Pro-Lifers and Killing Abortion-Doctors

Stephen Kershnar

Pro-lifers and Killing Abortion-Doctors

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

August 31, 2015

Over the summer, the Center for Medical Progress released secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood officials that appear to capture a criminal conspiracy by the organization to sell fetal body parts. Several states responding by cutting Planned Parenthood’s funding. Congress tried to defund it, but the attempt died in the Senate. While embarrassing, and perhaps criminal, the videos are less intellectually troubling than the pro-lifers implicit commitment to violence.

There is a history of violence by pro-life forces against abortion providers. The New York Times reports that between 1978 and 1993, there were over one hundred bombings and arsons of clinics, more than three hundred invasions, and over four hundred incidents of vandalism.

Pro-life violence has also resulted in eight people being killed, including four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort. Two examples are worth considering. On October 23, 1998, Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot to death with a high-powered rifle at his home in Amherst, New York. On May 31, 2009, Scott Roeder shot and killed Dr. George Tiller as the latter served as an usher at a Wichita, Kansas church. The leading pro-life groups publicly reject this violence.

The problem is that if the pro-life position is true, then the above killings and some of the other violence are justified. The argument is straightforward. Lethal violence may sometimes to be used to defend innocent parties and, if the pro-life position is true, then, sometimes, assassinating abortion-doctors is an instance of such defense.

By analogy, consider the following case. A Nazi worker drives his truck to his job at the death camp, Treblinka. His job is to drop Zyklon B into the shower-like rooms that are used to kill Jews. A Jewish resistance group kills the worker with an anti-tank round when he is a mile away from the camp. They do so in order to save Jewish lives. Under German law, assassinating death camp workers is illegal and punishable by death.

It intuitively seems the resistance group can permissible assassinate the worker. On the pro-life position, the Nazi worker is analogous to an abortion-doctor, the Jews who would otherwise be killed by the worker are analogous to fetuses, and the Jewish resistance is analogous to the pro-life resistance.

To deny this analogy, the pro-life opponent of assassinating abortion-doctors has to deny that the Nazi worker may be assassinated or show that, on pro-life assumptions, assassinating him is different from assassinating an abortion-doctor. The pro-life position blocks both moves.

The pro-life argument for assassinating abortion-doctors makes the following assumption: Abortion is as wrong as killing adult people and is wrong for the same reason. On different accounts, abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent, infringes the fetus’ rights, violates the Golden Rule, conflicts with God’s prohibition on such killing, deprives the fetus of a valuable future, or brutalizes the killer. The reason one of these wrong-making features is present depends on further assumptions concerning whether the fetus is a person or human being, is loved by God, has a valuable future, and so on.  

The pro-life commitment to violence can be seen in that on almost every pro-life view, killing a fetus is as wrong as killing a newborn. If defending a newborn’s life warrants lethal force, then so does killing a fetus. This can be seen in the above case in that the resistance may kill the Nazi worker if his job consisted of gassing Jewish newborns.

One objector might claim that assassinating doctors is illegal. This objection is weak because morality and legality are distinct. Slave-owning was immoral even though it was legal. Helping slaves escape was moral even though it was illegal.

A second objector might argue that it is always wrong to kill someone, intentionally kill someone, commit violence, intentionally commit violence, and so on. If this is a commitment of the pro-life position, then it is rather implausible. This would rule out defensive war and lethal protection of children being slaughtered. For example, the Catholic Church is pro-life but holds that some wars are permissible.

A third objector might claim that pro-life assassination is justified only if benefit of the killing exceeds its cost. From the pro-life perspective this is likely the case because assassinating and harassing abortion clinics reduces their frequency and each additional life saved is likely to add a happy person to the world. It is also reasonable to think that having children will even add to the lives of mothers who are prevented from getting an abortion. This rests on psychological studies of the effects of motherhood, including unwanted motherhood.

If we have to trade off a fetus for an abortion-doctor, then, in terms of costs and benefits, the tradeoff is worthwhile. The happiness the fetus gains by not being killed likely outweighs that lost by the doctor and his grieving family members. This is because, on average, the fetus has more years of life ahead of her than does the doctor.   

This fetus’ being more important is further evidenced by the fact that, in many cases, the abortion-doctor completed some or all of his reproduction and the fetus has not yet reproduced. Also, because, on average, aborted fetuses have demographic features (for example, black and poor) that suggest that they will have more children than abortion-doctors and will reproduce at a younger age (thus shortening reproductive cycles), there is even more reason to believe that in terms of producing happy people, a fetus’ life is more valuable than that of an abortion-doctor.

In short, consistency requires that if those who accept the pro-life position also accept assassinating abortion-doctors. If you think such assassination is crazy, you’re no pro-lifer, despite your protestations on Sunday. The reason almost no one believes that it’s okay to kill abortion-doctors is that they really don’t think that a fetus has a right to be in the woman’s body when she doesn’t want it there.

LOCATION             a:  DFOKershnar190.mat; Art. Sum. Set #60: Disc #1; Box #13-99; 08/31/15

Keep Women Out of Ground Combat Units

Stephen Kershnar

Women Rangers: Against Gender Integration of Ground Combat Forces

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

August 30, 2015

A couple of weeks ago, the first two women ever graduated from Ranger School. Ranger school is part of the Army’s special operations unit and an extraordinarily demanding program. Some consider it the most physically and mentally demanding course in the U.S. Army. Predictably, the Obama administration plans to allow women into the Rangers as well as other ground combat units, such as infantry, armor, artillery, and special operations. This is a mistake.  

Having women in ground combat units will likely make them less effective and we don’t know about the wider costs and benefits of such gender integration on the military as a whole or society. In general, if a change carries has significant cost and if we don’t know the net balance of other costs and benefits, then the change is best avoided. This is true here. 

Ground combat units (for example, infantry, armor, and special operations) are designed to close with and kill enemy combatants. Close combat units use guns, grenades, bayonets, or hand-to-hand fighting. To be effective the members of such units need strength, endurance, and to work well with teammates. What lessens these features threatens to degrade the team’s performance and increase the chance that members will get hurt or killed.

The notion that admitting women would make ground combat units less effective rests on the fact one way in which the sexes differ. On average, men have more strength and aerobic capacity than women. They are also less susceptible to injury. A British study of whether women should be in combat units found that, women performed 20 to 40% worse on various strength- and aerobic-based tests. The lesser performance is in part because, as the British Ministry of Defence found, in general, women have 30% less muscle as well as smaller hearts and skeletal structures.   

Even for women with the same aerobic fitness and strength as men, the British study found, women have a greater risk of musculoskeletal injury. According to the Center for Military Readiness, U.S. Army data indicates that in some areas (for example, artillery), women had double the injury rates as men. The British found that women are five times more likely than men to be injured when carrying heavy loads (consider, for example, stress fractures) and that these loads are less than what are carried in some ground combat units.

This rate of injury is distinct from women’s expected absences due to pregnancy and the extended recovery time that follows it (up to 24 months). Unsurprisingly, strenuous training with heavy loads undertaken before full recovery from pregnancy increases the risk of injury. The British also found that women in the military are also more likely to have mental health issues than men and that is before they being serving in ground combat units.

The problems here are threefold. First, introducing women into ground combat means more combat teams will operate shorthanded and have more turnover. When a team member gets injured, a unit operates with fewer people or has to get a replacement. Small combat units such as tank crews, infantry rifle squads, and artillery gun crews, the Center for Military Readiness points out, consist of 4-12 people. Injuries are a problem because, during combat, evacuating injured soldiers is impractical and operating shorthanded can endanger the crew. The same is true for pregnancy.

Second, on average, introducing women into ground combat crews will result in team members performing worse. There is no question that when pressure to achieve gender balance is applied to the military, standards will be lowered. This might be done by having different standards for men and women, lowering the minimum standard, or replacing higher scoring men with lower scoring women. Anyone who has watched the way in which affirmative action at universities has led to the admission of worse students knows how this will play out.   

Third, it is unclear whether introducing women will reduce cohesion among combat teams. The British study found that unit cohesion plays a significant role in determining how well units perform. The literature does not show whether introducing women will affect unit cohesion. For example, will the different perspectives outweigh tensions caused by courtship and jealousy, two sets of standards, and chivalrous concern? Studies of race and gender on unit cohesion were inconclusive, but in any case, the British claim, they are likely weak and fleeting. Given the greater turnover, it is hard for me to imagine that cohesion won’t take a hit, but this is armchair speculation. 

Other effects of gender integration are harder to assess. Among the expected benefits of gender integration are that more people are eligible to work in ground combat units, the cost of labor for such units will lessen, and there will be more equality of opportunity and more role models. There are also expected costs. These include the significant retraining costs for women who try but fail to qualify for ground combat units. When the injury rate climbs, so will medical costs, both short-term and long-term. There is also the smorgasbord of costs that will accompany separate gender facilities, diversity training, increased adjudication and punishment costs for sexual misbehavior, extra personnel to compensate for maternity leave, and so on.

The balance of these wider factors is unclear. One thing is for sure, American political leaders can’t be trusted to give an honest accounting. Consider the recent Presidential liars and bullshit artists. Obama, for example, lied about whether Obamacare will allow you to keep your doctor. George W. Bush lied, or was unformed, about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When it comes to sex and race, our leaders will be even more likely to lie or mislead than normal. 

In short, integrating ground combat units will likely cost money and lives, cause large numbers of preventable injuries, and degrade combat performance. It is best avoided.   

Confederate Flag: Blood in the Water

Stephen Kershnar

Confederate Flag: Imprudent to Take It Down

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

July 21, 2015

On July 10^th, following the Charleston church shootings, South Carolina took down the confederate battle flag. Barack Obama and the rest of the American left demanded its removal as did establishment Republicans such as Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Mitch McConnell.

South Carolina’s removal followed a mad rush to dump the flag. Walmart led the charge when it stopped selling items with it. Walmart was followed by Apple, Amazon.com, Google, Kmart, and Target who did the same. TV Land stopped showing reruns of the “Dukes of Hazard” because the car featured on it had a confederate flag on its roof. Corporate America had decided the flag was like used toilet paper.

This is yet another step toward cleansing the country of symbols of the confederacy. It is only a matter of time before military bases named after confederate military leaders (Fort Hood and Fort Brag) are renamed and statutes of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Richmond are removed.

There is the problem of inconsistency. No one wants to ban the sale of the Chinese flag. This is odd given that China’s flag flew during Mao’s dictatorship. His government starved and killed more than 60 million people as part of his attempt to shoehorn China into communism. A similar thing is true of current flags, t-shirts, and other displays of the Soviet flag despite its having flown during Joseph Stalin’s regime that starved and killed 20 million people. Few even seem to want to eliminate President Andrew “Indian Killer” Jackson from the twenty-dollar bill, despite his aggressive military campaigns against Native Americans. Apparently, contemporary Native Americans will have to rest content with changing the name of the Washington Redskins.  

Leaving inconsistency aside, the argument for removing the flag is unclear. It appears to be that governments and people should not cause offense to others when it is unreasonable to do so. For example, posters and t-shirts with the swastika, Princess Diana’s head superimposed on picture of a porn star performing oral sex (an Irish group’s taunt of England), “God hates fags” posters (Westboro Baptist Church), and pictures of partially dismembered fetuses (assorted pro-life groups) might violate this principal. The issue is whether flying the confederate flag is similarly offensive.   

It is not clear that flags and other symbols have a meaning in the sense that they express declarative sentences. Consider, for example, Israel’s flag. What does it mean? Israel exists. Israel is strong. Israel is a Jewish state. It is not clear which of these sentences, if any, are expressed by the flag. This is not true for symbol that focuses on an idea (for example, the peace symbol), but the confederate battle flag is not a symbol that focuses on an idea.

Rather than express declarative sentences, flags and similar symbols often have emotional content. Consider, for example, the emotions Marines feel when they fly the Marine Corps flag or see their grown children in Marine Corps uniforms. The problem here is that the emotional content of the confederate battle flag is different for different people and it is unclear whether, in this context, the emotions of one group are more reasonable or virtuous than another. 

Many Southern whites see the battle flag as symbolizing their ancestry and history. This is similar to a family coat of arms. The emotions they feel are those they associate with a band of brothers fighting against impossible odds. They’re offended when people want to take it down much as former Marines would be incensed were peaceniks to burn the Marine Corps flag. To many blacks, leftists, and establishment Republicans, the confederate battle flag is associated with bigotry and race-hatred that has its roots in American slavery and the antebellum Southern way of life.  

In general, there is no right against being offended or even unreasonably offended. People have a right to do what they want with their property and this right includes using it to express ideas. A pro-lifer’s ownership of her t-shirt includes the option to put a graphic pictures of fetuses on it even if it makes people uncomfortable. Even if there were a right against being offended, it wouldn’t solve the issue here as you have one group who will be offended if you leave the flag up and another that will be offended if you take it down.

Leaving rights aside, I think it is probably a bad idea to take down the flag. Nations and other political entities are often specific peoples with shared histories. Consider, for example, England, Germany, and Japan. I don't think it is a good idea to whitewash a people’s history any more than it is a good idea to airbrush out relatives from family photos. Knowing one’s family history, whether good or bad, is important for identity and a shared identity is often a good thing.  At the very least, we should have good evidence that airbrushing out the Confederacy is good for people or morally required before we do so. I don’t see any evidence that this is the case. 

More importantly, the movement to remove controversial historical figures and symbols will likely spin out of control. Not only because it has no natural stopping point, but also because once easily offended groups smell blood in the water, they’ll go on a feeding frenzy. Today the flag is lowered from South Carolina. Tomorrow statutes to confederate generals (for example, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson) and money with a murderous leader (for example, Andrew Jackson) are removed. Later, we’ll remove still more references to other historical leaders or events that retrospectively offend people. Perhaps the right will get in on the act and target horrible Presidents (for example, Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt) and stupid wars (for example, World War I). No thoughtful adult trusts the Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the NAACP, and their ilk to know when to stop dismantling historical symbols. Better to keep our connection to the past in place and be honest about where we came from.