Killing in the name of...

As a blog that often espouses Pro-life ideas I think it is important along with all the pro-life community to soundly condemn the murder of George Tiller. Tiller was a well-known abortionist who did late pregnancy abortions. He was shot yesterday in the foyer of his church.

Being pro-life means trusting that killing is not the right way to fix problems. Tiller had most certainly killed thousands of children, but stepping outside of justice and killing him is evil and inexcusable. Murder and mayhem for a good cause is still murder and mayhem. It is sad that many in our society believe violence is the path to goodness and peace (apparently even a few isolated pro-lifers).

It is encouraging to see the pro-life community as a whole condemn this violence. I hope that the understanding that even the killing of so bad a person as Tiller is wrong will lead the movement to oppose other such behavior such as capital punishment and unjust wars. I am still hopeful that someday our culture will find common ground on a Consistent Life Ethic that defends and respects all human life.

Hope and Politics

It is with mixed emotions that I congratulate Barack Obama on becoming the president of the United States. It is an historic landmark for America to choose a man with brown skin to be our leader. After listening to my wife's grandfather, the grandson of a slave, tell stories of all the discrimination he received as a soldier fighting for his country, I understand why America needed this—and why my African American wife was excited to vote for Obama. Obama really is a great man, and having a president capable of articulating a vision for America will be a welcome change after 8 years of a president who seemed incapable of explaining his ideas or decisions.

As proud as I am to have a president with a similar interracial makeup to my son, I am also dismayed that this president would have wholeheartedly supported us in killing our son 6 months ago if we had decided he was inconvenient—even offering government funds to help terminate him.

My wife says that I am foolish to hope for leaders that always guide us toward what is better. America will never choose a president like Joe Schriner. Politicians (at least the ones capable of being elected) won't or can't save America from itself. Perhaps trying to stop evils committed by our nation through voting is misguided. After all politicians only enable us to do the injustices to our fellow man that we have already decided as a society that we wish to allow.

This election cycle has me discouraged about the willingness of American to vote for any real improvement in this nation. Several state ballot measures to limit abortion lost badly. It seems that the much touted “values voters” are only really energized to ban gays from getting marriage licenses, but aren't willing to stop the murder of unwanted infants (just as most “pro-life” politicians haven't done a thing to limit abortions). The unpopularity of the war in the campaign was only rivaled by Obama, who opposed the war, falling all over himself to assure us that he is very willing to strike other countries. It seems voters don't have the stomach to accept the sacrifices required either for war or sustained peace. American voters seem to expect war to be convenient, easy, and bloodless—things war will never be. Obama had to repeatedly reassure voters that he will not “spread around wealth,” because Americans would not tolerate being required to share their means with the needy. In the end this election was about the economy. The results imply that Americans vote for their money and convenience; right and wrong doesn't factor into most voters decisions at all.

After spending a great deal of time on politics here at the Gridbook Blog I wonder if I have fallen into the pitfall of imagining that real change can be effected through government. This election has been touted as a reemergence of “hope” in the political process. As much as I admire Obama personally and what he symbolizes as an interracial president, I have very low hopes for him. Just as our nation gets beyond the horrors of racism, we only more deeply ingrain our policy of infanticide. Having seen first-hand the devastation of abortion, the fragility of human life, and knowing that Obama supports this atrocity makes me skeptical of all the other good intentions he has.

But perhaps this is the problem of hope in politics—we hope for too much. I had high hopes for Bush 8 years ago too, and he has been a sore disappointment. The problem isn't politicians. It is ourselves. Humans are naturally a violent and selfish species, and no law or government will undo this tendency. It can only be changed from the inside, supernaturally.

So I have learned to vote my conscience, but without as much hopefulness that the political process can cure the ills of our society. Rather than hoping for the law to enforce social justice, non-violence, equality, and treatment of all with dignity, perhaps I must work harder to live out these values in my daily interactions. I may not change the world, but if I change the lives of a few people it will likely be worth more than every vote I ever cast.

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Genocide Reflects Poorly On Us

I'm watching the debate:

Barack Obama just said, “When genocide is happening... and we stand idly by, that reflects poorly on us.”

He was talking about genocide in foreign countries, but his words demonstrate how poorly his own indifference toward the systemic killing of unborn children in his own country reflects on him. Obama's commitment to justice is only matched by his callous blindness towards his own hand in horrible injustice.

It really is a shame. He could have been so much better than this.

Human Rights and Gut Reactions

I recently read a fascinating post by Frank Schaeffer on Huffington Post on political compromise in abortion. His approach is interesting and compelling enough that it deserves some response:

First of all I don't want to minimize the significance of the biggest liberal site on the net arguing that late abortions are brutal murders and that Democrats should overturn Roe v. Wade. I hope this this realization will be an important step in the gradual political progress that will hopefully lead us away from the violence of abortion.

The ethics of the post, however, are so problematic that they must be pointed out:

"To most Americans--including me--it is gut-check self-evident that a fertilized egg is not a person, because personhood is a lot more than a collection of chromosomes in a Petri dish or in the womb. To most Americans--including me--it is also gut-check self-evident that an unborn baby is mighty like one of us, and that a lot of fast talking about reproductive rights and choice or a woman's mental well being, doesn't answer the horror of a three-pound child with her head deliberately caved in lying in a medical waste receptacle. Perception is reality in politics, maybe in ethics too."

Human Rights should not be based on emotional gut reactions! Emotional reaction doesn't always lead to right ethics. A European 200 years ago would have said it was gut-check self-evident that people of color couldn't live without white supervision. It sometimes seems obvious that people who cut me off in traffic deserve to die. It seems gut-check obvious that torturing one terrorist would be alright if it might prevent attacks. Gut feelings sometimes lead to good deeds and sometimes lead to enslavement and genocide. We debate human rights because gut reactions aren't enough.

Schaeffer calls “absolutists” who would either permit or ban all abortions “stupid” and claims that they are ruining our hope for political progress in America. I disagree, absolutists are the only ones actually thinking about abortion. Schaffer believes most people could agree on First Trimester as a place to draw the legal line for terminating a pregnancy. But any line in the middle of a pregnancy would be arbitrary. What would make an 11-week 6-day fetus a piece of tissue that can be removed, and a 12-week fetus a person deserving of protection? Almost nothing. The development from one-cell to infant is gradual.

There are only two monumental changes that could be logical candidates for conferring human rights: conception and birth. If you deserve rights from conception then all abortion is murder—and we should not compromise on murder. If before birth no one deserving of rights exists in the uterus then shackling a woman for 9 months to a fetus she doesn't want is unjust imprisonment—and we should not compromise on imprisonment of the innocent. While these are extremes, they strike me as the only thoughtful approaches to abortion. We may compromise on all sorts of politics (economics, healthcare, taxes, immigration) but we shouldn't compromise on human rights.

Schaffer's idea might offer a workable political compromise. Drawing an arbitrary line at the end of the first trimester could let some voters rid themselves of the nagging gut reactions that unsettle them now. Such a compromise would work like the “moderate” policy of whites in America between the Civil War and Civil Rights. Whites wanted to acknowledge the humanity of blacks while denying them legal equality or political power. Human rights compromises may work politically for a time but they are inherent contradictions that struggle under the weight of their own absurdity. Only one side can be right. Only one idea will win in the end. I can only hope that eventually a great human rights movement like the one lead by Martin Luther King will bring our divided culture to agree on the moral bankruptcy of killing unborn humans at any stage.

Schaffer is both insightful and correct on one assertion: If Obama loses this election it will be because of the voters like me who would have happily voted for him except for his unwavering support for abortion.

On Contraception

With all of the recent discussions of new birth as well as the longstanding defense of the sanctity of life it is important to make a clarification on the issue of contraception. As a whole-hearted supporter of the Pro-life movement I believe it is essential that we recognize human life begins at conception and defend the dignity and rights of all our fellow humans. Unfortunately, many of the most vocal in the Pro-life movement often add to the cause political opposition to access to contraception. Contraception as its name implies prevents conception. While, the responsible use of contraception (and thus sex) is a topic that deserve much introspection and discussion it is not directly a "life issue." While leaving the "right" to kill our fellow humans to our own discretion is something that must be opposed, I believe that leaving decisions such as contraception in the realm of personal ethical choices makes for a better, freer, and more just society.


Contraception, unlike abortion, does not kill. Contraception is a non-violent tool: a tool that can be used wisely or unwisely, but it should not be the goal of the Pro-Life Movement to make everyone wise--it should be to make a society in which we do not kill. Fortunately, the vast majority of pro-life Americans (80% according to a recent poll) favor no restrictions on contraception. These more "pure" pro-lifers, however, are not usually the public face of the pro-life movement. Pro-life advocates that politically oppose contraception re-enforce the rhetoric that seeks to label us as trying to control people's choices rather than save human lives from violence. If we truly desire to save innocents from being murdered we do better to simply oppose killing in the public sphere and leave contraception to discussions of private ethics.


Therefore, today I declare along with other pro-life bloggers (sponsored by TurnTheClockForward) on dozens of blogs that we support access to contraception.

An Open Letter to Senator Obama

Dear Senator Obama,

I hope that out of the many letters your receive every day you have an opportunity to read this and consider my words. First I must say that I admire your dedication to social justice, equality, and peaceableness, as well as your deep sincerity. On a personal level as part of an interracial marriage and the father of a biracial son I would feel deeply proud to see a man such as yourself in the presidency. I will not, however, be able to support you in your run for the presidency due to your support for legalized abortion, which contradicts all the ideals that you espouse in your speeches.

In your book “The Audacity of Hope” you imply that opposition to abortion is a primarily theologic concern, and thus while it must be respected it is foreign to the realm of politics. Nothing could be further from the truth! Claiming that opposing abortion requires a faith inaccessible to the uninitiated ignores the universality of human rights. To segregate basic respect for our fellow human beings to the church does a disservice to the rest of the nation. If people of faith were the first to oppose injustices such as slavery, inequality, and mistreatment of women it is not because these issues were only theological, but because religious people sometimes have a heightened sensitivity to real wrongs.

My personal awareness that this is more than some “political issue” was when I was fifteen years old and my mother told me that I was scheduled to be aborted myself and I had two older siblings who had been killed by abortion. Then I understood that abortion is not some abstract issue but a real violence destroying real humans. When I became a physician my mother asked that I use my influence as a doctor to help prevent abortions and help other women and families avoid the devastation that legalized abortion had on us.

In your explanation of your abortion position you said you support unrestricted access to abortion because the act is never done without the woman “wrestling with her conscience.” While this certainly should change our perspective on women who terminate their fetuses (compassion instead of judgement) the difficulty of the decision doesn't make the outcome (killing a fellow human) any less wrong. If you read in a history book that a slave owner or participant in genocide had deep misgivings about their actions this should elicit your sympathy, but the result for their victims (death and enslavement) becomes no less wrong because it was hard for their oppressors to do it. Nor should empathy for those who feel they have no choice but to act violently prevent their fellow citizens from restraining this violence and demonstrating a more peaceable way.

Senator Obama, as someone who champions human dignity and recognizes that our rights as individuals should not allow us to trample our weaker neighbors I would expect that you would be pro-life or at least more neutral on abortion. As someone who has been moved by your writings and speeches, I hope that your unwavering support for abortion is a blind spot you have carelessly inherited from the Democratic Party platform, rather than any true hypocrisy of the humane values you claim to espouse. Having read your books I really believe the sincerity of your values. I also believe it is not mere rhetoric when you say that you deeply respect me as a pro-life American. But your respect for me and your pronouncements of sympathy towards pro-life values are no comfort when the outcome for the victims is the same. Unborn Americans are being killed by the thousands everyday and as president you would do nothing to defend them.

Were it not for your position on this single issue I could have wholeheartedly supported your run for president, but instead I must vote against you and invest all my political energies into opposing your election.

Despite my opposition, however, I believe that you will become the next president of the United States. So as you enter your presidency I beg you to reflect on your values and reconsider your duties to human beings not yet born. You could use the “historic moment” of your presidency to lead America towards a more compassionate way that protects all the weak from violence. Like you, I am optimistic that the recognition of human dignity by political power will someday make our nation and world a better place. Future generations will judge our lack of action. If you do not realize that human rights apply to all humans another reformer one day will, and I fear that history will judge you harshly for your blind spot—like the early American leaders who spoke boldly about liberty and kept fellow humans as slaves.

Thank your for taking the time to read this letter and consider its contents. I pray that you exceed all my expectations and prove all my concerns wrong, and become the sort of leader America so desperately needs.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Davis

Representative Government

With all of my talk about controversial politics it was about time I actually broke down and talked to a politician:

2/17
Hello Representative McKillip, My name is Jonathan Davis, and I am one of your constituents in Athens. I am writing to ask you to support HR 536 “The Human Life Amendment.” This is not a liberal or conservative issue as much as supporting basic human rights and dignity. As a physician who has taken care of preborn children as well as the elderly and infirm I can assure you that they are deserving of protection under our laws. I believe firmly in this amendment and hope that Georgia will be able to lead the country in assuring all Americans are recognized and protected. I will be watching how you vote on HR 536, and it will influence my own voting when elections come up. -Jonathan Davis

2/19

Hi Jonathan! I appreciate your thoughts and do have certain reservations about the Resolution and its rather far reaching implications. I will review it if it makes it to the House floor. Please feel fee to send any thoughts on other matters that are important to you! -Doug McKillip (House District 115, Athens)

2/19
While I understand the "far reaching" aspect of this bill in terms of political power (challenging a Supreme Court statue and quite a few special interests) the idea of giving the most basic legal protection to every human being in Georgia could not be more simple. It is not far reaching to protect the basic human rights of every individual, it is one of the most basic ideas that this country is about. I do hope that you will reconsider your reservations about this bill. I believe the basic respect we afford to other human beings is one of the most important issues in this country today. If you end up opposing this bill I must respectfully say that I would be required by my conscience to most vigorously oppose your reelection. Thanks again for listening to me. I really appreciate the letter back. This is the first time I have ever been significantly involved with my local representative, and it is so good to hear back from you personally (something that never happens with my representatives in Washington). Democracy in action! Thank you very much, and if you do change your mind on HR 536 please do let me know. -Jonathan Davis

2/20
Hi Jonathan! I really make an effort to return all emails - especially when we disagree - I do believe it is crucial to communicate because it is the only way to hear different ideas. Maybe we will agree on the next one. Take care. -Doug

Unfortunately the representative is not supporting the resolution, therefore I will have to oppose his reelection. It is sad that I must oppose him since it is quite refreshing to have some two-sided communication with my elected representative. A wise friend and I recently had a long discussion on the whole idea of representative government by the citizens. His analysis of the flaws of democracy was brilliant and eye-opening (an excellent argument I could not do justice here). I still believe that representative government is the best way to run a society, but sadly the results of this exchange are not encouraging. Perhaps it is just the nature of human beings that we oppress others even in the best government system?

Values and Personality: Part I

With all the soapbox speeches on this blog, perhaps I would do well to examine the personal conflicts and influences that produced these convictions. While many essays here are commentary, this site is personal and the essays are personal thoughts.

Political and ethical beliefs are not arrived at in a vacuum with only logical extrapolations from fundamental principles. They arise organically within a mind after mixing with the milieu of experience, emotions, and personality. As Chris often points out the logical arguments for my stances often leave much to be desired. While I must work on more thoughtful reasoning, “one cannot help but believe, that which seems true.” Thus I will try to provide an examination of how these values came to seem true in my mind:

Part I: Pro-Life

I was raised in the Pro-life (anti-abortion) Movement. My mother was a passionate pro-life activist. She had two abortions, before having us, and she had initially scheduled me to be terminated as well. Seeing the wrongness of what had been done, she poured her energy into preventing further killing of innocent fetuses. As long as I can remember there were bumper stickers on the car and we carried signs at rallies. We were taught that if enough people got involved America would come to it's senses and stop the killing. To a child there was an overwhelming sense of optimism and hopefulness in the face of terrible wrong.

The impact of abortion within my family deepened the belief in the rightness of being pro-life, but it also prevented any sense of enmity in my conviction. How could I despise those who have abortions, when my own mother, who raised me to be pro-life and saved me from being aborted, had once done this? I believe this perspective nourished my sense of empathy, and led me to a much more nuanced view of evil. Conservatives often think in terms of good guys and bad guys. Even as a young person I couldn't fully accept such as simplistic explanation.

Being Pro-life and Christian my parents raised me Republican and Conservative. I believe due to this political affiliation I was initially in favor of the death penalty and hawkish about war. I even considered applying for a military academy. While I certainly had a young male bravado, I was never eager for violence, but I was taught it was a necessity for responding to evil in the world. While I couldn't quite accept the conservative concept of bad guys versus the rest of us, I did accept that violence kept order and prevented worse evils. Killing our fellow humans (guilty humans -since I was pro-life) was a necessary evil in this world. I even supported Bush's invasion of Iraq as recently as 2003, but by that time my confidence in the acceptability of violence was already waning.

(for more on becoming a pacifist see Part II)

Is Violence Effective?

This post originally started as a response to this post on Turn the Clock Forward.

A book a few years back called “Freakonomics” claimed that legalized abortion in America is responsible for decreasing the crime rate. (We aborted future criminals.) Since then much pro-life debate has focused on discrediting this argument. Similarly and more recently in the news the administration has been claiming it needs the ability to torture and hold people indefinitely without charges if it might save American lives. Pacifists and civil libertarians seem only able to counter with the claim that this behavior might be harmful in the long run because it hurts our image in the world. People of conscience seem bound to a debate that judges right and wrong based on utility.

I think we should be careful not to focus our pleas to stop violence on outcomes. Do I believe the argument that abortion lowers crime? While I don't want it to be true, it could be! Could torture prevent a terrorist attack? Quite possibly? Even if certain types of killing and violence does make the US people safer we still must stand against it. We should be committed to non-violence because it is right, even if it isn't always safe.

Even if preemptive wars and bombing civilians saved lives, even if capital punishment prevents crime, even if euthanizing the severely disabled does ease burdens on society, even if racial profiling gets drugs off the streets, even if embryonic stem cells do cure diseases, even if torture prevents terrorist bombings, even if aborting poor babies prevents crimes --these things are inherently wrong; wrong even if done for all the right reasons. Violence is an excellent way of enforcing peace and stability. Violence works even when it is wrong.

Our job (a difficult one) is to show people a better way. Forgiveness and love are better than violence, but people have to seek peace because it is right not because it is effective. (We Americans have a bad habit of mistaking efficiency for rightness.) Some hopeful idealist point out that if everyone practiced non-violence the world would be perfectly and effectively safe. While this is true in theory, there has never been a fully non-violent society this side of heaven, and in this world non-violent people often end up nailed to crosses.

Peaceableness wins the hearts and minds of people not by proving better outcomes, but by living out a truth that people will want to follow despite any danger.

Blood on My Hands (South Dakota)

Most of the fuss over the recent election is likely a lot of noise over nothing, exchanging bad for bad. The real tragedy of this election was the ballot that struck down the South Dakota Abortion Ban. I fear this injustice among us will not end in our lifetime, because in the end we want the ability to terminate those who inconvience us. What finally brought down the ban was that it would protect offspring of rapists from being killed. It reminds me of how even good people want to excuse the deaths of Muslim civilians and children, because they might be relatives of terrorists.

I found something I wrote in the gridbooks during medical school that reflects how I feel today:

On being a pro-life medical student:

Lord Jesus, how eagerly my brothers and sisters rush to shed innocent blood! And I am guilty with them. I cannot deny my hand in this. I have raised my fist and joined in the battle cry of individualism, which deals death the weak, the silent and the inconvenient. How lost we are! How desperately lonely!

And what do I say to them? I understand too well. I have blood on my hands as well. Would I lay down my rights, my life, even my comforts for another person I have never met? I say "yes" but it is only an abstraction. So I am forced to sit and listen as they sing the praises of destruction. I speak, but they respond, "What right do you have?"

I have no right. I am no less a sinner. So I am here among them, alone and shuddering. What have we done? How did we get so lost? Why don't we care about what we have done? How did our compassions become so misguided that even our caring breeds more violence?

How long can this last? How long can we go on neglecting our neighbors and living well at the expense of the weak, poor, and small? The problem is that we can go on this way indefinitely. Our human capacity to misuse each other is almost limitless.

The Pragmatic Use of Embryonic Stem Cells

Embryonic stem cell research was in the news today. (New York Times Article) I doubt the veto will last. Polls say 75% of Americans want embryonic stem cell research so there is little doubt they will eventually get it. I don't think I am being too incendiary to make the comparison to the crimes of my ancestors against the slaves they bought and sold:

Stem Cells and Slavery:

America has always been a pragmatic, business-minded culture. Most of our genocides have been done in name of sober well-doing. We have a history of inventing entities that we call humans but not persons (human things rather than human beings). Then we kill, maim, enslave, banish these “things” in the name of charity or good business.

We tend to invent these “human things” when our fellow humans can be conveniently used to further our goals, and then with clear consciences we go about our violent business. History will always judge us as murderers. We are, but we are not viscous murderers—just practical well-meaning murderers.