I never heard of Dr. George Tiller before today but now it seems like he's all I hear about. He performed late term abortions and cheated death a few times. Now, he's dead--shot dead in the foyer of his church.
I find all of this ironic: the man who shot and killed him did so because he felt Dr. Tiller was taking lives of the unborn did just what he hated--he took a life. I don't understand the logic. It is perfectly okay to oppose something--I oppose plenty of things within our society--but when is it ever okay to take the life of someone whose opinion and/or livelihood is different from yours? It never is.
This isn't about what my views of abortion are. This is about people killing others to prove a political point. This is about people not being able to get over the fact that women are given a legal right to abort a pregnancy. This is about infringing upon the rights that allow doctors to perform these acts no matter how abhorrent one may find them.
I won't blame FOX News or Right Winged Christian extremists because we, ultimately, decide how we react in situations. I will, however, ask these people who incite those to commit acts of violence for the sake of politics to really think about what they say before they say it. Have your opinion, sure, but realize that your words can shape and influence opinion and affect--or end--people's lives.
Postscript--Perhaps instead of the "we're gonna bully and scare women into not wanting an abortion by being in their faces and yelling at them and, perhaps even, killing them" why not try a loving approach? Teach legitimate sex education (not the phony crap I heard in high school), encourage adoption and make contraception readily available for sexually active women. Folks are having sex at younger ages and just because they hear "it's wrong and immoral" won't stop them from having it as we have clearly seen in the past two decades. It's time for a new approach but, of course, it always will begin at home.
I find all of this ironic: the man who shot and killed him did so because he felt Dr. Tiller was taking lives of the unborn did just what he hated--he took a life. I don't understand the logic. It is perfectly okay to oppose something--I oppose plenty of things within our society--but when is it ever okay to take the life of someone whose opinion and/or livelihood is different from yours? It never is.
This isn't about what my views of abortion are. This is about people killing others to prove a political point. This is about people not being able to get over the fact that women are given a legal right to abort a pregnancy. This is about infringing upon the rights that allow doctors to perform these acts no matter how abhorrent one may find them.
I won't blame FOX News or Right Winged Christian extremists because we, ultimately, decide how we react in situations. I will, however, ask these people who incite those to commit acts of violence for the sake of politics to really think about what they say before they say it. Have your opinion, sure, but realize that your words can shape and influence opinion and affect--or end--people's lives.
Postscript--Perhaps instead of the "we're gonna bully and scare women into not wanting an abortion by being in their faces and yelling at them and, perhaps even, killing them" why not try a loving approach? Teach legitimate sex education (not the phony crap I heard in high school), encourage adoption and make contraception readily available for sexually active women. Folks are having sex at younger ages and just because they hear "it's wrong and immoral" won't stop them from having it as we have clearly seen in the past two decades. It's time for a new approach but, of course, it always will begin at home.
2 comments:
I think that Jesus calls us to non-violence, so you won't hear me argue otherwise. However, it seems to me that killing a murderer has a different weight to it than killing an innocent human being. It's how we can separate the United States Justice System from the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Sure, they're both bad. However, one certainly is worse, isn't it?
hmmmm. never thought of it like that. the u.s. justice system has executed innocent people but not on the scale of the third reich. i was always under the impression that murder was wrong regardless of who did it...
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