Mark Shea and Robert George both have very good posts on why people from Live Action misleading Planned Parenthood to say and do incriminating things by pretending to be someone they are not engaged in an illicit tactic for pro-lifers. As we say in an editorial in the forthcoming March issue, the Culture of Life cannot be built on a foundation of lies.
Peter Kreeft disagrees, but he provides a mostly emotional argument that lying to get the bad guys is permissible because abortionists are not owed the truth. My problem with Kreeft’s defense of Live Action’s tactics is that the prohibition against lying exists not only to protect the person being lied to from deception but the person who would do the lying from being dishonest.
Tomorrow I hope to address what I call the Nazi at the doorstep fallacy.
