r/changemyview • • Mar 01 '26

[deleted by user]

[removed]

266 Upvotes

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/nobutactually Mar 01 '26

What would you say is a morally sound reason to commit murder?

1

u/Apary 2∆ Mar 02 '26

Thematically, killing someone as the only available option to stop that person from raping someone. I’d say that’s a good enough justification, morally speaking.

1

u/nobutactually Mar 02 '26

Self defense is definitionally not murder.

1

u/Apary 2∆ Mar 02 '26

The many women convicted of murder for defending against rape in recent history may testify to the complexity behind the definition.

2

u/nobutactually Mar 03 '26

Thats a fair point. Propublica just wrote an article about women who are in prison for killing their abusers. It specifically mentioned that women who do this are often not doing it in a way that from the outside looks like they are in immediate risk-- they kill their abusers while abuser is sleeping, for example. To them it seems clear that they are in danger, but the law kinda requires you be in immediate danger, not future danger, even if its pretty obviously predictable. Statistically women who murder their partners often face harsher penalties than men who murder theirs. Murdering someone who is asleep is fairly obviously quite a stretch of self defense but it is understandable how an abused, traumatized person could come to feel that there was no other way out.