Posted on 06/07/2009 3:53:34 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
The Technology of Low-Cost Murder
Now come chemical abortifacients. This is what is going to stop physicians from practicing abortion in the United States. Price competition is the great threat to the local abortionist, not some self-appointed revolutionary bringer of justice like yourself. It is the fact that women will be able to walk into some large store or local drug store and buy some pills -- "morning after" pills -- for $10.95 (or $39.95, on special, for a giant, economy-size bottle), take those pills, and kill their own infants. Price competition is the looming treat to the killer physicians, not the pro-life movement.
When such products are finally for sale, the pro-life movement will be forced to come to grips with the judicial reality of abortion, namely, that is it is legal. At that point, all of the pro-life posturing had better end. We will have fewer picket lines in front of physicians' offices. It will do no good to picket a physician if he has been driven out of the death business because it is so cheap to get home-based abortion out of a bottle. He is not going to be practicing abortions. Mothers will be practicing abortion. It will do no good to go out and shoot physicians. The advent of cheap abortifacients is when the legalization of abortion visibly becomes the real problem, when it becomes discount abortion, mass-produced abortion.
The problem is the legalization of abortion, not some killer physician on the corner. The physician on the corner who is practicing abortion is a symbol, and it is good to challenge the symbol in the name of the real issue, which is the legalization of abortion. But that local physician is not the main problem. The big problem is that modern technology is going to find a way to have dirt-cheap abortions and make millions of dollars doing this. We are going to get mass-produced abortions. We will no longer worry about a comparative handful of abortions: a million and a half a year. We will not know how many deaths will be administered. It may be twice as many; we will have no sure way of knowing. What we know is that it will be so unbelievably easy that the numbers of abortions will skyrocket. There is going to be no way to stop it by picketing. Besides, we will not have anyone specific to picket.
What are pro-lifers going to do? Organize picketing against Wal-Mart when it sells 10,000 products? Are we likely to get the buyers of 9,999 of those other products not to walk in the door, just because the store sells one product which we don't like. Do we think that such picketing is going to stop some murderous mother or anyone else? Picketing will stop almost nobody. We will not be able to target a particular practitioner any more. There will not be a visible representative any more. There will only be the society that wants the abortions and millions of women who want abortions.
There are tens of millions of men and women who will not vote to ban the sale of such a product. This is our problem. It is a political problem resting on a specific moral foundation: humanism. The problem is judicial. It is corporate. And finally, when the physicians are driven out of business by mass produced abortifacient, pro-lifers are going to face a new reality. They are going to realize that it is not abortion as such that is the problem. It is the problem of a society that has legalized abortion.
An anti-abortion protester today may save a few lives on a particular day. There may be a protest that saves a couple lives, but there is still going to be a million and a half that are not saved this year. There will be a million and a half who are going to die, whether or not you protest. The protests are symbolic. The protests are focusing on the evil of the act. But if they are to be life-saving, the protests must be used to call the whole society to its moral senses. The primary problem is the whole society, not the abortionist around the corner. This is a symbolic war which must be fought politically. When mass produced, inexpensive, price-comparative abortifacients are available on the shelves of Wal-Mart, most pro-lifers at last will figure this out.
To picket an abortion clinic is legitimate. It is a public way of saying, "We do not approve of what goes on in there. We call upon God to give us time to organize, to seek out ways to get abortion re-criminalized. We ask God not to bring His negative corporate sanctions against us. We are doing our best."
It is also a way of scaring other physicians who would be- come abortionists if there were not so much embarrassment attached to the profession. The physician inside the clinic has a seared conscience (I Tim. 4:2). His professional colleagues may not. In any case, they fear the public exposure.
Picketing an abortion clinic rarely saves lives directly. It saves lives indirectly. Picketing is for God's sake. It can sometimes save lives directly, but picketers should know the truth: the act is more symbolic (representative before God and men) than immediately corrective. The act is part of the process of consciousness-raising and conscience-raising for the participants, not a way to save lots of lives directly.
When cheap abortifacients are readily available, picketing will no longer work. The standard confrontational tactics will no longer work. The murderers will no longer be visible, nor will the places of execution. When murder is done in the privacy of the home, picketing will no longer serve many purposes, other than picketing politicians and, perhaps, the manufacturers.
Picketing is a temporary tactic, not a long-term strategy. But at least it has benefits. Murder does not.
When mothers perform in-home abortions, what will men like you do? What good will a shotgun be? Will your imitators invade homes and shoot down women they suspect of using morning-after pills? And if your disciples do this, what will happen to those unborn infants? Your disciples, not the mothers, will become the murderers.
Your perfectionist, guilt-ridden tactic of self-ordained judge-and-jury execution may make perverse sense to fanatics today, before the technology of mass murder is on the shelves, but the tactic clearly becomes self-defeating the day the new technology arrives. This should tell you that your tactic is wrong today. You obviously did not think through the implications of your recommended plan of action. I hope that those who might otherwise imitate you do think it through, before it is too late for them and also for the hundreds of thousands of innocent infants whose lives will be lost because of the political reaction your tactic will produce in normal human beings. These people vote. This is what your murderous perfectionism ignores.
....There are tens of millions of men and women who will not vote to ban the sale of such a product. This is our problem. It is a political problem resting on a specific moral foundation: humanism. The problem is judicial. It is corporate. And finally, when the physicians are driven out of business by mass produced abortifacient, pro-lifers are going to face a new reality. They are going to realize that it is not abortion as such that is the problem. It is the problem of a society that has legalized abortion.
Dr George Tiller, the infamous Kansas late-term abortionist was shot to death the last Sunday of May 2009. At some point, comparisons will be made to the shooting deaths of Dr. John Britton and abortion escort/bodyguard James Barrett in the summer of 1994.
This thread series features a letter written to Britton's murderer, Paul Hill while he was awaiting trial for the killings (Hill was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed for the double-murder). The author is "Christian Reconstructionist" writer Gary North. The letter (published in book form under the title Lone Gunners for Jesus: Letters to Paul Hill) articulates a Reformed response to the question of whether the killing of an abortionist can be considered morally justified in Scripture.
Pt 1: Introduction
Pt 2: Judicial Theology
Pt 3: Murder, Defined Biblically
Pt 4: The Fundamental Issue
Pt 5: The Guilt of the Community
Pt 6: The Question of Judicial Representation
Pt 7: Community Standards
Pt 8: The Technology of Low-Cost Murder
Pt 9: Voices of Virtue
Pt 10: Perfectionism and Unlimited Guilt
Pt 11: Non-Violent Resistance
Pt 12: Caught in a Crossfire
Pt 13: Conclusion
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