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That’s the question in my Scripps Howard column this week with my conservative colleague Ben Boychuk. My take:
Many Americans, I suspect, hate abortion politics. We understand why pro-lifers are appalled by abortion. We also understand why pro-choicers believe women should be free to make private reproductive health choices. Liberals like me usually end up on the pro-choice side, but the fit is often awkward.
The question of whether pro-life rhetoric led to George Tiller’s murder, however, is easy: Yes. Without a doubt. How could it not? How could a political movement spend decades portraying one man as the Hitler-like embodiment of evil and not expect that somebody someday wouldn’t try to violently end that perceived evil? Tiller’s death was, in retrospect, inevitable.
Nobody, it should be noted, is ever killed for refusing to perform an abortion or dispense birth control pills.
Some abortion defenders have suggested that it’s time for the abortion debate to end. That won’t happen. But pro-lifers must now vigorously root the merest suggestions of violence from their midst or be banished to the political fringes. And they can start by reining in the talk show blowhards on their side.
“If I could get my hands on Tiller — well, you know. Can’t be vigilantes,” Bill O’Reilly said on his radio show in 2006. “Can’t do that. It’s just a figure of speech.”
Abortion-opponents must be rigorously ensure their rhetoric doesn’t incite murder. Did O’Reilly’s comments cross that line? He certainly didn’t avoid it, so he deserves the criticism he receives. Those who encourage violence must feel the full weight of the law.
But abortion-rights defenders shouldn’t think they can or should try to silence the moral qualms of a great many Americans — including those who wrestle mightily with such qualms yet still support the pro-choice position.
The debate will be with us always. It must not become an actual war.
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I don’t think abortion-rights defenders hope “to silence the qualms” of those who disagree with them, Joel. Indeed, my experience is that those who are most willing to support a woman’s constitutional right to choice are the very people who are also most willing to support everyone’s constitutional right to free speech.
The problem here isn’t speech. The problem is violence.
The problem isn’t a picketer. The problem is a dead doctor.
I’m not asking for the government to put a gag on right-wing entertainers. And I don’t know of anyone else who is either. I’m just asking people who give a shit to raise their voices to some of the nonsense that goes on. You may have qualms about abortion, but it’s been the law of the land for 37 years and it’s not likely to change.
As kim says, it’s not the speech, it’s the violence.
However, i gotta challenge her last statement: with the current supreme court, the fate of legal abortion DOES hang in the balance. in fact, sotomayor’s views on the topic are a bit of an enigma.
the only other thing i’d add is that “reproductive rights” is a more accurate description thatn “pro-choice”.