One Imagines That Feeling of Responsibility Will Set in Any Time Now

Accountability for "hateful rhetoric": it's only for the anti-abortion lobby

The murder of Dr George Tiller was a terrorist atrocity.

This was a line of argument that some, including Robert Peter John Day, fell absolutely in love with.

In this case, it was rightfully so. They were right to denounce Dr Tiller's murder as terrorism. They would be right to denounce all instances in which abortion providers had been attacked as terrorism, even if they were extremely show to that particular punch.

But the pro-abortion lobby started to significantly overreach when they started to insist that the entire anti-abortion lobby was to blame for Tiller's assassination.

The argument was that the anti-abortion lobby had spread hateful rhetoric that had encouraged overzealous activists to murder Tiller as retribution for allegedly murdering unborn children.

Numerous Canadian bloggers wrote about Dr Tiller's assassination in this very vein -- individuals such as Mike from (ir)Rational Reasons, Robert PJ Day, JJ from Unrepentant Old Hippie.

Yet one would have to wonder: if the rhetoric of these particular pro-abortion bloggers could be argued to have encouraged attacks against anti-abortion advocates, would they apply that sense of moral outrage and responsibility to themselves?

Nope.

That's Lulu mocking Suzanne Fortin for questioning whether or not the pro-abortion lobby should be held responsible for encouraging attacks on anti-abortion activists.

The case in question deals with the matter of James Canfield, a 60-year-old anti-abortion protester. Last week, 40-year-old Reid Haver attempted to run him over with an SUV at a Planned Parenthood protest.

Unshockingly, the pro-abortion movement wants nothing at all to do with this particular assault. Certainly they don't feel as if they did anything to provoke it.

In the specific cases of Robert PJ Day, Mike and JJ, however, the truth could be argued to be very different. They may have done every bit as much to encourage the assault on Canfield as the anti-abortion lobby did to encourage the murder of Dr Tiller.

If this seems extremely similar to anyone, all one needs to do is remember the assault on then-69-year-old Ed Snell, who was pushed off a platform he had built on the top of his car by a man more than 40 years younger than him.

The pro-abortion movement's response to the assault on Snell was a textbook case of condoning violence because the victim of said violence was on the "other side" of the issue -- in their mind, the wrong side.

From JJ:

"D'oh! Someone finally had enough bullshit from the fetus fetishists:

'Pro-lifer Seriously Injured: Clinic Receptionist Shouts: “He got what he deserved!'

*snicker* Ahem. Bad receptionist! Bad!"

From Lindsay Stewart:

"I wouldn't be surprised to find that Ed Snell got a little too bellicose for his own good and in his insane fervor to interfere with other people's private lives, the stupid fuck wandered off the edge of his platform and sucked pavement."

And from Mike:

"Gotcha. Pushing an an annoying old man is THE EXACT SAME, morally, as assasinating a doctor who performs legal, medically nescessary operations in his church."

It becomes plainly evident precisely how these particular individuals -- themselves hopefully not actually representative of the pro-abortion lobby as a whole -- view assaults on anti-abortion activists.

According to JJ, it's worthy only of mock condemnation. According to Lindsay Stewart, they probably do it to themselves and then lie about it, and according to Mike they're just annoying anyway, and so deserve it.

Yet somehow they clearly want to pretend that this kind of rhetoric wouldn't encourage someone like Matthew Reid Haver to carry out assaults on individuals like Canfield.

Even in a case like Snell's, where his assailant, Nathan Richardson didn't actually have any demonstrable links to the pro-abortion movement, it's shocking the extent to which the pro-abortion movement embraced Richardson's act. An act that was inherently non-political in its commission eventually became very political in its consequences.

The Canfield assault, just as with the Snell assault, really demonstrates how utterly disingenuous these particular pro-abortion bloggers have been about the murder of Dr George Tiller.

They didn't really give a shit about Dr George Tiller, they only care about the opportunity to brand their opponents as responsible for murder. And now that an assault has been perpetrated against an anti-abortion lobbyist, one that their rhetoric has arguably encouraged, one can ensure that they won't accept any responsiblity for the matter.

If anything, they'll applaud it. It's what they do.