Coburn followup: quote confirmed
By azizhp Posted in User Blogs — Comments (24) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
In my previous diary entry, I noted the absurd statement by Tom Coburn that abortionists deserve the death penalty. There was some skepticism about whether the quote was true, and so I wrote to Josh Marshall about it. He responded with:
It ran first on July 9th out of Oklahoma City with a byline by Ron Jenkins.
Late Update: Alas, TPM readers have better google skills than I do. The story can be found here.
excerpt ...
Coburn is traditional conservative, opposing abortion except in rare cases to save the life of the mother and advocating tax cuts and limited government.On the death penalty, he said: "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life."
He said he performed two abortions to save the lives of mothers who had congenital heart disease, but opposes the procedure in cases of rape.
"Under the mores we live under today, my lineage wouldn't exist," Coburn said, explaining that his great-grandmother was raped by a territorial sheriff.
That's a more nuanced position than I gave him credit for earlier. But it's not nuanced enough - death for abortionists is simply not compatible with a sincere respect for life and law.
But I even quoted the entire AP article on this, in reply to your original post. (I did the much-asked-for Nexis search, and contrary to my lawyerly tendencies, didn't bill anyone for it!) There is more context, but not much.
I'm with Tac, though, except that I have no issue with the death penalty.
It's easy to say, from behind the shield of Roe v. Wade, that abortion is murder, but Roe is quite new in the history of law and abortion and there is no time in our legal tradition in which abortion was murder.
Do you really think that America would include abortion in the murder statutes? Remember, the women who seek the abortions would be murderers too, if we use the current murder statutes.
That's rather silly. For the first eighty years of the Republic, slavery was merely a form of property ownership.
read my sentence again - it is possible for someone to respect life more than law - the abortion doctor murders are proof that such respect often takes ironic forms.
Without law protecting the definition of life, you have vigilanteeism. The basic formulation by Coburn here is anti-rule of law, even if it is ostensibly pro-life.
I differ with you on the death penalty, which puts us in peculiar positions for this disagreement - but I still have a moral objection to any validation of the idea that individuals should endorse vigilante attitudes towards morality enforcement.
The law may be wrong, morally speaking. In that case it is incumbent upon those who respect law to work to change it from within. Those who advocate life are doing so, a noble effort (as is the intent behind those who defend abortion on grounds of personal liberty for women. Yes, they are in conflict, but neither side is inhuman).
And of course now we have indeed gone down a tangent which completely side-steps the issue of why Coburn is deliberately trying to craft rhetoric to appeal to the violent fringe. You would not endorse a Republican who made coded appeals to white supremacy; neither should you endorse one who makes coded appeals to vigilanteeism. And murder, because until the law says otherwise, an abortionist is not deserving of death, regardless of your moral views.
freelunch, if youre going to invoke popular opinion as if it were relevant, then realize its your burden of proof to uphold. Not a task I envy you, but you've chosen it willingly.
I wasn't invoking popular opinion. I noted that abortion had never been considered to be murder in American legal jurisprudence and that those who want it to be need to be aware that they are going to be accusing at least one woman of murder for each abortion that occurs.
I have no idea what the popular opinion would be on it, but since the other question about manslaughter only managed to get a 52%, I don't expect a majority of Americans to support the consequences of the idea that abortion is murder.
That Coburn is being "anti-rule of law" and "deliberately trying to craft rhetoric to appeal to the violent fringe."
That's just not true. Coburn simply seeks to accomplish the goal endorsed by the hundred-plus Congressmen who sponsor the Hyde Amendment: it would then be illegal to perform an abortion. States could render whatever penalties they wished for abortionists who continued to destroy babies illegally, up to and including the death penalty. All of that is action under the rule of law, and it's been one of Coburn's chief goals as a member of Congress and the Senate.
Your second statement is more disturbing. This is no "coded appeal to vigilanteeism" - Coburn's position appeals to me, and there are several other commenters here that agree with its sentiment - am I the violent fringe? Are we? Of course not. If you really stopped to think about it, you'd realize that Coburn is making a statement that would give those crazies who murder abortionists the death penalty.
We will see a huge rise in miscarriages. Of course, we won't know about them because the pregnancies will never be reported.
Outlawing abortion will not solve the problem that pro-lifers are after. Making abortion unnecessary and irrelevant is what needs to be done.
Real miscarriages are all too common, and they are quite devastating for the woman who really wants that baby or has suffered a number of miscarriages. Apparently God isn't nearly as pro-life as some of His worshippers.
You deconvolved my point into its separable elements, but I will reintegrate them to make my larger point.
I did previously state and will repeat that I do believe Coburn believes that abortion be made illegal -> death penalty becomes an option. I don't think there's evidence to suggest he wants to murder abortion doctors. He deserves the obvious benefit of the doubt on that score. However, he did not craft his statement to reflect that much more innocous belief. He deliberately chose words that are coded for people who are pretty much exactly UNlike you, Augustine. It's not surprising that you simply see his words as innocous because you're interpolating to the more reasonable position. But he is deliberately phrasing his argument in such a way that much less moderate elements will understand.
There is a long tradition of courting the extreme fringe whilst maintaining plausible deniability, especially with moderate reasonable people as ideological cover. But its probably outside the bounds of this diary to discuss. Perhaps I should just verify, and I am sure you will agree, that if it were true that Coburn was in fact trying to woo (deliberately, however subtly) the "religious psychotic vigilante" vote, you'd withdraw your endorsement?
The assumption of the belief that God actively kills. The assumption that God and man are bound by the same code.
Hardly valid assumptions for all, or even most, of the believers in question.
There are some comments on religion that don't appear to betray an especial familiarity with it.
(1) Y'know, the AP article doesn't indicate whether he was reading from notes or speaking extemporaneously. It's entirely possible he was speaking somewhat informally, and so was not "coding" -- indeed, was simply not speaking as precisely as he might have.
(2) Following from that, might we give him the benefit of the doubt and presume -- just for fun, mind -- that he did not deliberately choose "words that are coded for people who are pretty much exactly UNlike ... Augustine [and that] he is deliberately phrasing his argument in such a way that much less moderate elements will understand"? I mean, we all know all pro-lifers secretly want to blow abortionists and sundry support personnel to the nether regions of Dis, but maybe Coburn is the exception?
(3) I cannot speak for Redstate, but I personally would not support a figure who supported vigilanteeism.
(4) However, I support (a) making abortion illegal, then (b) executing doctors who perform abortions. I have no qualms about executing cold-blooded mass murderers of adults; I see no reason to spare cold-blooded mass murderers of children. (No, I don't advocate executing women who obtain abortions, though I'm not opposed to prison terms for them, either.)
I cannot speak for Redstate, but I personally would not support a figure who supported vigilanteeism.
Red State agrees.
I made no such assumption and intended no offense.
Natural abortions are a fact of life. I make no claims about whether God has anything to do with it. I have read pro-life tracts that appear to show a lack of awareness of that fact.
The arrogant "lack of awareness" commentary. Prolifers are quite aware, thank you. It's also not mentioned because it has nothing to do with the issue at hand, any more than dying from cancer ought to be discussed in the context of crimes of passion laws.
Speaking as someone who lost a child to a natural abortion, I take umbrage at that comment. Either note the "pro-life" tracts that miss that distinction, or back off.
Rereading what I said, I can see how I left out far too much context of what I was thinking to even try to make a defense of what I wrote.
My apologies. I'll cool it on this issue for a while and if I respond to it again, I shall do it with far more care.
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....death for abortionists is simply not compatible with a sincere respect for life and law.
Abortion, of course, is not compatible with a sincere respect for life. If you proceed from this premise -- that abortion is murder -- then it is perfectly reasonable to punish it as murder. Which includes the death penalty.
I am not in favor of the death penalty myself, but I see no inconsistency or inhumanity in this statement.
I definitely would like more context to it, though.