Amp:

Well, if I were a judge in that case, I’d certainly decide for “not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Why? This looks alarmingly like treating someone as crazy simply because their beliefs are morally depraved. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but in actual historical reality lots of Nazis and Klan members have actually thought this way about Jews and Blacks (for example) and acted accordingly, to horrifying effect. I don’t think they were “insane” in any sense that affects legal or moral responsibility. They were just evil. Why should our hypothetical murderous anti-Christian be thought of any differently?

I find it fascinating that the Catholic Church, at least in this official document, entirely avoids using the word “Protestant” to describe, well, Protestants.

Well, the “separated Churches and Communities” Unitatis Redintegratio aren’t just Protestants; they’re also talking about the Eastern Orthodox churches, to take one important example.

Dr. B.: Thank you for this post. It’s one of the best things I’ve read in a while on the bottom-line importance of a consistent pro-choice position. This whole argument reminds me of nothing so much as the arguments between immediatists and gradualists over the abolition of slavery — and not coincidentally, of course, since banning abortion just means legalizing slavery in the case of pregnant women.

amy: Hold the bus. Did I say “women in general don’t think about their abortions”? No. But I do believe that in any large group of people, you’re going to find some who ain’t all that thoughtful or responsible. That’s who laws are for.

This is not so. Laws (as opposed to advice or legislative resolutions) are for authorizing men with guns and clubs to enforce compliance with a proscription. Passing a law against something means, ultimately, being willing to cuff, beat, imprison, and/or shoot someone over it.

This is an important fact about government action that had better not be ignored. When you talk about using legislation to control people—women—that are declared to be irrational by some process of public deliberation, you are not just talking about telling them what to do. You are talking about attacking them if they do not do what they are told to do.

This is important to remember, because not thinking about it can lead people to sign on to the most monstrous sorts of views and argumentative methods.

amy: I do not regard a 10-week fetus as a baby. I do regard a 38-week fetus as a baby, and I suspect the vast majority of pro-choice voters agree.

But being pro-choice is not a matter of letting “pro-choice voters” decide what Julia can do with her own body. It’s a matter of defending Julia’s right to decide what she does with her own body. The pro-choice position is not a majoritarian position; it’s a position about rights.

bitchphd: You do not have a fundamental civil right to tell me what to do with my own body. That is slavery.

amy: b, of course I do. As part of a legislative process, I have a fundamental civil right to influence laws on what both women and men can do with their bodies. Can I tell you directly what to do or not do? No. I can only do it as legislator to citizen, though I can be pretty powerful about it if people ignore the issue and leave most of the billwriting to me.

You’re either not responding to bitchphd’s point or you’re saying something which commits you to a crazy position. If what you are saying is that freedom of political speech and freedom of conscience is a fundamental right, and so you have a right to go around saying that you support bans on abortions under conditions X, Y, and Z, well, of course you do. But that’s not a response to the statement that you don’t have a right to tell another woman what to do with her own body, since bitchphd is clearly talking in terms of enforced government policy here, not merely in terms of your rights to hector and admonish other people.

If, on the other hand, you’re saying that you are a citizen in a democratic polity and you therefore have a right to enforce your ideas about an abortion ban if you can get it done through the political process, then the argument only goes through on the premise that anything that comes about as the outcome of a democratic political process is therefore something that the government has the right to enact. Which is an absolutely crazy position. Political victors in democracies do not properly have totalitarian authority over the citizens. There are lots of things that nobody has any right to enact no matter what political process approves them—laws permitting slavery for example, or laws authorizing the extermination of Jews, for example—and any political theory which would regard these outcomes as possibly legitimate is frankly one that’s beyond the pale for civilized humanity.

You might claim that you’re not arguing from the universal claim that any decision issuing from a democratic process is therefore legitimate, but only that abortion is a field where majoritarian decision-making is appropriate. Fine; but then you’d have to give some argument for that, rather than just appealing to polls and pointing out that we live in a quasi-democratic polity. You’d also have to give up the claim that you are pro-choice, since allowing for abortion laws as long as they are supported by a majority may not be anti-abortion, but it is also not pro-choice.

Thus Robert:

Murder is a legal term that means the deliberate ending of a human life with a certain type of intent. It’s murder for me to shoot my wife’s ex-husband because I want him to die; it isn’t murder if I run him over by accident, or if I shoot him in the woods because I mistake him for a deer.

The only way abortion would be legitimately considered murder is if the person performing the operation, or the person who requested it be performed upon her, thought the fetus was a human being and wanted to end its life. That’s murder by anyone’s definition. If a person is honestly convinced that a fetus is not a person, then by definition they do not have the requisite frame of mind to commit murder. Manslaughter, at most.

So if I earnestly believe that Christians are not human beings, and that I therefore have a right to hunt anyone who makes a confession of the faith like a beast, and I act on this earnestly held belief by gunning down some folks at Sunday services, does that mean, on your view, that I am not guilty of murder, but rather of manslaughter at the most?

Come on, now. If you’re going to come down on abortion, at least don’t be mealy-mouthed about it.

Thanks for this post. I’d be interested to see what your research comes up with.

A couple of notes.

1. The decision that you pointed to isn’t actually about the cartoons that Hustler published, it’s about a short passage printed in Hustler after she filed suit over the cartoons, which read:

His client is “little guy” militant lesbian feminist Andrea Dworkin, a shit-squeezing sphincter in her own right. In her latest publicity-grab Dworkin has decided to sue Hustler for invasion of privacy among other things.

Dworkin seems to be an odd bedfellow for “just folks,” “family values” Spence. After all, Dworkin is one of the most foul-mouthed, abrasive manhaters on Earth. In fact, when Indianapolis contemplated an antizorn ordinance co-authored by Dworkin, she was asked by its supporters to stay away for fear her repulsive presence would kill the statute * * *. Considering that Dworkin advocates bestiality, incest and sex with children, it appears Gerry “this Tongue for Hire” Spence is more interested in promoting his bank account than the traditional values he’d like us to believe he cherishes.

This case is a nuisance suit initiated by Dworkin, a crybaby who can dish out criticism but clearly can’t take it. The real issue is freedom of speech, something we believe even Dworkin is entitled to, but which she would deny to anyone who doesn’t share her views. Any attack on First Amendment freedoms is harmful to all [,] Spence’s foaming-at-the-mouth client especially. You’d think someone of Spence’s stature would know better than to team with a censor like Dworkin.

Again, we’d need to see the briefs. But given the comments in the decision and the facts about Andrea, it’s likely that what she was complaining about as libelous was probably (1) the claim that her suit was a “publicity-grab” and a “nuisance suit” (the latter admits of a technical definition that the Court seemed to contort itself a bit to avoid dealing with); (2) the claim that “when Indianapolis contemplated an antizorn ordinance co-authored by Dworkin, she was asked by its supporters to stay away for fear her repulsive presence would kill the statute”, and (3) the claim that “Dworkin advocates bestiality, incest and sex with children”. The rest seems to be just garden-variety abuse and sleaze, with the exception of the description of Dworkin as a “militant lesbian feminist”, but none of those are terms that she ever hesitated to apply to herself (except when, as in Biological Superiority, she felt she was being bullied).

1. In 1977, Dworkin wasn’t a lesbian separatist, but lesbian separatism wasn’t what she was attacking in Biological Superiority. She footnotes the passage that you cite:

SuperWomon’s ideology is distinguished from lesbian separatism in general (that is, lesbians organizing politically and/or culturally in exclusively female groups) by two articles of dogma: (1) a refusal to have anything to do with women who have anything to do with males, often including women with male children and (2) the absolute belief in the biological superiority of women.

(1) and (2) are what Dworkin is characterizing as “ideological rot”, not “lesbian separatism in general”. You can be a lesbian separatist without committing to (1) or believing in (2), and in fact many (probably most, but I haven’t taken any surveys) lesbian separatists weren’t committed to either.

Come on, Hugo. I’m no Catholic, and I probably have a lot more problems with Benedict than you do, but this is a bit much:

As a Christian of Jewish descent (on my father’s side), and as a professional historian, I share the same uncertainties as Jonathan Dresner. (One canard that I’m quite tired of is the notion that “everyone” joined the Hitler Youth and “went along” because they had no choice. That insults the memories of far too many righteous Germans who were part of the Resistance, from Bonhoeffer to Hans and Sophie Scholl.)

Hans Scholl was 21 when the war broke out and Sophie was 18. Ratzinger was 12 years old. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty hard for me to blame 12-14 year olds for not facing imprisonment and death in the struggle against even the most Satanic totalitarianism. It’s pretty hard for me to blame 18-21 year olds, for that matter, but at least in that case we are talking about people who are unambiguously adults. (By the time Ratzinger was 18, the war was nearly over. He was drafted into the military; when he was, he did desert his post at the risk of summary execution.)

And, well, I don’t know how to say this exactly, so let’s just go with the quotes:

From Sophie Scholl’s biography on WikiPedia:

In 1932, Sophie started attending a secondary school for girls. At the age of twelve, she joined the Hitler Youth, like most of her classmates. Her initial enthusiasm gradually gave way to criticism. She was aware of the dissenting political views of her father, of friends, and also of some teachers. The political attitude now became an essential criterion in her choice of friends. The arrest of her brothers and friends in 1937 left a strong impression on her.

From Hans Scholl’s bio at the White Rose memorial site:

Hans enrolled in a secondary school. In late 1933, Hans joined the Hitler Youth. He was attracted by their apparently high ideals. However, disappointed by the reality of National Socialism, he sought contact with the ‘Jugendbewegung’ (Youth Movement).

From Pope Benedict XVI’s biography at WikiPedia:

When Ratzinger turned 14 in 1941, he was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, membership of which was legally required from 1938 until the end of the “Third Reich” in 1945. According to National Catholic Reporter correspondent and biographer John Allen, Ratzinger was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings. Ratzinger has mentioned that a National Socialist mathematics professor arranged reduced tuition payments for him at seminary. While this normally required documentation of attendance at Hitler Youth activities, according to Ratzinger, his professor arranged that the young seminary student did not need to attend those gatherings to receive a scholarship.

It’s worth pointing out that the Scholls each joined the Hitler Youth before it was made legally mandatory. The point here isn’t to run down the Scholls; it’s to point out that people can join terrible organizations when they are young, not knowing very much about what is going on around them, and later repent, and even bring themselves to acts of astonishing courage and love. The fact that Ratzinger was in no position to do this at the age of 14 raises no more moral questions for me than the fact in 1932 Alexander Solzhenitsyn (age 14) was not personally risking his life in the underground to stop the Great Purge and the Terror-Famine in the Ukraine.

Van Helsing: Gentlemen, we are dealing with the undead…

Scholar: Nosferatu…

Van Helsing: Yes, Nosferatu.

Well, there are lots of reasons to be creeped out by Ratzinger, but the whole “former Nazi” thing is unfair.

Ratzinger was 12 years old when World War II broke out. When he was 14 he joined the Hitler Youth because all teenage boys were forced to join the Hitler Youth by law. When he got older he was drafted into the military and he deserted his post at risk of summary execution. Ratzinger’s a lot of things, many of them bad, but a “former Nazi” isn’t one of them.

Of course you don’t want to criticize John Milton for not using inclusive language or Victorian authors for perpetuating the anatomical mystery of the vagina. These are more modern concepts of equality.

Well, why wouldn’t you want to criticize them for this? If positing men as the default is bad for women now it was bad for women then, too, wasn’t it?

Amp:

But we won’t do it, because it would require spending precious tax dollars, and too many Americans would rather see some poor pothead or shoplifter raped than pay higher taxes.

Well. There’s a lot of reasons to condemn popular attitudes towards prison rape (a lot of people continue to think that it’s absolutely hilarious when made into a broad joke). But I don’t think that the issue has anything in particular to do with tax rates. Legislators routinely raise taxes or issue bonds, with no particular political consequence, for building more and larger prisons and have been doing so for years. (Sometimes they even manage to Mau Mau 51+% of ordinary people into signing on to it in a local referendum on, e.g., building a new county jail.)

Voters ought to take rape in prisons seriously enough to ensure that something is done about it, and it’s a sad commentary that they don’t. But the primary source of the problem isn’t voters at all; it’s corrections officers and the prison bureaucracy, who have repeatedly shown their willingness to encourage a climate of sexual violence and terror as a means of internal control—either directly or by turning a strategic blind eye—and to protect each other behind a Blue Wall when guards are negligent or are committing the assaults themselves. Power corrupts, and unaccountable power corrupts without limit.

There’s plenty of money to solve these problems already. The problem is that the legislators don’t care and the corrections officers’ unions block serious reform efforts at every step.