LA Times and The Week, something must be said about their damaging rhetoric. (Look here for a direct response to the attack in Colorado Springs.)
The rhetoric of abortion advocates, especially over the last week, has been deeply irresponsible and damaging. In response to a terrible tragedy, they have immediately used their rhetoric to start a political blame game. Clearly, they only care about an attack like this in order to score political and cultural points against people who had absolutely nothing to do with the attack. They just can’t let a perfectly good tragedy go to waste. Their rhetoric has been both irresponsible and unhelpful to society.
But it’s not their fault. I don’t blame them for their rhetoric. I blame them for their inability to reason honestly and intelligently. Their nonsensical rhetoric is only a symptom of their much deeper intellectual problem: that their rhetoric is illogical. Let’s examine a couple examples from the two pieces mentioned above to see what I mean.
In The Week, Damon Linker sets out to place blame for Robert Dear on the Pro-Life Movement. He writes a 1001-word piece all about how he thinks that if abortion is wrong then violence is an acceptable response. Thus, he concludes, the people who publicly say abortion is wrong are to blame for violence. Ignoring the fact that the Pro-Life Movement universally condemns violence, if we assume Linker is correct, he just became guilty of his own attack. In more ways than one.
First, if the Pro-Life Movement is guilty of what Linker considers implied suggestions of violence (despite their explicit condemnations of violence), then surely Linker is now guilty for explicitly stating that crazy people ought to react to abortion with violence. Any readers who genuinely believe rhetoric is to blame for violent reactions towards abortion facilities, look no further than Damon Linker.
Second, if we simply assume Linker is correct, he is now also liable for any future violence against pro-life people. To see why, let’s also look at Robin Abcarian’s (a consistent pro-choice columnist) piece in the LA Times to see how they’re both guilty of the same thing.
The central point that these two pieces, and many others circling the internet this week, have in common is the argument that saying abortion is very wrong will inevitably cause violence. They argue that if you really believe abortion results in someone dying, someone will logically conclude they ought to kill to stop abortion. The reasoning they reference is totally false and all pro-life organizations condemn it. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that they’re correct. Let’s assume this argument is correct:
Using rhetoric to say that [X] kills people logically causes people to kill to stop [X].
Abcarian and Linker fill in the brackets with [abortion]. So they conclude you shouldn’t say it. But, notice how if the argument is true that [rhetoric] fits the argument just as easily:
Using rhetoric to say that [rhetoric] kills people logically causes people to kill to stop [rhetoric].
So I guess you shouldn’t say that, either.
This “blame-the-rhetoric” thing is a double-sided sword. If it’s true, then accusing pro-lifers of causing death ALSO logically causes death. Thus, the next time a pro-life woman has a Molotov cocktail thrown at her, she can use rhetoric to blame Linker’s and Abcarian’s rhetoric for causing violence against her. And then they can use rhetoric to blame her rhetoric for blaming their rhetoric for causing violence. And the cycle will just keep going.
The main abortion advocate argument coming out of Colorado Springs is self-defeating. It is logically self-contradicting. Saying, “You cannot make accusations of violence because it causes violence” makes as much sense as saying, “I don’t know a single word of English.”
If they’re right, the only logical response is to never speak of it, for fear of inciting more attacks. If the only logically consistent way to believe something is to never speak it, we should probably question whether the premise is true. And many, many very intelligent pro-life philosophers have already dissected that thoroughly.
And while we’re all so pre-occupied with trying to find a way to blame pro-life people, we all seem to have missed the fact that the only non-insane people even remotely implying violence would ever make sense are actually abortion advocates. Interesting.]]>
Yet Another Abusive Man Slips Pregnant Girlfriend Abortion Pills without Consent
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In Japan, an investigation is underway after 21-year-old Jin Mimae allegedly snuck his 18-year-old girlfriend two separate doses of Mifepristone, the first of the two-drug chemical abortion regimen. This drug kills the preborn child by blocking progesterone, a necessary pregnancy hormone. The child’s mother was about 5 weeks along and, unsurprisingly, became sick after being unknowingly drugged. The abortion attempt succeeded in October 2020. Tokyo Reporter wrote: Upon his arrest on suspicion of attempted abortion without consent on February 22, Mimae admitted to the allegations. “I didn’t want to marry her,” the suspect was quoted by police. “Because of
