anti-abortion violence

In response to Robert Lewis Dear’s killing spree at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, pro-abortion columnist Jill Filipovic resurrected one of abortion supporters’ most insidious (and that’s saying something!) refrains in asking:

If you actually believe abortion is legal mass murder on par with the Holocaust, then how is it 100% wrong to kill abortion providers? Answer: most prolifers don’t even believe their own claims and don’t think abortion is quite the same as murder. Because it’s not.

This pops up every now and then among abortion defenders trying to trip up pro-lifers on our own principles. Slate’s Will Saletan accused pro-lifers who condemned the slaying of George Tiller of not “mean[ing] it literally” when we call abortion murder. Evangelical pastor-turned-humanist/atheist Bruce Gerencser asks “those who say abortion is murder” if “you support the execution of murderers.” Jason Brennan of the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog thinks it’s “implausible” and “absurd” for people who equate abortion with murder to confine themselves to stopping it through legal and peaceful means. California law blogger Mike Cernovich argues that peaceful pro-lifers are suffering cognitive dissonance, basing our beliefs “on psychological comfort rather than intellectual rigor.” We see it on a fairly regular basis in comment threads.

The truth is that this isn’t a sincere argument. They know they can’t win a fair argument on whether the unborn are human or abortion is killing, so they hope to indirectly discredit the truth by conjuring up inane reasons to claim we don’t believe it. So now would be a good time for a refresher course on the just use of force in a free society.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

One of the most frustrating things about dialogue between pro-lifers and pro-choicers is that only one side truly understands where the other is coming from. We can fully understand that support for abortion (among the non-extremists, at least) is rooted in a reluctance to not force women to undergo something perceived to be needless (because they erroneously believe the fetus isn’t alive), but pro-choicers rarely acknowledge compassion for preborn children as our driving force, instead constantly insisting we simply hate women.

At Refinery29, Kelsey Miller has what seems to be a rare pro-choice effort to actually understand pro-lifers, in the form of an extended ride-along and discussion with Students for Life coordinator Emily Wilkinson.

It contains a number of revelations that the truth is more complicated than pro-aborts would like, which will hopefully push some of the site’s more moderate readers to reassess their own assumptions—for instance, she acknowledges the problems with Planned Parenthood’s “abortions are only 3% of what we do” lie and the counter-argument to the belief that more contraception would reduce abortion rates, and admits that we don’t call abortion murder “for dramatic effect; that’s simply what they see.”

But Miller also unintentionally illustrates several ways that even more reasonable pro-choicers are avoiding the fundamental questions about their position.

Read the rest at Live Action News.

Conservative Standards

Think. Fight. Win.

New at Live Action: Rare Pro-Choice Attempt at Fair-Mindedness