is it murder?

again i am amazed by the moral dialogue on boston legal as i am catching up on episodes saved on my dvr. i, for one, am fascinated by moral arguments and much prefer to engage with the hypotheticals on television because, well, i like to avoid real conflict.

the two issues up for debate on the episodes we watched tonight: abortion (roe, originally aired on 11.10.08) and the death penalty(kill, baby, kill, originally aired on 11.17.08). you can watch them online at

now, in the abortion episode, denny made one of the most astute observations of the abortion debate i have seen--partially because i felt it was true about me. he noted that ardent defenders of roe v. wade may be doing so out of their own need to justify a moral position that they are not sure that they can defend otherwise. out of security, they cling to this case. i know that i value life and the dignity of life to the last drop. but, i also do not know the best way for a secular justice system to make rules that uphold those values. i am not pro-abortion, but support the legality of abortion and women's access to it. too many women die from back alley abortions when abortions are illegal--and these are not the women in our society who are enfranchised and whose voices are heard. so what to do? give women the choice, council them and support them to choose life when they can (emphasis on support them). that is particularly my responsibility as a future (current?) religious leader of some sort. it is a complex, complex issue that i am not confident of my position on. denny's observation was an incisive look at the reality of the rhetoric and the complex layering of issues around abortion. in the face of such complexity, the only simple support for my secular, civil, pro-choice stance is roe v. wade.

and the death penalty issue. in this episode, the defendant was a prison guard who was observing an execution that went horribly wrong. the prison guard, after seeing a man conscious, convulsing and gasping after thirty minutes of being hooked up to the iv, shot the man in the head--which killed him instantly. the episode explored the question of whether this is murder. if the state was already in the process of killing the man, but due to a malfunction, was unable to do so and the man was suffering, is it murder? is it the moral choice of an individual when they individual is carrying out a sentence that the state is royalling screwing up? is it murder when the victim is in the midst of dying a slow painful death at the hands of the state? i am deeply against the death penality, but as it is the law in many states in this country, how do we handle it when it goes wrong? what do you think--is it murder?

these episodes are raucous adventures into parts of the moral landscape that sometimes even the church is unwilling to explore honestly.

well done, boston legal, well done.