I find these comments by Megan McCardle very disturbing:

"We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders--had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer's actions."

I recognize that anti-abortionists view abortion as "murder," but the law does not, nor does a healthy majority of the American public. That McCardle would endeavor to compare an abortion clinic with a room full of schoolchidren in an example about justified homicide tells you a lot about her disregard for the rule of law and the accepted norms of our society.

Assuming we accept McCardle's analogy: What kind of society do we end up with if we permit a self-appointed moral policeman to grant himself shoot-to-kill authority against people with whom he has a moral/philosophical disagreement?

JohnC - What is more astonishing about that sentence is that McArdle is supposedly pro-choice.

I've often thought that one useful tactic WOULD be to demonstrate right back at the anti-abortion crowd. Not the harassment and the violence, but just picket them back, at THEIR homes, THEIR businesses, THEIR churches.

Think how comfortable it must be to be an anti-abortion activist - you get to CHOOSE when and for how long and to what extent you're involved in the debate, and then you go home for a nice quiet meal and an evening with your family. Meanwhile, the clinic workers do NOT get to choose when they're on the front line; the protesters are at their place of business and increasingly at their homes.

So why NOT picket them right back? Let the ones who smugly consider themselves the 'good' 'responsible' anti-abortion protesters just because they're not shooting or bombing know how it feels.

I honestly believe it wouldn't take too many picket events before the movement lost most of its foot soldiers. I've thought the same thing about that obnoxious Fred Phelps cult. Take the protests to them. Picket them right back.

I hope to hear the same "moral" arguments if PETA extremists start gunning down people for backyard barbecues. After all, according to their consciences, meat is murder! By all means, let people's "feelings" on hot-button issues rule!

Megan McArdle wrote: "In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it."

So, she is arguing that it would be justified to firebomb the offices of Operation Rescue?

Megan McArdle wrote: "If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action?"

I think that the slaughterhouses of the USA are committing more than nine billion gruesome murders a year -- brutal, gruesome murders of intelligent, emotional, sentient beings who have far more capacity to experience pain, fear and suffering than even a late-stage fetus.

Ms. McArdle is apparently advocating that the proper response is for me to go beyond what even the most extreme elements of the Animal Liberation Front have done, and start murdering slaughterhouse workers and owners and bombing slaughterhouses.

Murder & mayhem plus incitement to the same is outside the law. Isn't it?

I find War to be sinful and an abomination. Should I kill all the generals and soldiers I can find? (a rhetorical question)

Taking the law into one's own hands in the belief that one acts for a god is terrorism or insanity or both. Inciting the insane & fearful to murder & mayhem is perhaps worse than pulling the trigger.

Megan McArdle is an appeaser. Doesn't she know they hate us for our freedoms?

Megan McArdle does not seem to have thought through her positions. She is one of those shallow, trendy opiners who tries to be provocative and c ountertrend, but this is pretty disturbing.

Bomb throwers are bomb throwers, regardless of their cause, and it isn't legitimate protest in this country. Not for any cause, whether its the Weatherpeople or the Unabomber or Tim McVeigh or Tiller's killer.

John wrote: "What is more astonishing about that sentence is that McArdle is supposedly pro-choice."

What McArdle is, is a pompous idiot spouting pseudo-moralistic, fake-intellectual crap. She writes as though she imagines that she is the first and only person in the history of the world to ever contemplate such matters, and everyone should bow down in awe at her moral profundity.

And as for her "what if Tiller had opened fire on a schoolroom of innocent children" bullshit, she should try that brain-dead Operation Rescue cut & paste boilerplate out on any of Tiller's patients, for example those whose stories Hilzoy has excerpted in earlier articles on this blog, whose lives Tillman saved, and who regard him as a hero and a saint.

McMegan: "You know what fixes terrorism? Bitch slap those bastards until they understand that we'll never compromise!

"Well, it sure worked in Iraq. I think Afghanistan's going pretty well, too, right?"

Let's see: we were just starting to "bitch-slap those bastards" in Afghanistan, when we left off and started punching out another group of brown people in Iraq who had nothing to do with "those bastards."

As I recall, during the run-up to war in Iraq, Bush said he wasn't concerned with bin Laden anymore. That was one hell of a bitch-slap on Osama, wasn't it?

Megan McArdle does not seem to have thought through her positions.

Oh, hell no, particularly when you remember that she called for taking 2X4's to antiwar protestors back in 2003. Now she is piously intoning that violence never solves anything, LOL!

The media is already playing this murder as a lone gunman. They say nothing about the bomb making material previously found in his car and his affiliation with the right wing extremists.

Megan McArdle is too stupid to understand the difference between an internal dispute and an order imposed by a foreign invader.

This is not news.

Which Canto of hell will be reserved for the killers of killers? I don't ascribe to abortion being murder, but those who do and those who murder the murderer are no better in the eyes of our maker! Smarten up pro-lifers, and celebrate life!

If abortion is legal, work to change the law. Anyone who condones cold blooded murder of a living, breathing human being because of a medical procedure between him/her and his/her patient in the privacy of one's own medical care is not the humane, rightous person s/he thinks s/he is! -Kevo

Quoth McArdle:

Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court.

No, it had not. The decisions of the Supreme Court—and the mechanisms of getting them changed (including, not necessarily exclusively, impeachment of justices, changes to the size of the Court, appointment of justices, and Constitutional Amendments) are part ofthe normal political process of this country defined in the Constitution; decisions of the Court, even those on Constitutional rather than statutory grounds, are not external constraints on that process that are not subject to change through normal political processes. The federal judiciary is a body subject to the normal political process, not a body outside of the normal political process, for all that it sometimes imprecisely described as a "non-political" branch of government distinct from the "political" executive and legislative branches.

Therefore, the idea that failing to secure a favorable Supreme Court decision is the same as having exhausted the avenues for redress of grievances within the political system and can for that reason serve as part of a moral justification or factor in mitigation of an act of violence outside of the political system must be absolutely rejected.

Anyone who doesn't understand this doesn't have the understanding of the Constitution that was, when I was in school, expected of 8th graders.

"We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders"

What does MM mean by "when the law is powerless"? Does she mean "when there are no law enforcement officers around"? Or does she mean something else.

The thing is, the law is very specific that opening fire on schoolroom of children is illegal. The law is not "powerless" in that case. If there are no LEOs there, then one could say that ... uh, there is a lack of LE there to enforce the law. So a civilian might take matters into his or her own hands and stop the shooter by using violence.

The law is also specific that George Tiller was acting within the law in his usual daily activities. He was certainly acting within the law when he was standing in the vestibule of a church handing out programs to members of the church. A civilian who took matters into his or her own hands to stop him from doing what he was doing is certainly not "entitled."

Thought experiment time!!!

Let's say Ms. McArdle discovered a fertility clinic on fire. She runs inside and finds she can do only one thing: (1) save a toddler trapped inside the building; or (2) wheel out a freezer carrying several hundred frozen embryos.

What do you think she will do?

Well, it sure worked in Iraq.

Was that Megan that said that, or Dick Cheney? Because the last I heard, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So what the hell is she talking about?

What color is the sky on the planet where Megan McArdle is taken seriously?

wow, what disgusting viewpoints offered here by M. McArdle. this is really, really ugly stuff. the right wingers are just CRAZY on this issue.

they really don't get why we're not all in a frenzy calling women murderers who want to control their own reproductive lives. y'all are IDIOTS, you hear?

McArdle's being both stupid and irresponsible.

bucky wrote: "What color is the sky on the planet where Megan McArdle is taken seriously?"

The color of money.

Someone takes her seriously enough to pay her a lot of money to churn out pseudo-intellectual, fake-moralistic crap.

Follow the money.

You know what I think? when these pro-life nutjobs try to insist that a woman with a dangerous pregnancy stay pregnant and that woman dies, then they're guilty of homicide.

They make me sick - for all their protestations about loving life, they don't give a fuck about the life or health of the mother.

She's nothing but a vessel to them. Bah. A pox on the lot of them.

And by the way:

"We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders"

No, I don't accept that at all. We don't live in Deadwood.

I actually agree with McArdle to an extent. That is, if there were a mass-murderer down the street killing lots of small children, and the authorities were protecting him, certainly someone would have to stop him. But the fact that more people don't go to such lengths to stop abortion providers tells me that most pro-lifers don't really consider abortion to be murder at all. A moral wrong, sure, but not homicide.

"If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action?"

Is she calling for the assassination of those who gave us the Iraq war? I don't think she gave this much thought.

Bitch slap those bastards until they understand that we'll never compromise!

And the anti-choice crowd is willing to compromize exactly how?

So glibertarian McArdle sides with the anti-choice crowd? Color me not surprised. Why anyone takes that twit seriously is beyond me.

Danp, McArdle doesn't give anything much thought. It's a little disheartening to see somebody like Hilzoy giving McArdle the undeserved respect of engaging with her, as though McArdle were somebody with opinions worth being interested in.

Megan McArdle does not seem to have thought through her positions.

You don't say.

HMOs and a lack of medical insurance kill thousands and thousands of people a year by denying health care. Should we start shootings HMO CEOs and members of Congress who block universal health care?

"...Possibly because those fringes have often turned to violence precisely because they feel that the political process has been closed off to them."

Well, yeah. If by "closed off to them" you mean "They couldn't get their way via the political process." Last time I checked, an anti-abortion rights person had the same political rights I do. Failing to prevail in elections or to convince the court to overturn Roe does not translate into being stripped of political power. And it sure as hell doesn't mean "the law is powerless."

I actually agree with McArdle to an extent. That is, if there were a mass-murderer down the street killing lots of small children, and the authorities were protecting him, certainly someone would have to stop him.

Oh right, because that happens all the time. In fact, there's a serial killer on my block who eats christian babies - barbecues them every sunday and APD just covers for him!! oh noes!!

McArdle is a fucking idiot.

I live in Colorado Springs, home of Focus on the Family and Ted Haggard, to name two... the problems with people who hold extreme views is that they are mentally ill, and that unbalanced mental condition often translates into violent behavior. We have to find ways that can change their behavior since such a simple act as reading the Bible sets off sociopathic instincts...

Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court.

I don't think McArdle is smart enought to understand that having the Supreme Court rule on the constitutionality of legislation IS part of the normal political process in the United States.....

HMOs and a lack of medical insurance kill thousands and thousands of people a year by denying health care. Should we start shooting HMO CEOs and members of Congress who block universal health care?

Hmmm, thinking... thinking.....

(joke, joke)

On every subject, Megan McArdle manages to be an ass.

Thank you, Hilzoy, for your calm, well-reasoned disassembly of Ms. McArdle's ill-conceived apologia for real murder.

from,

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090601-religion-abortion.html

Unwed pregnant teens and 20-somethings who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools, according to research in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. . . ."

Well, it sure worked in Iraq. I think Afghanistan's going pretty well, too, right?

Megan loudly supported both wars, although as with The Unit, she backtracked when convenient. She's still a jackass and a not particularly bright one at that.

Oh right, because that happens all the time.

Of course it doesn't. But you can't follow the logic if you're unwilling to accept the premise. I for one am surprised, given all the "abortion is holocaust" rhetoric, that more abortion providers are *not* murdered. And that tells me that most pro-lifers are don't accept the premise either.

Whatever merits McCargill's arguments may have had break down on the fact that the specific abortions done by late term abortion doctors are done mostly on fetuses that are already dead or will die shortly after birth. Either that or there is a great risk of the mother dying.

So basically she's rationalizing that it is OK to kill a doctor who was saving the lives of women, mostl of the time without killing a fetus or only killing it before it was going to die any way.

She probably never bothered to find out what late term abortion doctors do.

INteresting how the rightwing, which hhas arlready revdealed it's inate barbarism by rationalizing torture, is now rationalizing murder.

As always, Megan McCardle = so many words, so little logic.

McA-hole hits upon a good point, purely by accident. She proves that for an unfortunate large group of people, there is no civilized debate when it comes to abortion. They will twist any line of logic to justify their acts of terrorism, like an abusive lover or spouse who can think of a thousand valid reasons why the restraining order is irrelevant & unnecessary. They might have scores of lawyers & big-buck donors willing to bankroll their terrorist tantrums, but in the end, terrorist tantrums are what they do.

What is sadly required is for civilized people to point and laugh at these clowns. Chant "aaaaassshoooooole" when they set up shop. They will attack when they feel threatened, but they'll also attack when they feel emboldened, so the thing to do, time-consuming lo it may be, is starve them of membebership by pointing how few agree with their terrorist acts. And this is necessary of pro-lifers, too, those that TRULY believe in the sanctity of life, which means even doctors who perform abortions don't deserve to die. Point. Laugh. Mock. Shame & violence is what they understand. We will not kill them, we will not injure them, but we'll make them miserable, like pariahs, until they learn better behavior or self-destruct. There will be further damage, but there would be damage regardless; they waged this war. But we don't have to fight on their terms.

Simply publish her home address, office address, spouse/children's contact information (if she has them), personal, cell and business phone, email addresses. How and when she goes to "work", if she leaves her home. I don't even know who this person is and have never heard of her before today. What could she possibly have going for her if this is her point of view on Dr. Tiller's murder and abortion, in general? Her neighbors certainly need to know who lives in their neighborhood to protect themselves from her enemies, who may take violent action against her. Ever heard of collateral damage?

Obviously, anyone who finds her words threatening to life or safety has a perfect right to follow her suggestions, because the "law" doesn't seem to be doing anything to protect us from her insanity.

Too much anger?

I saw this coming when James Dobson said that the right had lost all the battles of the culture war. The clear implication was that there was nothing left to do within the law or the electoral process, and that it was time to pick up the guns and bombs.

She means state law.