Gidday Mrs Don-O
You write:
> What you said about perps not being victims is true, too, but a tautology because it’s governed by your definition of “victim.” Which is, however, a reasonable one. (Many people use “victim” to mean merely “somebody who suffered something,” as in “a cancer victim,” “a victim of Communist propaganda,” “a victim of alcoholism,” whatever, but I think I like your more restricted definition better. Due to the elasticity of current usage,though, you’re always gonna need to spell out your definition explicitly. Duty to define.)
I agree. I believe in “Truth in Advertizing”. It does nobody any good to fuzzify the roles played in the crime of Abortion. By mis-labeling the woman seeking the abortion as a “Victim” (which she isn’t — she’s a Perpetrator) we automatically sacrifice any opportunity to help her in a meaningful way.
I feel awfully sorry for someone whose life circumstances place them on the wrong side of the law. Especially as they are getting caught and perp-walked for the first time. That doesn’t make them “victims” tho’. They still need help and they are probably in pain and we should aid them if we can. But we would select a different approach to helping them than we would to, say, the family of the liquor store owner who has just been shot.
Truth in Advertizing = Clarity of Though and Deed.
Cheers
DieHard
Keep in mind, though (I'm preaching to myself here, too) that culpability in objective moral wrongs can be mitigated --- and in some cases reduced quite significantly ---- by subjective lack of adequate knowledge and free consent of the will.
Jesus Himself alluded to this in the midst of His own horrific suffering on the Cross when He prayed, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The mere fact that the Abortion Entrepreneurs must lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, means that they are aware that many of their prey --- particularly very young women --- might choose differently if they had a clear idea of the truth.
Yet ---I agree--- if we fuzzily label everyone who cooperates with evil as a "passive victim" or make a universal presumption of gross ignorance or mental incapacity, we lose the very clarity we need to help those who are defensively closed-off to us in anger, confusion and pain.