tomorrow\u2019s<\/em> news.<\/p>\nGiven this advance warning of the traumas and tragedies about to unfold, Chandler races around the city, trying to avert disasters, rescue the innocent and save as many lives as he can.<\/p>\n
This plays havoc with his life. It disrupts his career and upends his relationships. He ultimately has to surrender any thought of a normal life or even of ever getting to take a day off.<\/p>\n
He resents this \u2014 resents the ceaseless, relentless responsibility that comes with the \u201cearly edition.\u201d But what choice does he have? Lives<\/em> are at stake. If he took a day off or ignored the paper when it arrived, then people would die<\/em>.<\/p>\nAnd you can\u2019t have a show in which the hero is willing to sit around on his butt, just letting innocent people die without even trying to save them. That wouldn\u2019t make him the hero of the show. It would make him a callous, apathetic monster<\/em>.<\/p>\nAll of which is to say, yet again, that I cannot believe that my \u201cpro-life\u201d friends really believe the extraordinary things they claim to believe. Because if they really believed the things they claim to believe, that would make them callous, apathetic monsters. And I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what they are.<\/p>\n
Consider, for example, our new friend Frank the Prolific Poster. Earlier today, Frank wrote this as a description of legal abortion in the U.S. over the past 40 years: \u201cAlmost 55 million unborn children killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Children. Killed. Someone is killing children!<\/em> Tens of millions<\/em> of children!<\/p>\nThat\u2019s horrifying!<\/em><\/p>\nI mean that. If one truly believes that this is an accurate description of abortion, then one truly should be horrified by it.<\/p>\n
But most people who claim to believe such a thing don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Our new friend Frank, for example, says he believes that an embryo or fetus is a fully human person, indistinct from any other human person. Thus, in his view, abortion is the murder of innocent children. I do not<\/em> believe that an embryo or fetus is a fully human person. Thus, in my view, abortion does not<\/em> involve the killing of innocent children. That seems to be the core of our disagreement.<\/p>\nBut, again, I do not believe we really disagree. I do not believe that Frank really believes what he says he believes.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t just mean that at the basic level at which, as former anti-abortion pioneer Frank Schaeffer says, \u201cit is gut-check self-evident that a fertilized egg is not a person<\/em>, because personhood is a lot more than a collection of chromosomes in a Petri dish or in the womb.\u201d<\/p>\nWhat I mean is that if our new friend Frank really<\/em> believed that tens of millions of children\u00a0 were being murdered, then his behavior would be inexcusable. To believe what he claims to believe while behaving as he behaves would be monstrous<\/em> \u2014 inhumanly callous and cowardly.<\/p>\nAnd I refuse to believe that our new friend is such a contemptibly cowardly monster.<\/p>\n
Here is the headline of our early edition: This year, some 1.2 million abortions will be performed in the United States.<\/p>\n
To believe what Frank says he believes would mean that you had to accept that every day<\/em>, some 3,288 children<\/em> are going to be murdered<\/em>. That\u2019s more than a 9\/11 every single day for a year. Every. Single. Day.<\/p>\nWhat would such a belief, if it were genuinely held, require of the one who believed it?<\/p>\n
Far more than joining a political party or voting in elections every few years. Far more than sending the occasional check to some group abstractly lobbying against the murder of children.<\/p>\n
And far, far more than trolling the comment sections of C-level blogs to repeatedly express a strongly worded opinion.<\/p>\n
This is a belief that \u2014 at a minimum<\/em> \u2014 demands the believer quit his job and take to the streets. It won\u2019t do to volunteer occasionally. It is nowhere near sufficient to demonstrate the sincerity of this belief by protesting outside of a clinic once a week, or twice a week, or even five days<\/em> a week. To really believe that abortion means \u201cchildren killed\u201d requires a 24\/7\/365 reshaping of one\u2019s entire life.<\/p>\nForget about any thought of a normal life or even of ever getting to take a day off. Lives<\/em> are at stake \u2014 children\u2019s lives<\/em>.<\/p>\nAnyone who really believed that<\/em> could not spend hour after hour in the comments sections of blogs.<\/p>\nIf someone really believed that children\u2019s lives are at stake, they would be too busy chaining themselves across the front doors of hospitals to waste precious hours just talking, talking, talking<\/em> \u2014 mostly about themselves and their alleged morals. Blog disputes, self-congratulation and the marking-off of tribal territory would be luxuries such a true believer could not afford when 3,300 children are about to be murdered<\/em> and the clock is always ticking ticking ticking.<\/p>\nI have seen very, very<\/em> few people whose behavior allowed me to believe that they really believed any such thing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Syndicated reruns got me hooked on the old CBS show Early Edition years after it was cancelled. It\u2019s a lot of fun. If you haven\u2019t seen it, it starred a pre-Friday Night Lights Kyle Chandler as Chicagoan Gary Hobson. Every morning, mysteriously, he receives the next day\u2019s newspaper \u2014 a newspaper with tomorrow\u2019s news. Given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-6376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-satanic-baby-killers"],"yoast_head":"\n
Actions speak louder than "Satanic baby-killer" rhetoric<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Syndicated reruns got me hooked on the old CBS show Early Edition years after it was cancelled. It's a lot of fun. If you haven't seen it, it starred a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/22\/actions-speak-louder-than-satanic-baby-killer-rhetoric\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Actions speak louder than "Satanic baby-killer" rhetoric\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Syndicated reruns got me hooked on the old CBS show Early Edition years after it was cancelled. It's a lot of fun. If you haven't seen it, it starred a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/22\/actions-speak-louder-than-satanic-baby-killer-rhetoric\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-02-22T22:34:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/22\/actions-speak-louder-than-satanic-baby-killer-rhetoric\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/02\/22\/actions-speak-louder-than-satanic-baby-killer-rhetoric\/\",\"name\":\"Actions speak louder than \\\"Satanic baby-killer\\\" rhetoric\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-02-22T22:34:46+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-02-22T22:34:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Syndicated reruns got me hooked on the old CBS show Early Edition years after it was cancelled. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Actions speak louder than \"Satanic baby-killer\" rhetoric","description":"Syndicated reruns got me hooked on the old CBS show Early Edition years after it was cancelled. It's a lot of fun. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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