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"It is useless to urge restraint on men who believe self-editing of freedom of speech apply only to others, that they are flawless and blameless and righteous. It is useless to make Frank Schaeffer's argument even though they have made parallel ones about how 'liberal' television degrades children, about how 'liberal' television hypnotizes voters, about how liberal entertainment destroys American values. When they reply, "Not in this case, bad apple, tv can't make that happen", it is useless to say, "If tv can't make something happen, then why do people advertise on it with the same commercial again and again and again in hopes of making buzz words sink in. The Geico Gecko, Viva Viagra, Free Credit Report dot Com. Tiller the Baby Killer...
...So what to do? Your boycotts mean little. You are already here; you are not watching Fox News Channel. Advertiser boycotts are also of limited value. Most make barely a dent in a company. Besides which, in this economy, an advertiser who found its sales boosted by association with Malaria would start breeding mosquitos. If there is a solution, it is perhaps an indirect boycott. It is probably your experience, as it has been mine, that stores, bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, often show Fox News on their televisions. Don't write a letter, don't make a threat. Just get up and explain. If they will not change the channel, leave the place and say calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere..."
I have to say, it is a workable plan.
7 comments:
I think Olbermann and Sullivan's attacks on O'Reilly are a little unfair - many people genuinely believe that partial-birth abortion is equivalent to "killing" a baby (I myself am undecided on the issue). But from what I've seen, O'Reilly never explicitly called for violence.
Many pundits on the left used extremely incendiary rhetoric against President Bush. In general, I think that's all right, as long as they're not directly calling for violence.
(I'm not sure if you've ever heard some of the debates in the British Parliament, but I think you'd be appalled by the vicious ad hominem attacks. George Galloway, for example, has called some of his fellow MPs names far worse than "killer.")
Still, I agree that Olbermann's plan is fair and reasonable. People should boycott FOX News if they think that O'Reilly's antics somehow justified the use of violence against abortion doctors. I think that's a legitimate use of consumer power.
Here is a really good post by Megan McArdle about Dr. Tiller's murder. (Try to ignore the many spelling and grammatical errors.)
I'm sure you'll take issue with McArdle's view, but maybe that will help generate a new blog post!
I've already read the Megan McArdle article, and have seen red.
The issue with calling someone "Tiller the Baby Killer" is that it does invite attack.
Secondly, what Bill O'Reilly and his ilk do (and what you seem to fall prey to yourself) is a misframing of the reasons for late term abortions. Late term abortions are not done for the heck of it. They aren't done because the woman in question "couldn't keep her legs together" or because she didn't have the moral fortitude to last the nine months. Late term abortions are actually illegal unless the life and/or health of the mother is at stake, or if the fetus will not be viable/suffers from severe defects. This is the abortion women who truly (and sometimes desperately) wanted their baby have. Are there provisions for a woman's mental health? Yes. But the fact is, these late term abortions are being performed willy nilly, have to meet strict guidelines (like having two doctors sign off on something like a mental health reason), and make up about %2 of the abortions performed in this country. The Far Right, and that includes Bill O'Reilly, strip all of that away, make it seem like people like Tiller are ripping babies that could be born in a healthy manner from their mothers because the mom suddenly decided she wanted a cup of coffee, and create an environment where a medical procedure - perhaps the one abortion procedure the Right and the Left could agree is medically necessary if we're speaking about facts and not emotive "Baby Killings" - is demonized because it is the easiest way to drum up anti-abortion sentiment.
Making it seem like fully viable babies are being aborted every day for no other reason than the doctors are amoral beings who want to make money and the women are flighty things that can't even hold on for nine months helps create an environment where women suffer and doctors die.
I understand many of the reasons for late-term abortion, and I’m not unsympathetic. I don’t know about O’Reilly, but I’m certainly not suggesting that the majority of women make this choice lightly. I think this is a very difficult moral issue.
From what I understand, there is some debate over the medical necessity of late-term abortion when it comes to the health of the mother. But I don’t know enough about it to argue this point more forcefully.
There have been a number of cases where healthy, viable fetuses were aborted. Tiller was singled out by abortion opponents particularly because he performed late-term abortions on healthy babies – sometimes as late as nine months into the pregnancy. I think you’re right that O’Reilly and other pro-lifers misrepresent the extent to which late-term abortions are being performed on healthy fetuses, but even a single abortion of a fully-developed, healthy fetus could be the moral equivalent of “killing” a baby, depending on how you define “personhood.” I have a lot of trouble with the idea that a fetus is only a “person” after he or she exits the womb.
I don’t think that mental health is a reasonable justification for terminating a pregnancy at seven or eight months. Certainly, we wouldn’t allow a mother to terminate her child’s life immediately after pregnancy because of mental health reasons. And by the third trimester, there is no physical difference between a child inside the womb and a child outside the womb.
I also think that there are some doctors – though hopefully not many – who would be willing to certify under virtually any circumstances that a pregnancy could cause “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” Tiller and the few doctors who worked with him clearly interpreted the Kansas statute very loosely.
Tiller was singled out by abortion opponents particularly because he performed late-term abortions on healthy babies – sometimes as late as nine months into the pregnancy.
But not on healthy mothers. He was brought to court many times under the grounds of performing illegal late term abortions, and was always found not guilty of those charges.
I have a lot of trouble with the idea that a fetus is only a “person” after he or she exits the womb.
And I have a lot of trouble with the idea that a woman should have to risk her health and/or her life to deliver a fetus.
Also, from a purely legal standpoint, it is logical for the fetus to only gain 'personhood' after exiting the womb. Otherwise, any and every miscarriage after a certain week would be worthy of investigation - which, no.
From what I understand, there is some debate over the medical necessity of late-term abortion when it comes to the health of the mother.
The evidence of women who either had abortions due to health reasons (like the woman whose blog post about this very issue was linked the last time you mentioned this debate) or who have or would have died in childbirth or simply because they were pregnant (ie, women who need treatments such as chemotherapy that would be harmful to the fetus, or renal failure) outweigh that debate.
I don’t think that mental health is a reasonable justification for terminating a pregnancy at seven or eight months. Certainly, we wouldn’t allow a mother to terminate her child’s life immediately after pregnancy because of mental health reasons.
We don't allow a mother to terminate her child's life immediately after pregnancy for mental health reasons because the woman could then get things like drugs without being barred due to potential harm to the fetus.
Unlike what O'Reilly and others have insinuated, mental health reasons isn't having seen Glenn Beck on the tv and decided that you just are feeling a bit down and no longer feel like being pregnant - especially in Kansas, by the way, where two physicians have to agree that the woman would be 'irreparably harmed' by giving birth before said woman could get a late-term abortion.
Tiller was singled out by abortion opponents particularly because he performed late-term abortions on healthy babies – sometimes as late as nine months into the pregnancy.
Tiller was singled out because he was one of three doctors in this country who would perform late-term abortions, and he was outspoken about that fact and used his money to support pro-choice causes and institutions.
Tiller wasn't brought to court on charges that he performed late-term abortions on mentally healthy mothers. He was brought to court on charges that he was getting second opinions from his own employee. He was acquitted of the criminal charges, but the Kansas state medical board was still investigating him before he was murdered.
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If it was always a choice between the mother's life and the life of the fetus, I think I would agree with you. But it's not always that black-and-white.
As far as I know, there is no legal definition of "mental health." The doctor has full discretion to determine whether a patient is mentally healthy. "Irreparable harm" is, likewise, undefined by law.
Part of the reason that there are only three doctors in the United States who perform late-term abortions is that - at least according to the Supreme Court - there's some consensus among doctors that late-term abortion is never medically necessary.
Like I said, I don't know enough about medicine to know whether the Court was correct. I'm sure that there are more doctors who would be willing to perform abortions if they didn't fear for their own safety.
But given that a) the medical necessity of late-term abortion is disputed by many medical professionals, and b) there is already selection bias among the few doctors who are willing to perform late-term abortions, I don't think we should automatically trust the medical judgment of late-term abortion practitioners who use mental health to justify the procedure.
"Part of the reason that there are only three doctors in the United States who perform late-term abortions is that - at least according to the Supreme Court - there's some consensus among doctors that late-term abortion is never medically necessary."
Part of the reason there are now only three doctors who perform late-term abortions is because they - like Tiller was - tend to be in the crossfire of the extreme, terrorist like anti-choice movement. Likewise, there is a reason why there is now a shortage in doctors who are able to perform abortions, and it isn't because there is a consensus among doctors that abortions are wrong.
"If it was always a choice between the mother's life and the life of the fetus, I think I would agree with you. But it's not always that black-and-white."
Life isn't always black and white, which is why it is important to keep procedures like late-term abortions legal. Because it isn't just about saving babies' lives. It isn't "kill Tiller and all of these infants who would have otherwise lived get to with no other harm done". It is a messy choice in almost every legal circumstance, but just because it is uncomfortable doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. This is a no win situation, not in the least because most of these women genuinely wanted those children. Which is another thing that gets lost when the anti-choicers start up.
"As far as I know, there is no legal definition of "mental health." The doctor has full discretion to determine whether a patient is mentally healthy. "Irreparable harm" is, likewise, undefined by law. "
Don't take this the wrong way, but I trust a doctor who has evaluated individual patients to know more about whether or not an abortion should be performed in the event that the patient's mental health would be irreparably harmed than you - or I, for that matter.
I think I mentioned that safety was a concern for some doctors. But it’s really unfair for you to suggest that the “anti-choice movement” – you’re doing a bit of argument framing here yourself – is “terrorist-like.” This seems a bit like saying that “Muslims are terrorists.” The vast majority of pro-life organizations vehemently condemned Tiller’s murder, and a number of pro-life groups even rallied with pro-choice advocates to show their outrage. Every pro-lifer I know strongly rejects any kind of violence, and I have friends who are pretty militant.
I certainly don’t think that I know more than a doctor about what is medically necessary. And, like I said, I’m sure that the vast majority of late-term procedures that are performed are morally vexing and emotionally painful for the mothers involved. But there is a great deal of debate among medical professionals as to what is medically necessary, especially when it comes to late-term abortions. Dr. Tiller had a particularly loose definition of maternal “health” – so loose that his own friend (and fellow abortion practitioner), Dr. William Harrison, said: “Some of his [Tiller’s] practices are hard to defend."
I don’t agree that we should simply defer to a certain self-selected group of doctors on matters of such profound ethical sensitivity. Doctors aren’t ethicists, they are not morally or politically objective, and they clearly do not always make decisions that are morally defensible.
I do not believe that a viable fetus has interests that are morally equivalent to those of the mother, but at such a late stage in the pregnancy, I think that the life of the fetus does have to be weighed against the interests of the mother. If the mother’s health concerns are temporary or superficial, then I think there is a problem.
I have trouble believing that a doctor who was one of only three in the country willing to perform such late-term procedures is a fair and reasonable arbiter of whether the mother’s health concerns are pressing enough to go ahead with the abortion. As far as I can tell, Tiller never refused a procedure.
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