Posted on 09/04/2003 8:51:55 AM PDT by Polycarp
Because the law says that unborn children are not human beings, one cannot legally use deadly force to defend a person who does not legally exist.
But I am not arguing that Paul Hill is innocent of murder as it is legally construed. According to a legal system in which the unborn are denied their personhood in direct contravention of the Constitution, Paul Hill broke the law.
What I am talking about is morality - would it have been morally right in Stalin's Russia to use deadly force to defend someone who had been officially declared a non-person - or would it be murder?
As I have pointed out several times, the Hill case has absolutely nothing to do with vengeance. Hill's argument all along was not that he had a right to exact vengeance for past murders, but that he had an obligation to prevent future ones.
Those are two very different things.
Have you killed any abortion doctors to prevent abortions?
No.
If not, why not?
Because I evaluate it as a less productive strategy than others that can be employed.
You answered: "I don't know."
Are you suggesting that it is possible that legality is synonymous with morality?
So, you would kill the mother to save the fetus?
(1) I am not arguing that position.
(2) I do not come to the conclusion that this particular tactic saves the most lives in the long term.
Because first and foremost, we are a nation of laws
We like to make this claim, but our Constitution, our most basic law, theoretically guarantees a right to life. We are not a nation of laws - we are a nation of public policy.
you know that the truly guilty party is the woman opting to have her baby killed . . . the abortionist is simply an accessory to her actions.
She does bear guilt. But she is often a confused and intimidated person who who is talked into the crime.
The abortionist is not just an accessory. He commits the actual, physical act of murder. Moreover, he does not murder because he is scared or confused - he murders because he has coldly calculated that it is profitable for him to do so.
That is the question at the end of it all isn't it.
The truth it seems, is that no matter how much we placate ourselves with platitudes of mushy morality and arm breaking back-pats for our supposed "enlightened evolution", we are a barbaric civilization. Both sides of this debate is evidence of that. Ancient Rome displayed no less barbarity. We've made very little spiritual progress in 2000 years. Technology has only sharpened our efficiency at debasing our own humanity. We consume our own substance.
That doesn't really matter, because the situations are directly analogous. In each case an unelected official has declared certain individuals as nonpersons whose lives are meaningless and who can therefore be killed on a whim by persons authorized by the state for that purpose.
There was no question, legal or otherwise, that those people were in fact persons.
You are completely mistaken on this point. Nonpersons were not considered to have ever existed. They were erased from all official records, they were deprived of all rights accruing to persons under law and they officially had no legal existence.
There may have been whispered questions of fact, but there was no legal ambiguity: legally nonpersons were not persons - hence the name.
There is a huge unsettled question about the legal status of a fetus.
I am not arguing a legal point, I am arguing a moral one.
Legally, I can set up a corporation.
According to the law, the corporation is a person: it can act as a party to lawsuits, own property, claim tax exemptions, etc.
My little daughter had no such rights the minute before she was born. Legal personhood is completely divorced from moral reality.
Once a fetus is found to be (legally) a person, the abortion will stop.
As long as their are evil people and gullible people in the world there will be abortion.
But the argument will forever be, at what point is it a human being?
There is no substantive argument on this point.
One can either arbitrarily assign a subjective criterion for personhood (if you happen to be outside a womb, if there happens to be a good chance you could survive outside a womb, if someone can feel you kicking, if someone can hear your heartbeat, etc.) or one can acknowledge objective biological fact.
There is a reason why all arguments for abortion are based on the mother's "choice" and her "feelings" or "health." That reason is the inability of abortion cheerleaders to present a coherent theory of humanness that comfortably excludes the unborn.
For the proabort, biological facts are the enemy.
I said I hoped it wouldn't happen. Unlike you and your posse, I don't rejoice in seeing people - pre-born or post-born - slaughtered in the street.
(1) As a practical matter, there is no circumstance under which a woman could not be restrained from inducing an abortion without the use of deadly force against her.
(2) Even if such a situation were theoretically possible, the point is moot. One cannot use deadly force against the woman without gravely injuring or killing the child.
More red herrings.
I gather you mean a Judge. A Federal Judge gets his or her post as decreed by the Constitution, nominated by an elected official, and approved by Congress...all elected officials and constitutionally charged with that responsibility.
"You are completely mistaken on this point."
I am absolutely not, you can't erase something that was never there.
"I am arguing a moral one."
You are arguing in favor of the illegal act of murder, you can't justify murder in the name of stopping murder and continue to claim a moral high ground.
It's wrong...period.
My little daughter had no such rights the minute before she was born."
Nor had she those rights legally after she was born either...until reaching legal age.
"As long as their are evil people and gullible people in the world there will be abortion."
We are discussing government sanctioned abortion here.
But I agree, you can't stop abortion, you can only criminalize people who get an abortion, and those who perform them.
"I am not arguing a legal point"
Until the legal point is settled, the moral point is moot.
You last two paragraphs, while inspired, meant very little.
Tbe point is that until the battle to define at what point life is won, nothing can be accomplished.
And none of this, not a single word you posted excuses Paul Hill's actions.
"Thou Shalt Not Murder"
Applied to him as well.
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