Hanging women who have an abortion is not pro-life

Space_Time · Apr 6, 2018

Was The Atlantic justified in firing him? Is hanging women who have abortions just beyond the pale? Does the defense of Williamson reflect badly on the Right?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...BlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories

Kevin Williamson is wrong. Hanging women who have an abortion is not pro-life
Kirsten Powers, Opinion columnist Published 9:45 a.m. ET April 6, 2018 | Updated 10:40 a.m. ET April 6, 2018
Kevin Williamson wasn't fired by 'The Atlantic' for being anti-abortion or having 'mainstream' conservative views. He was fired for wanting women to suffer.
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(Photo: BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Is it out of bounds to argue that women should be hanged for having an abortion?

An actual debate is raging over this question following yesterday’s firing of conservative writer Kevin Williamson from The Atlantic for expressing this view on multiple occasions. Williamson apparently believes this is “pro-life.”

Conservatives fanned out to attack The Atlantic and “the Left” for their closed- mindedness in not embracing a view that calls for the humiliating, torturous killing by the state of women who have had an abortion.

Commentary’s Noah Rothman called Williamson’s firing “chilling” and The Resurgent’s Eric Erickson said that it was all “about the left wanting a monopoly on the public square so none can be exposed to competing ideas.” The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher tweeted, “The Atlantic's cutting [Williamson] loose under left-wing fire is deplorable. But clarifying. Definitely clarifying.”

Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote, “The Atlantic is essentially declaring that it cannot stomach real, mainstream conservatism as it actually exists in 21st century America.”

Here is Williamson’s view as expressed in a podcast: “I would totally go with treating [abortion] like any other crime up to and including hanging -- which kind of, as I said, I’m kind of squishy about capital punishment in general, but I’ve got a soft spot for hanging as a form of capital punishment. I tend to think that things like lethal injection are a little too antiseptic.”

“I’ve got a soft spot for hanging.”

Little Green Footballs’ Charles Taylor hit the nail on the head in a Twitter debate with Williamson about his view: “You don’t just want these women to die, you want them to suffer.”

But according to Williamson’s defenders, this is just another viewpoint like, say, believing in supply-side economics or that the government is too big. It’s “mainstream conservativism,” apparently.
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Guyzilla · Apr 6, 2018

BUT, it will darn sure prevent her from killing again. Wont take many before they lurn their proper place.

Andrew Jackson · Apr 6, 2018

Space_Time said: ↑

Was The Atlantic justified in firing him? Is hanging women who have abortions just beyond the pale? Does the defense of Williamson reflect badly on the Right?
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Anybody "defending" Williamson's moronic statement reflect poorly on HUMANITY (regardles of political lean).

Space_Time · Apr 7, 2018

Here's more:

http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/06/firing-kevin-williamson-is-just-the-beginning/

Firing Kevin Williamson Is Just the Beginning
When contrarian voices are elevated to publications once viewed as places where contending ideas shared space, organized online backlash is now inevitable.
Ben Domenech By Ben Domenech
APRIL 6, 2018
The firing of Kevin Williamson from The Atlantic on the day he was set to give an opening Q&A in their offices was sadly unsurprising given the pattern of these types of hires. It is an incident that will be referred to largely as a “media story”, meaning that Williamson is not a figure so prominent nor The Atlantic a brand so ubiquitous as to graduate this to a national story, in the way that the situations of Brendan Eich at Mozilla or James Damore at Google became national cable news stories. But they really are the same story, a story about the times that we live in and the changing nature of America. They tell a story about what happens when a talented individual has deeply held beliefs those in his profession find unacceptable.

This story is a predictable continuation of the left’s ownership not just of media but indeed of all institutions. It is depressing. It is predictable. And it is where we are as a country now. It is not confined to the realm of ideas. Eich, Damore, Williamson and others are subject to blacklists and HR reports and firing in every arena of industry and culture. If you have wrongthink, you will not be allowed for long to make your living within any space the left has determined they own – first the academy, then the media, then corporate America, and now the public square. You will bake the cake, you will use the proper pronoun, and you will never say that what Planned Parenthood does is murder for hire, and should be punished as such under the law.

Imagine what the few lonely voices that inhabit a position at a prominent publication or network to the right of Hillary Clinton on social issues if their hiring was taking place right now. Imagine what Ross Douthat would be going through if the Times hired him today (recall he was at The Atlantic before that). Imagine how his deeply held theology would be interpreted by an audience that has no respect for it whatsoever, and view it more as anti-science mysticism than as belief rooted in thousands of years of human experience.

In the case of Williamson, even someone who literally wrote a book titled The Case Against Donald Trump was unacceptable for The Atlantic because wrongthink about what ought to be the legal ramifications for tearing an unborn child apart – ramifications that ANY pro-lifer of any seriousness has wrestled with in conversation. Serious ethical and legal ramifications for destroying the unborn or the infirm are debated in philosophy classes every day – Williamson’s mistake, as an adopted son born to an unwed teenage mother, was being too honest about his belief that what he sees as the daily murder of infants should, in a more just society, have severe legal consequences. Well, that’s not what we want around here.

This brings to mind Herbert Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance”, published in 1965. This essay does a good job of summing it up.

Marcuse argued that, because of the radical repressiveness of Western society, a tolerance for all viewpoints actually contributed to social oppression. A pervasive network of assumptions and biases implicitly privileges the viewpoint of the powerful, so that seemingly “equal” presentations of opposite opinions actually end up benefiting the viewpoint of the powerful… Because of social programming, the inhabitants of a given society automatically favor certain values. The ideological playing field’s lack of levelness means that seemingly equal presentations of ideas are not really equal.

In the light of this situation, Marcuse made a rather cunning inversion (one that has been aped countless times since by cultural organs across the United States): The fact that society is so radically unequal means that we should be intolerant and repressive in the name of tolerance and liberty. He rejected what he termed “indiscriminate tolerance” — a tolerance that accepts all viewpoints — in favor of “liberating tolerance” or “discriminating tolerance.” Unlike many of his disciples, Marcuse was frank about what this intolerance would mean: “Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.
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GrayMan · Apr 7, 2018

Killing is extreme. There might be room to discuss sterilization in certain circumstances to prevent continued death of unborn children who are very developed.

Dayton3 · Apr 7, 2018

The guy ignores the fact that most murderers are not executed. Even most guilty of first degree murder are not executed. For that matter most don't even get life in prison.

btthegreat · Apr 7, 2018

Space_Time said: ↑

Was The Atlantic justified in firing him? Is hanging women who have abortions just beyond the pale? Does the defense of Williamson reflect badly on the Right?
Click to expand...

The Atlantic can make its own decisions consistent with its contract, but if I am assured that I will have complete autonomy to explore these kinds of issues as someone who writes controversial editorials, then they should honor that promise. Its a very provocative piece, but I would try not fire an editorialist or commentator who wrote this and ride out the PR storm. Another one of his offerings may sell more subscriptions than this one loses. Try to stand by your editorial writers as long as they do not promote violence or overt and belligerent bigotry.

Bow To The Robots · Apr 7, 2018

Space_Time said: ↑

Was The Atlantic justified in firing him? Is hanging women who have abortions just beyond the pale? Does the defense of Williamson reflect badly on the Right?
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Hanging a woman for having an abortion? Heck that sounds like something straight out of the Koran.

Brewskier · Apr 7, 2018

Bow To The Robots said: ↑

Hanging a woman for having an abortion? Heck that sounds like something straight out of the Koran.
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Right! She should have as much degenerate sex and abortions as she wants. Girl power right bro?

Bow To The Robots · Apr 7, 2018

Brewskier said: ↑

Right! She should have as much degenerate sex and abortions as she wants. Girl power right bro?
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As long as she doesn't ask me to pay for it.

Daniel Light · Apr 7, 2018

Brewskier said: ↑

Right! She should have as much degenerate sex and abortions as she wants. Girl power right bro?
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You realize that millions of married women get abortions when their birth control fails or when the fetus does not form properly or other complications make it unwise to bring the fetus to term.

Do you guys actually know real women?

gamewell45 · Apr 7, 2018

Space_Time said: ↑

Was The Atlantic justified in firing him? Is hanging women who have abortions just beyond the pale? Does the defense of Williamson reflect badly on the Right?
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Whether it was justified or not, they were legally correct in firing Williamson. It's called employment at will and unless you are represented by a labor union or have a personal service agreement (who's terms and conditions of employment are dictated otherwise), the company can terminate your working relationship for any reason subject to Title VII.

logical1 · Apr 7, 2018

The thread title is a typical scare tactic of the radical left. That among the other 862 reasons is why intelligent people find them pathetic and laughable.

Space_Time · Apr 8, 2018

The commentary on this issue keeps getting more interesting, please read both pieces at their links:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/opin...fire-kevin-williamson-cupp-opinion/index.html

Conservative outrage over Kevin Williamson's firing is misplaced
By SE Cupp

Updated 2:20 PM ET, Fri April 6, 2018
S.E. Cupp is a CNN political commentator and the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered," covering contemporary issues on HLN. The views expressed in this commentary are solely hers.

(CNN)It's nice to see so many of my conservative colleagues rush to the defense of one of our own, who was recently fired by a liberal magazine.

But, while I appreciate the solidarity, their outrage is misplaced.
Let me begin by saying I respect the hell out of Kevin D. Williamson, who was recently hired -- and fired two weeks later -- by The Atlantic. He is one of the smartest and most talented writers I've ever met, and I have long been in awe of his considerable gifts. Even when I disagree with him, I am always grateful that he has challenged my orthodoxy.
That said, The Atlantic was well within their purview to let him go over the issue of his stated view that women who undergo abortions should "be hanged," and the magazine wasn't merely "caving" to Twitter pressure in doing so.
The defensiveness of my friends and fellow conservatives is wholly understandable.
Liberal media often feigns a tolerance for conservative thinkers -- hiring one is often their proof of ideological diversity -- only to eschew them for merely writing or talking like actual conservatives. It's a gnawing problem when you consider that Keith Olbermann, one of media's most noteworthy misogynists, keeps getting hired by reputable outfits like Conde Nast and ESPN, despite his utterly indefensible and violent outbursts about conservative women.
There is also a thing in political media, wherein a liberal outlet hires a token conservative to represent all of conservatism, but really doesn't want that conservative to be muscular in his or her beliefs. It's a kind of conservatism that feels microwaved, warmed over and anodyne, the kind of conservatism that is safe for the left to ingest in bite-sized morsels.
Of course, that's hardly a service to readers or viewers, who will come to believe through this person -- a Bret Stephens at The New York Times or a Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, for example -- that they are all of conservatism, or at least what they want conservatism to be. When, really, a reliable conservative would never pen an essay calling for repeal of the Second Amendment, as Stephens has done in The Times. Twice. But it satisfies the Times' left-leaning editorial board and readers who tell themselves, "Now this is our kind of conservative." (Yes -- the kind that sounds like a liberal.)
That phenomenon has long plagued conservatives who've had to make a choice: work within the right-wing media bubble, or cross over to the mainstream to have your ideas watered down.
But that's not what happened in the case of Kevin Williamson.

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04/06/s-e-cupp-stop-defending-williamson-conservatives/

S.E. Cupp: Stop Defending Williamson, Conservatives
ED MORRISSEYPosted at 6:01 pm on April 6, 2018

Did Jeffrey Goldberg cave to a virtual pitchfork-and-torch mob in cashiering Kevin Williamson after one column, for reasons that had nothing to do with his article at The Atlantic? Or did Goldberg make a correct-if-tardy decision that Williamson really doesn’t fit within the magazine’s oeuvre? Much of the split between these two perspectives falls rather neatly into the same existing ideological bunkers that Goldberg said he wanted to transcend with Williamson’s hiring, but not all of it. CNN’s S.E. Cupp argues that conservatives should refrain from defending Williamson, as the position that got him fired is far from the conservative mainstream position:
That phenomenon has long plagued conservatives who’ve had to make a choice: work within the right-wing media bubble, or cross over to the mainstream to have your ideas watered down.

But that’s not what happened in the case of Kevin Williamson.

Williamson got fired for his argument from a few years back that, since abortion is murder, the women who have an abortion should be executed by hanging. That’s an oversimplification of an argument Williamson made on more than one occasion, and which he later explained with some nuance at Hillsdale College:

Noah Rothman
✔
@NoahCRothman
I'm not sure if anyone actually cares what Kevin Williamson thinks, but he talked about the "hanging" controversy at Hillsdale in 2015. It's about 2 minutes, and you won't be surprised to learn he's not the monster the left wants him to be. …

5:53 AM - Apr 6, 2018
447
299 people are talking about this
The basic argument in its original form was that if you believe abortion is murder, and Kevin believes it is, then it should be treated as murder, although not in an ex post facto manner. For what it’s worth, I’m highly opposed to abortion but believe that prosecuting the women who receive them is a very bad idea; it amounts to adding despair on top of despair. In a future where abortions are illegal, we could pursue legal remedies for those doctors who provide them, but the better option then and now is to offer hope in place of despair to the mothers themselves. I’m also opposed to the death penalty, in this and in other applications outside of war.

We already have the pro-abortion side of the equation selling despair and desperation for the abortion industry. We don’t need to add to it. That said, though, Williamson’s core argument that abortion is murder and should be treated as such is hardly unknown in the pro-life movement. With that in mind, back to Cupp:

The real problem I have with the conservative outrage over his dismissal is that I don’t believe Kevin’s view is a particularly conservative one.

For one, respecting life requires consistency. Abortion is an horrific and abhorrent societal ill, but capital punishment, whereby the state is empowered to kill human beings, some of whom turn out to have been innocent, is not consistent with a pro-life perspective. For another, I don’t know any conservatives who believe women should be punished for having an abortion. …

Defending Williamson’s freedom of speech is inherently a conservative thing to do. But defending his actual prescription is not.

I have problems with both parts of this argument, the second of which I’ll address at the end. First off, this isn’t a First Amendment issue at all. Williamson has the right to free speech, not publication. He hasn’t lost his voice, only a paycheck — and undoubtedly only temporarily. The Atlantic didn’t owe him a job prior to his hiring, and technically everyone’s only one column away from being canned. (Don’t let my boss know I wrote that.) No one’s arguing that Goldberg didn’t have the right to fire Williamson, but whether he was right in doing so, which is certainly fair game in the sense of media criticism.
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Teddy Roosevelt1951 · Apr 8, 2018

Space_Time said: ↑

Was The Atlantic justified in firing him? Is hanging women who have abortions just beyond the pale? Does the defense of Williamson reflect badly on the Right?
Click to expand...

.
The anti-choice right-wingers are NOT pro-life, they are only pro-birth.

Their worries concerning the unborn child end immediately after a baby draws his or her first breath. A baby is then free to starve to death, die a horribly painful death, be killed in war, etc. Conservative Christians no longer care. And they never cared if carrying the child to term would cause the mother's death.

Pro-life conservatives do NOT exist.

.

Bowerbird · Apr 8, 2018

GrayMan said: ↑

Killing is extreme. There might be room to discuss sterilization in certain circumstances to prevent continued death of unborn children who are very developed.
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So
Does that include the woman who is married has children her partner has refused to have a vasectomy and she finds herself pregnant just as he loses his job??

How about abortions for medical reasons??

An 11 year old raped by her local Baptist minister??

The 13 year old who was gotten drunk by her 15 year old boyfriend and actually cannot remember how she got pregnant??

The homeless 17 year old

The single mother who has lost her job, her home and is Iiving in her car with her 3 chidren??

What "punishment" are you going to give these people? And what punishment willl you dole out to the men who got them pregnant in the first place?

Bowerbird · Apr 8, 2018

logical1 said: ↑

The thread title is a typical scare tactic of the radical left. That among the other 862 reasons is why intelligent people find them pathetic and laughable.
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I will believe that republicans are more intelligent than Democrats when I can find 1/2 dozen repubicans capable of critiquing research

To be honest I think I have met ONE who fitted that criteria

Giftedone · Apr 8, 2018

Brewskier said: ↑

Right! She should have as much degenerate sex and abortions as she wants. Girl power right bro?
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Belief in freedom is not about belief in freedom "only for things you agree with". Everybody believes in that. If you do not believe in freedom for things you disagree with .. then you don't believe in freedom at all

Giftedone · Apr 8, 2018

logical1 said: ↑

The thread title is a typical scare tactic of the radical left. That among the other 862 reasons is why intelligent people find them pathetic and laughable.
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What's scary is the number of retards that can not figure out that there is a difference between a single human cell (aka zygote) and a baby.

tecoyah · Apr 8, 2018

"Pro-Life" is not pro-life....it is pro-birth. Once the birth happens they do not seem to care anymore.

FoxHastings · Apr 8, 2018

Space_Time said: ↑

Was The Atlantic justified in firing him? Is hanging women who have abortions just beyond the pale? Does the defense of Williamson reflect badly on the Right?
Click to expand...

Seems two issues are rolling around in a confused "one" issue.

Capital punishment and abortion.

YES, if abortion is deemed murder the women having the abortion must be charged and punished as murderers.

Hanging as a way to kill the guilty is rather primitive so I think the drug route is the best.

However, the hilariously named "Pro-Life" faction doesn't want to let people know they really want to punish women for having sex so they do NOT like the punishment part brought up....the execution , the life in prison, the motherless children left behind that now the state pays for..

They don't want their dirty little secret to get out....that making abortion murder means the murderers will be punished.

NOW, before ya jump on that remember that they have a long way to go to make the fetus a person with rights...I'ev never seen .an explanation of just how women are suspected, investigated, charged, how women who have miscarriages are jailed until they can prove it was a miscarriage which is almost impossible to tell from an abortion
so think of the women who have miscarriages who will be executed...

GrayMan · Apr 8, 2018

Teddy Roosevelt1951 said: ↑

.
The anti-choice right-wingers are NOT pro-life, they are only pro-birth.

Their worries concerning the unborn child end immediately after a baby draws his or her first breath. A baby is then free to starve to death, die a horribly painful death, be killed in war, etc. Conservative Christians no longer care. And they never cared if carrying the child to term would cause the mother's death.

Pro-life conservatives do NOT exist.

.
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EVERY SINGLE adoption of people I know has been via a conservative family and I live in a liberal state in a even more liberal city.

rcfoolinca288 · Apr 8, 2018

GrayMan said: ↑

EVERY SINGLE adoption of people I know has been via a conservative family and I live in a liberal state in a even more liberal city.
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Anodoctal evidence FTW

GrayMan · Apr 8, 2018

rcfoolinca288 said: ↑

Anodoctal evidence FTW
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I assumed Teddy's claim...'opinion' was based on Anodoctal evidence. I was simply pointing out how different ones experience can be.

Dayton3 · Apr 8, 2018

Teddy Roosevelt1951 said: ↑

.
The anti-choice right-wingers are NOT pro-life, they are only pro-birth.

Their worries concerning the unborn child end immediately after a baby draws his or her first breath. A baby is then free to starve to death, die a horribly painful death, be killed in war, etc. Conservative Christians no longer care. And they never cared if carrying the child to term would cause the mother's death.

Pro-life conservatives do NOT exist.

.
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Complete BS that the pro abortion (sorry Abortion "rights") advocates have been claiming for decades now.

Apparently they believe that in order to care about a baby, one has to be an advocate of cradle to grave state funded care.

Which is ridiculous. What is wrong with expecting the parents to care for their child in the first place?

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