting away with something.”
     Although I’m pro-choice, I accept restrictions on post-viability abortion (I have argued this before on threads, but not recently, because I got tired of called a woman-hater by Jes). And if there are laws I don’t object to them being enforced. What I do object to, and so should anyone who cares about the legal system, is a presumption of guilt in these cases – that people have to prove they haven’t broken the law.

215. “An independent doctor or two agreeing to the abortion (as in Kansas)? Irrelevant. “
     The same doctor in every case, who got paid by the patients, and possibly would have stopped getting the referrals if he’d found some of the abortions unnecessary? One doctor is probably enough, but it really shouldn’t be a doctor chosen by the abortionist.

216. Alright then, let’s rely only on arguments based on feelings and personal experience and be very suspicious of any attempts to point out incoherencies in these or discuss ethical matters on a more abstract level, as this might cause discomfort.

217. The same doctor in every case, who got paid by the patients, and possibly would have stopped getting the referrals if he’d found some of the abortions unnecessary? One doctor is probably enough, but it really shouldn’t be a doctor chosen by the abortionist.
     Who do you think the doctor should get paid by? You couldn’t possibly have a doctor paid by the state deciding on abortions could you (as in the UK)? Think of the outrage over tax dollars going to someone who might permit an abortion.
     And who do you think should get to choose the second doctor if not the patient? Or is it suddenly OK for patients to lose their rights when they’re possibly doing things you don’t like?
     As for all this rubbish about doctors just doing it for the money, any evidence that Tiller was a millionaire? Because I’d want to be a hell of a lot better paid than your average doctor to go around in a bullet-proof vest all the time. (And I bet the guy who gave second opinions is pretty scared right now). It’s just another slur on doctors who carry out abortions.

218. And while you are at it, you can always complete exclude the middle. It can’t help but enlighten these issues.

219. I have argued within “the middle” in both threads. Your claim that I have relied on “pure logic” to make my case is baseless. Abstracting from individual cases and engaging in the odd thought experiment or generalized comparison is the most common thing in the world when discussing ethical and political matters. Every argument in a pub will have elements like this, implicitly or explicitly, they are part of “the middle”. It is you who wants to restrict the discourse here to a certain form you deem appropriate, not me.

220. I have argued within “the middle” in both threads.
     but
     let’s rely only on arguments based on feelings and personal experience and be very suspicious of any attempts to point out incoherencies in these or discuss ethical matters on a more abstract level, as this might cause discomfort.
     That’s a rather strange definition of middle you have there…

221. You might want to turn your sarcasm detector on.

222. I realize that the hole you are digging has nothing on the earthmoving that von has been doing in the Latina thread, but if you go back, you might notice that you have accused me of ‘disregarding suffering’ and ‘restricting discourse’ (how, I’m not sure). Perhaps that is sarcasm, but I fail to see how you have any evidence for either of those propositions.
     You wrote earlier in this thread, in complaining about hilzoy’s point
     Philosophical debate should take nothing for granted and radically question all our assumptions, not in order to translate directly into political action, mind you, but rather to investigate if our deeply held ideological preconceptions will stand up to scrutiny. Now this might be considered a dangerous activity, but to me it is the essence of free thought and a necessary process if we don’t want to simply rely on our more or less unexamined moral intuitions.
     You seem to have some unexamined moral intuitions yourself, but your whipping back and forth between the every so dangerous activity of philosophical thought and indulging in sarcasm to attempt to make your point leaves me with neither the time nor the energy to try and lead you to see them. Best of luck in all your philosophical inquiries.

223. You seem to have some unexamined moral intuitions yourself
     Oh, I’m sure, don’t we all. So please take a crack at them, because that might at least be mildly interesting. As it stands, you have contributed nothing of substance and only expressed a vague feeling of annoyance regarding my debating style. I’m sure you can do better than that.

224. The pre-1922 IRA were operating in a democracy. Sinn Fein won 73 seats (including the first woman elected to the Commons) out of a total for the UK of 707 in the 1918 election with the old Irish Nationalist Party winning a further 7 seats. This meant there were no fewer than 80 nationalist MPs unfortunately 73 of them were abstentionists, greatly weakening their influence. In 1885 Irish Nationalist representation had been 86 out of 670 and remained at about that level until the First World War.

225. By shrinking the enlarged prostate, Avodart may alleviate the various urinary symptoms, making surgery unnecessary. That is the reason why doctors are advised to buy Avodart for its treatment with out surgery.

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