Month: May 2009

Dissents Of The Day

  A reader writes:

As insufferable as O'Reilly usually is, I don't think he was beyond the pale to say "death-mill." (And I'm pro-choice.) The disturbing description that young woman gave – patients lying in a row awaiting full dilation, squeezing the fetus into a toilet-like device – does convey a kind of assembly line where dead fetuses are the end result. Just as you always say how torture should be called "torture," the description of abortion procedures should not be sanitized.

Now, if O'Reilly had directed inflammatory rhetoric at the doctor himself, by saying something like "Tiller should not get away with this" or "Somebody needs to stop that monster," then I think your post would have merit. Absent of that, I think you're being just as inflammatory as O'Reilly - if not more so.

Another writes:

I think it was wrong that Tiller was killed. I knew someone who flew out to Kansas for a late term abortion – month 7. The viability threshold had been crossed and there was no real health risk to the mother. Much as I don't like O'Reilly, his use of the phrase "baby killer" was factually accurate.

Another:

The blame for Tiller's murder rests solely on the depraved individual who pulled the trigger, not O'Reilly or any other pro-life boogeyman that you feel like beating over the head with this tragedy. O'Reilly does come off as a despicable alarmist in those clips, but that is no reason to inject his name into your headline and insinuate that he is responsible for Tiller's murder.

Also, how can you chalk this up to Christianist terrorism when the killer has yet to be caught? The Christian organizations who were Tiller's biggest enemies have already put out statements denouncing the act as evil cowardice.

Your blame-shifting and overgeneralization do a huge disservice to Obama's call for "open hearts, open minds, and fair-minded words" on the abortion issue. I hope that you will address this knee-jerk, sensationalist post when the shock of the news has worn off.

I do not and did not blame O'Reilly for the murder. I think his rhetoric and demonization of an individual subject to violence and threats are excessive and dangerous. He has every First Amendment right to speak the words he has spoken and I am sure he never wanted this to happen. But you can debate these matters with a little less personal demonization and get your point across.

Quote For The Day

"Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. No private individual had the right to execute judgment against him. We are a nation of laws. Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence. Rightly or wrongly, George Tilller was acquitted by a jury of his peers. "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord." For the sake of justice and right, the perpetrator of this evil deed must be prosecuted, convicted, and punished. By word and deed, let us teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion. Every human life is precious. George Tiller's life was precious. We do not teach the wrongness of taking human life by wrongfully taking a human life," – Robert P. George, current theocon-in-chief.

Terry’s Moment

Almost all pro-life organizations have decried the Tiller assassination as unconscionable and wrong. Here is Operation Rescue's Randall Terry:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

O’Reilly’s Grandstanding

A reader writes:

I know it's a minor point in the scheme of this story, but that interview with the girl who had an abortion was utterly incoherent. The procedure was completely legal and ethical — a girl accompanied by her parents had an abortion at 20 weeks. She received counseling and seems to have undergone a waiting period — the abortion took place five days after she arrived.

If O'Reilly believes that this was a terrible thing, why isn't he blaming the girls parents? They made the decision. The doctor simply performed a legal and ethical procedure with what sounds like care and professionalism.

In any other case, O'Reilly would be crowing about parental responsibility. Here, he shamelessly shifts the blame. The girl speaks of the abortion as if neither she nor her parents knew what an abortion was. I have no doubt that some women and girls who have abortions later regret their decision. But that doesn't obviate the fact that it was their decision, and/or their parents', not the choice of the doctor who did the procedure.

“Sin”

Jessa Crispin partially defends it:

Sin is a cultural construct, and what is considered a sin in one time or place seems like a good time in another. As much as the Church has used the idea of sin as a form of control, it’s hard to take the idea seriously much anymore. So if I vote for a pro-choice candidate, I’ll suddenly lose the ability to receive the sacrament of communion and therefore go to hell? Yeah, right. Embracing sin is instead seen as freeing and, in its way, a form of spiritual evolution. As Aviad Kleinberg writes in his new book Seven Deadly Sins: A Very Partial List, “Sin can be the expression of an ardent desire for freedom, for liberation from any rules but the rules of our own desire. In its most heroic manifestations it becomes an act of creation – creation of the individual self at the price of being cast out of the common paradise.”

The Far Right’s Rhetoric

Ta-Nehisi is concerned after the Tiller assassination about the consequences of Limbaugh statements like this:

How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people or even saying you do, or that they're not good or put 'em down, whatever…make white people the new oppressed minority and they're going right along with it because they're shutting up. They're moving to the back of the bus and I can't use that drinking fountain, okay. I can't use that restroom, okay.

TNC notes:

Anyone who knows anything about American history knows what lies at the end of this kind of rhetoric.

Other Far Right Response

From the Free Republic blog commenters, courtesy of Balloon Juice:

What goes around comes around…

One less nazi as far as I am concerned.

This isn't good, boys and girls … not good at all. This serial-killer piece of excrement will be held up by every abortionist and every lover of abortionists as the reason why the Secret Service needs to be assigned to guard every abortionist, every abortion mill and every lover of abortions in this country.

Obama is going to take advantage of this murder to sieze [sic] even more control over our society. I would not even put it past them to commit this murder themselves, as an excuse to sieze [sic] power. Reichstag Fire, and all that…

No doubt this ‘man’ is responsible for thousands, maybe tens-of-thousands of needless and wanton  deaths. If you think his ‘passing’ is a bad thing in the cause of speaking out and ending the practice of abortion, I don’t know what to tell you. I can only say that I shall not mourn his demise, nor shall I judge others.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn what they say. I suspect more people than would publicly admit it are glad Tiller is dead. I doubt there will be a lot of Doctors lining up to take over his practice.