Posted on 06/01/2009 8:37:48 AM PDT by rintense
"I feel sorrow for the Tiller family. I respect the sanctity of life and the tragedy that took place today in Kansas clearly violates respect for life. This murder also damages the positive message of life, for the unborn, and for those living. Ask yourself, 'What will those who have not yet decided personally where they stand on this issue take away from today's event in Kansas?'
Regardless of my strong objection to Dr. Tiller's abortion practices, violence is never an answer in advancing the pro-life message."
Governor Sarah Palin
If you are right in the initial assessment of the situation, yes, it is entirely acceptable under established law to do exactly what you describe.
If you are wrong, you’re going into a small place for a very long time.
Do the right thing - and make sure you are, indeed, right.
The legal term is “the principle of competing harms”, to wit: doing a minor harm to prevent a major harm is reasonable. In the issue at hand, this principle indeed applies: having confirmed some 60,000 lost, and having established those who could stop it won’t, it is clear that losing one more can save thousands more. (Oh, and the “but they’ll just go elsewhere” line is a lame copout. You don’t give up on a war because stopping one soldier didn’t stop the army.)
This is a very useful assessment and gets at the problem, really better than I did. Thanks.
Do you have any additional comments?
This murder will HURT the pro-life cause. Everyone in that church, if not many of the people following this story the way the MEDIA will present it, will be turned away from the pro-life movement. It is my belief that abortionists do not command abortions. Women (and their men) command abortions because they are told by the pro-abortion community that it is not killing a baby. They are fooled. And we have been winning hearts and minds with the newest ultrasound images. Three weeks and a few days after that "night of love," an unhappily pregnant woman can see her baby's beating heart.
This murder has only IMPEDED the effort to show the truth to all Americans. Not one abortion has been prevented with this horrible murder.
A closely related point:
The “principle of competing harms” amounts to something else called an “affirmative defense”: the acknowledgement in court that you did something you were not allowed by law to do, but it is nonetheless excuseable because of some other overriding legal/moral principle. This approach may very well work (ex.: in a self-defense case, “he was gonna kill me!” overrides “no discharge of firearms in city limits” and homicide prohibitions), but the catch is that you ARE ADMITTING GUILT in the hope that the court will, in fact, agree that such an otherwise illegal action was justified given the legal/practical circumstances. This usually only works in a _specific_ _articulable_ case (think Bernard Goetz being charged for unlicensed CCW), rarely applying to vague/hypothetical what-ifs. Again, do the right thing - and you’d darned well better be right.
If “the guy from Kansas” is smart and has a competent lawyer, he’ll admit what he did - and then make it convincingly clear that specific lives would be lost if he didn’t. He could conceivably win this. He could also conceivably turn this into overturning Rv.W, by arguing that there was nothing “private” about what was going on at a publicly advertised business operated by a very vocal & notorious practitioner.
I agree with your statement. Sarah shows once again she has some common sense that is lacking in DC these days!
GO SARAH!!!!!!!!
Too true,
Thanks for posting.
One fine classy lady.
These late term abortions are so sickening (what hope is there for responsibility when even our Pres. voted for the right for late term abortions?). A perfectly healthy person murdered. The horrific mothers surely don’t care about responsibility. One must be insane to perform a late term abortion or have one.
Yes, she does, indeed.
bump
The only moral answer to that question is to kill the killer. Anyone that would just stand by is a coward of the first degree..and would be a coward even if quoting scripture...
Okay, I want you as my lawyer. This is finally rationality, logic, common sense, wise counsel, even a biblcial morality brought together.
Please weigh in on these sensitive issues more often and ping me when you do. Thanks.
Click here for my assorted blatherings on various topics. I hope my signal-to-noise ratio is reasonable.
Are you aware this guy specialized in 3rd trimester abortions and made millions at it? Hell isn’t hot enough
Gov. Palin’s comments were correct, from the heart and to the point.
We know the Left monitors forums such as FR.
I am sure they are eating up and will use against conservatives the few mononic posts on this thread.
Yes.
I am sorry you are hopeless.
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