Abortion and Murder, cont'd: A Duty to Riot?

I appreciate Eduardo's response to my post about Rauch's review of Ponnuru's book.  (That sentence is a parody of blogging, isn't it?) 

That said, the force of Eduardo's and Rauch's critique continues to elude me.  That is, I do not see why those who believe -- as I do, and as Ponnuru does, and as Eduardo does -- that abortion generally involves wrongful homicide, and that our Nation's tolerance (let alone constitutionalization and celebration) of private violence against unborn children is shameful, are therefore required, for consistency's sake, to believe that women who have abortions, or doctors who perform them, should be punished in the same way and with the same severity as are persons who "murder" adults.  Nor do I see why those who believe that abortion generally involves wrongful homicide are therefore required, for consistency's sake, to "fire-bomb[] . . . abortion clinics" or take to the streets.

Eduardo writes:

But if abortion is murder, then the scale of the injustice being perpetrated on a daily basis in our country alone (not to mention the world) is truly staggering.  Over six million innocent human lives have been intentionally taken in the United States under the Bush presidency alone.  Why does President Bush get a pass for this?  No doubt some will point towards his  rhetoric of life and the limited actions he has taken, which admittedly would not have been taken under a different administration.  But if abortion is mass murder on the scale of a Holocaust every eight years, shouldn't he be doing more?  Where is the sense of urgency?  If abortion is mass murder, the President should be filibustering, refusing to talk about anything else, shutting the federal government down until he gets his way, not taking his eye of the ball and fighting wars in Iraq, negotiating trade agreements, cutting taxes, or making speeches about the problems with social security. 

Well, I suppose one reason why "Bush [might] get a pass" on this is because he is, in fact, doing what can be done, within the constraints of horribly misguided constitutional law, to change people's minds about abortion, and thereby hastening the day when the wrong of abortion will be as clear to most people as it is to Eduardo and me.  Eduardo knows as well as I do that "filibustering," etc. would be, given the givens, utterly useless.  I do not see why those who believe that abortion is wrongful homicide are required to indulge in useless (indeed, counterproductive) dramatics, even when the wrong being combatted is as great as this one, when smaller steps hold out the promise of actually changing people's minds.

I am inclined to agree with Eduardo that there is a difference -- one that is relevant to the perpetrator's culpability and deserved punishment -- between procuring or performing an abortion and maliciously causing the death of an adult.  True, both involve the deaths of human beings, and both are wrong.  But, it seems to me, the state-of-mind, or mens rea is almost certainly different (if only because the humanity of the victim, and therefore the wrongfulness of the conduct, is impossible to avoid in the latter situation), and so it does not seem to me odd, or hypocritical, to concede (as Ponnuru does) that the law may treat them differently.