LeRoy Carhart, butcher

Our friend and faithful reader Alicia has said in comments in recent days that she strongly objects to pro-lifers calling the late Dr. Tiller "evil," on the grounds that to do that makes it easier for those inclined toward violence to take the fateful (and fatal) step. I get that, but I don't see how it is possible to describe the work that Tiller and LeRoy Carhart, who performs late-term abortions, as anything but evil. Below is an excerpt from the transcript of a July 17, 1997, preliminary injunction hearing in US District Court, in Nebraska, in the 1997 Stenberg v. Carhart case, re: late-term abortions:

Are there times when you don't remove the fetus intact? Carhart: Yes, sir.

Can you tell me about that -- when that occurs?

Carhart: That occurs when the tissue fragments, or frequently when you rupture the membranes. An arm will spontaneously prolapse through the os... we talk about the forehead or the skull being first. We talked about the feet being first, but I think in probably the great majority of terminations, it's what they would call a transverse lie; so really you're looking at a side profile of a curved fetus. When the patient's cervix is already starting to contract, and they are starting to miscarry, when you rupture the waters, usually something prolapses through the uterine, through the cervical os, not always, but very often an extremity will.

What do you do then?

Carhart: My normal course would be to dismember that extremity and then go back and try to take the fetus out either foot or skull first, whatever end I can get to first.

How do you go about dismembering that extremity?

Carhart: Just traction and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get ahold of which would be usually somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the fetus, pulling down on it through the os, using the internal os as your countertraction and rotating to dismember the shoulder or the hip or whatever it would be. Sometimes you will get one leg and you can't get the other leg out.

In that situation... are you.. when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the fetus still alive?

Carhart: Yes.

Do you consider an arm, for example, to be a substantial portion of the fetus?

Carhart: In the way I read it, I think if I lost my arm, that would be a substantial loss to me. I think I would have to interpret it that way.

And then what happens next after you remove the arm? You then try to remove the rest of the fetus?

Carhart: Then I would go back and attempt to either bring the feet down or bring the skull down, or even sometimes you bring the other arm down and remove that also and then get the feet down.

At what point is the fetus ... does the fetus die during that process?

Carhart: I don't really know. I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see the fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound.

LeRoy Carhart is a butcher, and an evil man. That does not justify violence against him. But we cannot and must not shy away from describing exactly what he does, and calling it what it is. If what is revealed here in this court exchange is not evil, then what is it? Perhaps the distinctions to be made is calling his actions evil, but refraining from judging his person. I think this is probably the Christian response; as I understand it, "do not judge" doesn't mean refraining from making moral distinctions, which would make life impossible, but withholding judgment about someone's soul, because only God can fully know the heart of each person, and to assess that person's culpability. But that is a very fine distinction to make when one is dealing with the kind of phenomena likely to be described as "evil" by persons. Alicia is right that it's easy to go from calling something or someone "evil" to justifying radical, even violent, action to deal with that evil. The injunction against consequentialism ("The ends justify the means") is absolutely critical here.

Thought experiment: Would you resist from calling slavery or segregation "evil" because it might lead a radical to commit violence against slaveowners or segregationists?