“Immediatist vs Incrementalist” debate analysis: Epilogue
In the scheme of things, the “Immediatist vs Incrementalist” debate between AHA’s T. Russell Hunter and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s Gregg Cunningham on April 25, 2015, was iconic. AHA’s immediatist philosophy was laid bare as contradictory, confused, and even nefarious.
Most extraordinary was that Hunter came so ill prepared, after beating his chest for months for prudentialists to “choose a man, and let him come down to fight me,” in the words of Goliath.
Witnessing social movement historian and master debater Cunningham methodically take down each of AHA’s talking points, only to receive such flummoxed responses by Hunter, was a sight to behold. Cunningham was quick to challenge Hunter’s “conflated” and “binary” arguments, and with no keyboard to hide behind, Hunter’s half-baked theories, groundless accusations, and inaccurate portrayal of history were laid bare.
Hunter asked me this question in a comment on my post, “Immediatist vs Incrementalist” debate analysis, Part II: There’s only one way to cut down a tree?:
Jill Stanek,
Do you agree with your readers that “AHA” is some kind of a pro-choice plot? A group sent by pro-aborts to bring the PLM down?
Russ
This was in response to commenters like Kate, who wrote:
I’m convinced that Abolish Human Abortion are pro choicers disguised as prolifers with the mission to bring the prolife movement down. It is one thing to disagree, it is another to go after your own, as they constantly seem to do.
I don’t know why Hunter cares what I think, since he actually accuses me of being part of the “pro-choice plot” for supporting incremental legislation and thus advocating, so he says, abortions that are “safe, early, and painless.”
As you can see, the conversation can (and often does) get stupid. Another for instance, when AHA responded that my hatchet-job on Hunter’s tree analogy was misplaced, because silly me thought he was actually making a tree analogy…
… which was to say the tree analogy only works if it supports AHA theory.
But I will answer Hunter’s question. Actually, I’ll let others who have already said it better than I could. The first thought comes from a pro-life proponent who would prefer no attribution:
T. Russell Hunter and AHA are not dissenting voices in an intellectually honest discussion. They are intentionally poisoning the well and confusing the faithful. Heck, not only does Hunter break down under cross-examination, he can’t even clarify his own position – thus, the endless stream of sandwich-eating videos.
When you can’t clarify your own position, something other than your position is the real agenda. That “something else” in this case is a personal hatred of pro-lifers who are recognized (and paid) for working hard and actually getting things done.
What has AHA done other than attack pro-lifers? Reach a few students here and there with a quick sermon? Demonstrate abortion to a handful of folks via a picture provided by CBR? In short, we are dealing with malcontents who rival Planned Parenthood in their efforts to confuse and distort reality.
Watch this clip from Band of Brothers. I’ve seen it a number of times and weep each time. This is what we fight. Everyone in our sphere would save as many of these people as we could. T. Russell Hunter and his cronies will not work with Catholics and secularists to free these people. He would not save them incrementally (click on screenshot to view video)…
So what’s the lesson? Simply this” We are not dealing with rational dissenters who contribute something to our understanding and thus make us better. To the contrary, we are engaging a moral sickness combined with unthinkable arrogance. I’d rather be known for opening the camp gate.
Steve Hays of Triablogue also answered Hunter’s question in two succinct blog posts on May 17.
Why does AHA discriminate against babies?
Abolitionists accuse prolifers of “discrimination” because they lobby for laws that protect some babies rather than all babies. But the allegation is ironic:
i) To begin with, the charge of discrimination is nonsensical. For instance, it’s discriminatory to choose one group over another group if you’re in a position to choose both groups.
If, however, prolifers are striving to save all, and only those babies who can be saved right now, that’s not discriminatory. They lack the wherewithal, at present, to save more babies. If they could, they would.
ii) In fact, it’s actually the abolitionists who are guilty of discrimination. They discriminate against the babies who are savable by opposing incremental legislation. They discriminate against those babies by refusing to take feasible measures necessary to save them.
So not only is the abolitionist accusation false, but it boomerangs. On the one hand, prolifers don’t discriminate against babies. On the other hand, abolitionists do discriminate against babies.
Abolitionists discriminate against babies in the present in the hopes of saving all babies in the future.
Why does AHA support abortion?
Abolish Human Abortion: Abolitionists will also continue interposing themselves between the innocent unborn and the rhetoric of wolves that jovially and enthusiastically support the unjust laws that cement ageism into our culture of death’s psyche.
Translation: abolitionists interpose themselves between innocent babies and the prolifers who could save them. AHA barricades the abortion clinic from restrictive laws. AHA barricades the abortion clinic to prevent restrictive laws from saving babies.
Instead of protecting babies from the abortionist, AHA is protecting the abortionist from laws that limit his access to babies. They don’t allow the prolifer to come between the abortionist and the baby. They give him free rein.
By opposing incremental legislation, AHA protects the legal status quo. They stand guard at the abortion clinic to keep restrictive laws at bay.
In closing, a thought by Maggie Gallagher of National Review Online last week, upon the passage of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which AHA opposed:
I remember being at the table in New York City in the 1980s, discussing abortion strategies with people who said they could never support any law except a constitutional amendment protecting all human life. Otherwise, they told me, their hands would be dirty.
I remember thinking: Your hands may be clean, but the babies are still dying.
Read previous posts:
Prologue
Part I: Let babies die today, we can save the rest later
Part II: There’s only one way to cut down a tree?
Part III: Social justice history vs TR Hunter
Part IV: Straw men and the Bible
Part V: Sacrificing children to the idol of abolitionism
Part VI: Christians and the legislative process
Part VII: So fundraising is wrong?
Scott Klusendorf: Debate between Gregg Cunningham and T. Russell Hunter
Jonathan Van Maren: Four observations from the Cunningham vs. Hunter debate
Also, fyi, we are in the final stages of preparing an ebook compiling all the analyses of the Cunningham-Hunter debate into one document. Stay tuned.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
“I remember being at the table in New York City in the 1980s, discussing abortion strategies with people who said they could never support any law except a constitutional amendment protecting all human life. Otherwise, they told me, their hands would be dirty.”
At least there’s hope that many individuals in AHA, like the early prolifers, will adjust their strategy if they realize they aren’t making progress. If you can’t break through a castle wall, undermine, go over it, go under it, go around it, starve the defenders out if nothing else will work.
Hopefully this comprehensive analysis of their foolish and counterproductive approach will cause them to rethink their theology.
True disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ are on a never-ending quest for truth, more wisdom, more understanding. None of us has arrived or knows everything. It would be great if one of their leaders would just come out and say, “We’ve been way off, forgive me.”
PS I love the cover design of the ebook. The knot/shadow in the tree shaped like a baby is awesome.
Other than criticize the tactics that you support, Jill, I still don’t understand what makes AHA worth all of this hub-bub. How much influence do they truly have, especially since it claims to have little money? How is criticism of something an endorsement (or even complicity) of its opposite? I think you give them too much credit.
Amazing. This post went up at 2:49 pm and I sit here at 9:37 pm staring at a thread that has not been swarmed by AHA trolls. This must be some sort of miracle.
Reading this much about AHA has not been a productive use of my time. I cannot fathom investing the effort that went into writing it.
Is there any risk or cost if we all go back to ignoring AHA like we always have?
You are obsessed and wasting time on nonsense.
This has not been a complete waste of time. It was probably necessary to measure and establish that AHA is a paper tiger.
AHA has a choice, at this point. They can refocus their mission toward the abortion industry and ending abortion…. or they can become like Westboro Baptists of the pro-life movement, an annoyance and a laughing stock and a tool in the hands of abortion-lobbyists.
Let’s hope that AHA realizes that we must all work together for pro-life, as we pursue our various enthusiasms in law, and charity, and education, and prayer.
This.
Cranky, Del, DeColores:
I feared as I got into these posts that some people might grow tired of them. My original intent was to only write two or three. But new topics kept coming to the fore.
This debate conclusively exposed and debunked all of AHA’s fraudulent claims – all in one place and all within two hrs. Stripped of the rambling writings, videos, and bully pulpit he is known for, Hunter showed his theories to be confused, inconsistent, and historically inaccurate.
I determined it would be a good to document the sum total of AHA’s illogic in one place for posterity – for those with ears to hear.
Furthermore, IMO AHA is as dangerous to babies as Planned Parenthood, although I agree on a minute scale by comparison. Nevertheless, AHA unchecked kills babies, another reason I took this on.
Nevertheless, AHA unchecked kills babies, another reason I took this on.
I find AHA to be fools. But to say they’re complicit in killing babies is over-the-top. Again, you give them too much credit when they have none. They’re not on Capitol Hill blocking legislation. They’re not pushing sidewalk counselors to the ground.
This is the same nonsense that dictates, “If you refuse to vote for the Republican, you’re voting FOR the pro-abortion Democrat…and therefor YOU’RE KILLING BABIES!”
Were you watching the same debate I was Jill? Cunningham got so distraught, he started to personally attack Hunter. When you have no answers, attack your opponent. Call me silly, but I still think it was wrong for Cunningham to pay an abortionist $5000 for the rights to film an abortion. I guess that is ok when you are an incrementalist. As a Christian – you save that baby.
It is my observation that some people derive their greatest happiness from experiencing continuous minor pain or discomfort.
Do the scions of AHA fall into this category?
Was their lack of support for the pain-capable bill due to their odd ethos or because they recognized it for what it truly is?
From my perspective, while they focus on attaining the impossible they aren’t inconveniencing women so much.
Or is it that ‘AHA’ secretly means ‘actually helping abortion’? I hope not.
Did we watch the same debate?
Cunningham was rambling, incoherent, angry, and not at all organized in his thinking. He even dodged a question in the Q&A session, only to admit towards the end that he’d known the answer all along, and dodged it because the answer was unfavorable.
Hunter, by contrast, was clear, concise, put forth a Biblical argument with reason and logic and clarity. He was consistent and logical.
I, for one, will not watch the debate because the recording is so awful. I’ve relied on Jill and her colleague’s analysis.
Cranky, CBR’s recording has better audio and video quality. It can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs2SmsCuLV0&feature=youtu.be
How many animals were harmed in the making of this debate?
Cranky, it’s an excellent debate. You should really watch it.
Odd Jill how none of the incrementalists want to respond to Cunningham having paid an abortionist for the rights to film an abortions. Understandable I guess. Especially when Cunningham asked Hunter, “Should we allow these babies to die?” – is that not the ultimate in hypocrisy.
Steve, why should anyone respond to an accusation that has no basis in fact?
Is Cunningham admitting it to me on the telephone enough fact for you? I spoke to Cunningham about his threatening to sue me (mttu.com) because I used some of “his pictures” on the Abortion Gallery. During the course of our conversation, I confronted him for paying a European third world abortionist $5000 for the rights to film an abortion. (Where do you think all these new *unique* pictures came from?) After not wanting to talk about it, he finally admitted it. It seems the end justifies the means with Cunningham. It is why I found his statement to Hunter, “Should we allow these babies to die?” so hypocritical. Obviously, the answer is yes.
Steve, assuming that’s true for the sake of the argument (even though you haven’t provided any evidence), how would that validate AHA’s position or refute Cunningham’s arguments? Suppose he performed the abortions himself and took the photographs. That would make him a hypocrite and a very bad person, but it wouldn’t affect the soundness of his arguments regarding the incrementalist strategy. It also wouldn’t make it wrong to use CBR’s pictures (as photographs of abortion victims can never be obtained unless something morally abhorent is done – namely the baby is aborted in the first place).
Well I can’t give you a tape of the phone conversation we had, but could probably dig up the email where he threatened to sue me if I did not immediately remove his aborted babies pics.
That aside, incrementalism is easily refuted by time itself. 42 years and 60 million dead babies later – and we are no closer to seeing an end to abortion. Trying to get the “right judges” and the “right laws” has done little. This charade in going to Washington DC was a complete waste of time. The bill would never get past the Senate, and Obama was veto it. Even if it did – all it takes is one federal judge to call it unconstitutional, and you are back to square one.
I don’t know if the abolitionist movement we succeed either – but at least it is something new – something that has not been tried before. It has at its heart the Church is to be the light, instead of relying upon politicians to do what God called His people to.
I do have one concern though. The early rescue movement relied on Martin Luther King Jr as its example. Civil disobedience and such. This was wrong. So too, the abolitionist movement may be relying too much on the abolition of slavery. This troubles me as each movement was its own animal, and the results of each are not easily duplicated – if you get what I mean.
“As the war between the royal families of Saul and David dragged on, David’s family became stronger and stronger, and Saul’s family became weaker and weaker.” 2 Sam 3:1
“instead of relying upon politicians to do what God called His people to.”
Are there no politicians who are His people too? Has God not called any politicians to this cause?
God has called His Church to be light and salt – not the government. Politicians, however well meaning, get swallowed up by the cesspool which is Washington, DC. Incrementalists place their hope in these politicians. Good luck with that. It’s been 42 years and 60 million dead so far – with no end in sight.
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