An argument seems to be developing along these lines:
- Pro-lifers call abortion murder, and use other extreme language in describing abortion, such as comparing it to the Holocaust and slavery
- Pro-lifers strongly condemned the murder of Dr. Tiller.
- 1 and 2 are inconsistent. Either pro-lifers do not really believe that abortion is an evil on the scale they claim it to be, or their condemnations of Tiller’s murder are less than sincere.
First, I think there is a kernel of truth to this argument. I do think that pro-lifers occasionally let their rhetoric get ahead of their actual feelings, and I also think that many of the condemnations of Tiller’s murder were motivated more by political necessity than genuine outrage.
Nevertheless, the argument laid out above is not sound. For one, someone committed to the principle of nonviolence could believe that abortion is a great evil, even the greatest of evils, and still not believe that violence is an apt response. This is generally rejected because many pro-lifers vote Republicans, and Republicans couldn’t possibly embrace non-violence, although it is theoretically possible.
I don’t think one needs to completely embrace pacificsm in order to avoid an inconsistency. In this thread, Cathleen Kaveny argued that a war in the US over abortion would not be justifiable by Just War Theory. And I agree. But the conclusion seems to be that since it is not, then abortion should not be considered a grave evil. I disagree with this. To understand why, let’s look at the requirements for a Just War:
The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
A war based on abortion would, in my opinion, fail on the second third, and fourth criteria. It would also fail because it is not clear who has “responsibility for the common good” and be in a position to make a “prudential judgment.”
It’s important to note that the abortion’s failure on these criteria says almost nothing about the gravity or scale of the evil of abortion. The only criterion that touches on this is the fourth one, and that is a questionable judgement call on my part, and motivated more by my high estimate of the evils that would be produced by such a war than by a low evaluation of the evil of abortion.
The criterion most relevant to the enormity of the evil is the first one, and I think the abortion issue clears that bar. It would be possible to imagine a hypothetical situation where the abortion issue was the cause for a just war. If one country was invading another, and planned to impose a one-child policy enforced by compulsory abortions for women pregnant with a second child, I think that alone would be sufficient cause for violent resistance. Though I admit it would be difficult to imagine the imposition of a “pro-choice” legal regime as the cause, since if the country were truly pro-life, they would simply not exercise that option.
Which leads to the another problem with this line of reasoning, in that it leans upon the current answer to the question being debated. Part of the reason why the idea of a war over abortion is absurd is because our culture has become so accepting of abortion. Even if it were possible to take over the government by force for the purposes of installing a pro-life regime on the US culture as it exists today, it would not end the evil of abortion, and likely provoke an even stronger response. A significant contributing factor to that is that abortion has been established as a Constitutional right. So in using the absurdity of a war based on abortion, one is assuming (and in a sense, endorsing) our culture’s current acceptance of abortion, and the legal recognition of abortion as a constitutional right.
Which is not to say that the use of such language is always prudent. But that is a separate question than whether a violent response is justified.
