It's funny you say that because I've been thinking the same thing recently. If I truely believed, truely believed without a shadow of a doubt that aborting a fetus is the same as killing a baby then I would say not only is it morally acceptable to kill those who perform abortions but in fact a duty to do so.

I believe there are large shades of grey on this issue. I tend to lean towards a woman's choice is more important then the prevention of allowing cells to become life however if you have the above viewpoint and are not killing abortion doctors or at the very least blowing up clinics your a hypocrite and a coward.

who do you think you are, dumbass?

If I truly believed that aborting a fetus was killing a baby then I'd have to tie that in with my belief that taking human life is wrong fundamentally and not a sliding scale based upon the actions of the human involved. Abortion doctors were fetuses once, it doesn't change the nature of the act just because you aborted it forty years late.

If we are justifying murder based upon the actions of the human, then we're just saying that it's wrong to kill a baby because it hasn't grown up to do something to deserve death yet, which is a retarded interpretation of the words "pro-life."

That's like saying you're pro-democracy so long as no one elects a black person... or a member of Hammas.

Not at all, a pro-lifer would be saying killing is justifiable to prevent a murder. Not as a punishment, mind you, but literally to save more lives. If there's a guy drifting around town cutting people's throats, is it not arguably justifiable to shoot that man down to get him to stop killing people? If we equate abortion to murder, this is absolutely justifiable. Pro-lifers are trying to have it both ways and waffle because the law isn't on their side and the end result of their rationale disgusts even them.

I dunno petep, you do YOU think I am?

I guess I shouldn't just say 'pro-lifer'. I'm referring directly to anybody who simply equates abortion to murder, which is still a lot of people.

What often gets lost in the "Killing to prevent the murder of innocents" is that people tend to only give killing as the only option for stopping someone. To take Cleaner's hypothetical thought experiment (I really want to imagine that he said "there's a guy TOKYO drifting around town cutting people's throats"), I can think of a dozen non-lethal ways to deal with the menace. How does killing the knife-wielding ricer ever become justified? This just makes the term "pro-life" look even more oxymoronic.

Now, what people AREN'T addressing is that if somebody condones the killing of Tiller, why not post information and putting hits on the women that are getting the abortions? What abortionist sneaks up to a pregnant lady and vacuums out her snatch? By the anti-abortion community's reasoning, aren't what they doing just as profane to the Word of the Lord? I was under the impression that if a doctor wasn't going to give a woman an abortion, that they'll find a way to do it themselves.

I only heard that argument once. It was some late night AM talk radio where the host had a speaker from Operation Rescue on his show, talking about the possible criminal charges being brought against Tiller at the time (Being a Kansas [sic], we got into this debate A LOT). The host kept pressing the spokeswoman into answering whether or not the women getting abortions from Tiller ought to be charged with crimes themselves. After a lot of attempts to derail the topic, the spokeswoman said in a perfect world, they deserve to go to prison. She was very angry at being put in that position and the conversation ended right there. If I remember correctly, she did not bother to stay after the commercial, even though she was suppose to.

Oh, and I have no idea who petep was talking to. But I'm pretty sure that he thinks your a dumbass, Cleaner. CRIPPLE FIGHT!!!!

He wouldn't be the first one. But hell, I have to at least know why before I'm going to flail my stumps around in comical fashion.

And I'm sure Tiller got plenty of death threats. I'm pretty sure he was shot and crippled earlier, so it's not as if the valiant Fetus Fighters didn't TRY to sway him off the course via non-lethal means (surely if they'd meant to kill him he would have been smote). But the guy just wouldn't stop, and so our hero figured the only way to get him to stop was to kill him, and he may have been right. Apparenlty Tiller was very passionate about women's rights.

But the thing is that from the threats, to the injury, to the killing, it's all terrorism. And you're definitely right that the evil women who get their dastardly abortions are equally culpable, but the problem is if you shoot them in the head the kid dies, and if you wait till post-abortion her killing is no longer justifiable as preventing a murder. Unless she's constantly getting knocked up and having abortions I guess.

In which case, it occurs to me, you'd be preventing a future murder by preventing the future child from being conceived in the first place. Birth control? That's a no-no too. How confusing it is to be righteous.

There are so many philosophical angles to this issue. Everything from the far flung : is it possible to change the future through time travel and how does this redefine the nature of abortion, to the more personal : how do we cognitively cope with being a species who hates to die to the point where we love to kill? In a way, I think we're all thinking too deeply, or maybe in an alien fashion, to the way the people who shoot abortion doctors think. We're processing the data differently. To us, this could be an issue of the ultimate question of the value of life, while to them it's just keeping babies alive long enough to turn them into dead soldiers. Making the issue not the sanctity of life, but who gets to control the destiny of life, the mother, the church, the government, or something else entirely.

Oh yeah, my vote is for "the mother."

(insert fart joke here)

Here is an honest question on this topic:

If the fetuses being aborted weren't viable (which is sometimes the case with the procedure Tiller was performing) then would a anti-choicer still consider that murder?

I mean, if the potential-baby had no head--which does happen--or some other profound birth defect, is it wrong to abort it?

Forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term is the same as forcing her to abort.

Fundamentalist terrorists, or bomb-throwing radicals? Whichever, they're becoming everything they hate.

KILLIN BAYBIES IS WRONG! U WIL BURN IN HELL!

I win the debate.

Squidmojo: Well, I cannot say for certain, but I assume that a baby without a head would be less cute to the pro-life community and therefor be more okay to take out and toss into a wood-chipper.

What about a fallopian-tube baby? There is nothing technically wrong with them, except for the fact that when they grow that they will rupture the woman's reproductive centers and kill her. But they aren't growing in the womb, so is it really considered an abortion when you take one of those fuckers out?

I'm sure you would love to suck Bill O'Riley's cock.

Oh hi!

I'm not talking about O'reilly I'm talking about the anchor women. Just like Olbermann she only gets guests who agree with her.

I disagree

Hey Cena, it's a month later and you're still not on POE-News

It's because you're a coward

Great arguement Capitalist Real Porn, please explain why you disagree.

Pastbot, I've been busy. I work at day I bounce at night. I beat up some Georgia Tech frat dudes last week. I'll get to it when I'm ready. I'm not a coward, just ask those frat dudes.

did the chess club get roudy?

Frat dudes at GT are different from the rest of the student body. They study business as opposed to engineering. And they go to the bars trying to act tough because there aren't any hot girls at GT. They weren't chess geeks, just your typical fratty douch bags.

so you, except with a business education?

Greta Van Susteren, mmmmmmmmmmm...

Cena Mark? A Bouncer?

It's like... like I can hear the earth revolving, coming full circle...

She's not an anchor woman. She's a pundit. I have a degree in broadcasting. I've taken courses on reporting and the media. I keep having to correct you guys who critique Fox News pundits by calling them anchors and reporters, just because you're fed on a diet of MSNBC and News Busters.

These are the beauties I'm talking about. Fox has hotter women. http://www.askmen.com/women/votes_350/354_hot_news_anchors.html

I prefer getting real information from reliable sources, and later looking at vapid women in skimpy outfits.

That's just me though.

Cena, please go to POE-News and get that shit sorted out with futurebot before coming back to PoeTV. If you have time to argue with us fags on the TV site then you have more than enough time to argue with the fags on the News site.

Don't interrupt Cena, he has BOUNCING to do.

The Pro-Life movement, as a movement, does not in fact allow exceptions for this trinity of yours. The founding belief is that abortion is exactly the same thing as throttling a newborn to death, so therefore there's absolutely no way to justify it.

It's one of the things that makes pro-choice v. pro-life such a perfect political issue, especially for senators: Everybody feels entirely too strong about it, there's no conceivable way in which a compromise can be reached, and the people who use abortion as a platform actually can't do anything to directly affect the issue.

Magnesium, citrusmirakel made great points here, but it's also important to remember that Dr. Tiller was willing to do the LATEST OF THE LATE term abortions. Apparently there're only a handful of people skilled enough or willing to do that.

You're drifting into the area now where a doctor is willing to knowingly abort a fetus that actually might look mostly like an infant rather than some sort of human/tadpole mutant crossbreeding. That can be a disturbing thing to sit and consider for a lot of people, and Doctors are people too.

I would imagine a certain amount of prejudice got aimed Dr. Tiller's way for this perceived horrificness in regards to his seemingly unflinching nature in such abortion cases. These people know that these cases fit a very narrow medical and legal situation, but I'd wager are just horrified by what they perceive as the horrific... apathy? immorality?... it would take to do it.