May31 |
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The death of George TillerI grew up and spent most of my adult life in Kansas. The shooting death of abortion Doctor George Tiller stuns me, but it doesn’t really surprise me, unfortunately. Tiller had been a signal feature of my home state’s political landscape for as long as I can remember — a person around whom political careers were sometimes made or broken — and I can only assume angry recriminations will be echoing in the Statehouse and at the polls for a little while to come. I do not believe that one crazed gunman represents the whole of the pro-life movement — unlike Andrew Sullivan, I’m not tempted to pin this on Bill O’Reilly. But I also note that no doctor or pharmacist ever gets shot for refusing to perform an abortion or denying women access to birth control pills. |
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PhillyNow | PW Style | Make Major Moves | The Trouble with Spikol
You name one man in your orbit — pundits, bloggers, whoever — who would risk his life on an hourly basis to defend a woman’s constitutional right, or, hell, anyone’s constitutional right regarding anything.
Crazed gunman? Acting alone, right? Totally nutso? Just a crazed guy. No connection to Tiller’s incessantly being called a “monster” and a “mass murderer” and “bound for hell” and all that stuff. Nope. No connection. None at all. No one could have foreseen that some “crazed gunman” would take them seriously. No one could have foreseen that, and yet you say you’re not surprised. Hmmm.
This death is an outrage.
I agree with Kim Callahan that this is more than a lone, crazed gunman. That the feds probably won’t pursue this as a terrorist act—it is, after all, a targeted act of violence meant to intimidate and frighten a specific group of people—is shameful.
Sure, the killer does not represent the whole of the pro-life movement (just as Tiller did not represent the whole of the pro-choice movement), but he does represent a sect of it and was working within the rhetoric. I think it’s dangerous to brush him off as crazy.
To Dr. Tiller’s family: thank you for your selfless act of supporting Dr. Tiller in his attempt to act in accordance with the law and preserve women’s right of reproduction. I only knew him indirectly but I appreciate all he did and admire his strength and courage. I was ~8 mos. pregnant during the “Summer of Hell” when Operation Rescue(?!) pounced on Wichita to spew it’s hatred and shame. The only thing that kept me from standing in front of Dr. Tiller’s clinic, IN SUPPORT OF HIM, was knowing that there were “people” who would decide they were God and take my life as well as the child I gave birth to. This is America…LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE, NOT land where 1)certain people decide they can write our morals and if you don’t follow them, they will justify whatever action THEY MUST TAKE in providing consequences, 2)many of those same people want the government’s help ONLY IF it establishes laws, mostly social, that THEY SUPPORT, 3)quite coincidentally, those SAME PEOPLE are those that LACK courage because they shoot/bomb and run. Saddest of all…these people commit these actions IN THE NAME OF GOD…I wonder: do these same people regret passing up their right to an abortion if they are in the situation of finding out their child is homosexual and their prayers aren’t “fixing” them or the child is unable to “resist the temptation” to be homosexual? All of the bibles I’ve read stress the importance of LOVE as well as NOT JUDGING OTHERS.