how can a murderer be pro-life?

[cellio]

I keep starting and abandoning posts about the murder of Dr. Tiller. I guess I'm still a little dumbfounded by the fanaticism involved.

It's not about pro-choice versus pro-life; the people I know who oppose abortion are not cold-blooded murderers, and we can disagree thoughtfully and respectfully. And most of the people I know who oppose abortion still grant that under some circumstances it might be the least-bad path, if the life of the mother is at stake (and with it the life of the fetus anyway, in some cases). I don't like abortion, but I feel it can be necessary sometimes. People like Randall Terry call Dr. Tiller a butcher; what do you call a doctor who stands idly by while a woman dies from a pregnancy gone horribly wrong?

But as I said, this isn't just about abortion. The person who murdered Dr. Tiller committed the same kind of terroristic act as the unabomber or the Oklahoma City bombers or any number of other people trying to advance a position by inciting fear and committing violence. No matter what the issue is, the method is unacceptable. As with treason, terrorism is about more than the specific acts committed by the wrongdoers. It doesn't seem like our legal system has a good way to deal with that, and indeed it would be hard to write the relevant laws, but I sure hope this factor is taken into account when Dr. Tiller's murderer is convicted and sentenced. The murder of any individual is sad; this was not just the murder of one individual. It needs to be discussed and, if possible, prosecuted as the larger crime.

Comments

[hildakrista.livejournal.com]

This is going to sounds strange, but I don't think the murder was about abortion at all. I think that people who kill on purpose are likely unbalanced and very easily misled. Such people fall into many, many different situations in this world, and it's a combination of luck and environment that leads them to their eventual ends.

If the good doctor's killer was mentally unbalanced and easily misled, then a different combination of events would have led him to hurt someone else for a different reason, but the damage to someone else (whether murder or not) was probably inevitable.

These are the people that are this world's fanatics. What form the fanatics take depends, I think, mainly on environment. Some fanatics straps bombs to themselves and blow up in busy train terminals. Some of them are widely respected and revered religious leaders. Some have 120 cats in their houses. All these people scare me.

When fanatics are bought up in an intolerant household, they become very, very dangerous. Tolerance is key to diffusing these sorts of people, and it's a damn shame that so many religions, including the murderer's brand of Christianity, regularly steep children in intolerance.

[subdivisions.livejournal.com]

I can't really comment on the Tiller case, because that guy might actually have some mental problems (they apparently run in his family or something?).

But the available social science research on the motivations of terrorists more generally indicates that in fact they are typically quite "normal", and no more likely to be mentally ill than other members of the population.

That research also identifies some of the reasons why so-called normal people engage in acts of terrorism, which are too complicated to go into in detail in a comment, but essentially boil down to "unmet expectations". Human beings don't have to be mentally ill to kill on purpose - they just have to experience the right combination of circumstances in life. Disturbing thought, but true. Sorry. :-(

[dragontdc.livejournal.com]

One person's terrorism is another person's asymetric guerrilla warfare. When "normal" people are engaging in terrorism, they usually consider themselves (and describe themselves as being) "at war" with a vastly more powerful and numerous foe. The methods of terrorism are those of force-multiplication taken to extremes that carry them outside the bounds of conventional warfare.