Two days, two killings.
On Sunday, George Tiller, nationally-known late- and full-term abortion provider, was shot and killed in his church in Kansas.
Today, a soldier (rank unknown), William Long, was shot and killed in his Army recruiting station in Arkansas.
Only one of these shootings will label an entire group of people, numbering roughly 51% of the population (according to Zogby) as mad, irrational, mentally handicapped potential murderers. The other will be regarded as a purely political act undertaken by a single deranged lunatic who at least had his heart in the right place.
If you thought that the shooting of George Tiller was the latter, think again.
THIS is why I tell people, till I'm blue in the face, that this is not what pro-lifers represent. Not because I actually care about low-life scum like Tiller, who intentionally wait until the child is long past old enough to survive outside the womb, so that they're easier to extract without "accidentally" dismembering them inside the womb. Such actions should be abhorrent in any society that considers itself upright and just; even the vast majority of abortion-choicers will agree that such late-term abortions are an abomination (even if they can't quite explain to others, or admit to themselves, just why some "choices" are more disturbing than others). I say it because people believe that this is what ALL pro-lifers represent, right down to the middle-aged woman praying in front of a Planned Parenthood and the teenage volunteers at their community crisis pregnancy centers.
But shoot a recruiter and his assistant and, well, at least he means well....
The reality is that very, very few people are actually insane enough to shoot and kill someone outside of the confines of the law, and those who are, will do so regardless of their ideology.
This is the very definition of insanity. It's possible that the man who shot the recruiter could just as easily have pumped an anti-war protest full of lead if he'd had the right influence. It's likewise possible that Scott Roeder could have blown up a crisis pregnancy center. The point is, these people are clearly mentally disturbed -- period. It doesn't matter what "group" they thought they belonged to, because the bottom line is, the vast majority of pro-lifers and pacifists are rational, caring, thoughtful people, who simply want to effect the most good in their world that they can -- just like abortion-choicers and soldiers. Their rationale might be wrong, but a few irrational bananas in the bunch don't make the entire tree bad.
I give the majority of abortion-choicers the benefit of the doubt on being at least semi-intelligent, rational, clear-thinking, and nonviolent; why can pro-lifers not be afforded the same courtesy? Until this single, isolated attack, the last known bombing of an abortion clinic was later found to have been perpetuated by the acting physician himself, for the insurance money. Until this incident, no abortion practitioner had been killed in 11 years. And unlike clinic violence, which the media finds newsworthy, attacks on crisis pregnancy center workers -- a phenomenon I've personally experienced multiple times, including having tires slashed, being egged, and being threatened with bodily harm -- is almost never reported, and pro-lifers generally do not take it as an indication of universal violence for all abortion-choicers. There is simply no reason for the blind, irrational, mindless hatred for pro-lifers demonstrated by the media and abortion-choicers.
I hope both gunmen are found and brought to justice. I hope their sentences are equitable -- because shooting a person, regardless of what that person did, should always be regarded as wrong. That Mr. Long was a recruiter and Tiller an abortionist should be irrelevent. Tiller should not be made a martyr, and Long should not be made a criminal. The bugs, after all, will not care what the man did while alive while they're chewing on his flesh. The crime is the deed, not the victim.
Comments (9)
Well said. I didn't even hear about the recruiter the day he was killed - apparently a "spray and pray" killing isn't as newsworthy as the irony of Tiller being killed in a church. I agree that both murders were crimes committed by men who were not representative of any group other than "the crazies".
A second opinion:
http://zerowing21.xanga.com/703603690/reactions-to-the-tiller-murder-and-next-blogalog/?cuttag=true#cuttaganchor
It's pretty well laid out. I don't think I can say it any better.
@In_Reason_I_Trust - Meh... reads like the same old, same old to me.
I'm not going to defend, or speak for, anyone other than myself. I've written at great length on abortion (this is merely a short list of my writings; I stopped tagging after a while), both itself as a political act and as a commentary on modern ethics and morality; on the logical inconsistencies of abortion-choicers; on prenatal development, on the courts' rulings on abortion, on judicial commentary, etc, etc, etc. I'm currently in the middle of writing a nonfiction book on the nonreligious opposition to legalized abortion. Suffice it to say, I've thought about the issue a time or two. Writers like the one you linked simply assume that pro-lifers are brainless ignorami, with no clue about the prenatal development of the human child, who simply want to find more, new, and insidious ways for the government to control and oppress women, repeal the 19th amendment, force millions of children into orphanages and foster care, kill women with coat hangars, and generally destroy modern society.
Horse shit.
Again, I can only speak for myself, but my readers are a pretty intelligent bunch -- a few PhDs, some professional writers, teachers, lawyers, and just all-around smart eggs frequent these parts. I find it difficult to believe that this group of highly intelligent professionals and home-makers somehow degenerate into knuckle-dragging numb-skulls when faced with the overwhelming mental taxation of basic embryology or -- gasp! -- the use of basic logic skills. If you honestly believe that over half of the population of the US are brain-dead, vaguely humanoid pustules who can't distinguish between legally killing "in defense of others" and criminally killing a perceived threat, then maybe it's the abortion-choice side in need of a reality check, not us.
"Abortion-choice"? Wow. That says it all. Your bias glasses are very thick.
Your entry reads like the same ol, same ol crap.
@In_Reason_I_Trust - I use the term "abortion-choice," not "pro-choice," for one reason and one reason alone: Because it is the only intellectually honest term.
If I am at a head shop and say I'm "pro-choice," they're not going to assume I'm talking about marijuana.
If I'm at a gun show and say I'm "pro-choice," they're not going to assume I'm talking about gun ownership.
If I'm at a gay pride parade and say I'm "pro-choice," they're not going to assume I'm talking about gay marriage.
You and I both know that the only "choice" covered by the term "pro-choice" is in regards to abortion. We're not talking about the myriad things that the majority of pro-lifers believe SHOULD be a matter of individual choice -- from taxes, to immigration, to religion, to speech, to education, to gun ownership, to marijuana, to gay marriage, to adoption, and on and on goes the list. I'm the most pro-choice person you could hope to meet. I simply believe that the government's only legitimate role in society is to regulate those choices which impact the lives of nonconsenting others. I happen to believe, based on the evidence and my own good common sense, that this includes the whole of humanity, not only those who meet my subjective criteria.
Well done.
Great work I'm happy to see more of this coming out. Maybe one or two people will trying actually thinking
I think both of these murders are horrible. There are always many crimes, but the media decides which ones to cover.
I do think it's unfair to label all pro-life people based on the actions of one person. Many pro-life people have said how horrible the muder was. (There have been a couple of disturbing people who were actually glad about it, though.) To be fair, though, I've also heard pro-life people label all people who are pro-choie, calling them "baby killers," etc. and I think this label is also unfair. There are pro-choice people who realize that abortion should be avoided if possible, but that there are some situations when it may be used.
I've heard similar arguments among Christians and Muslims, for example. There are some people who only criticize Christianity and not Islam. On the other side, there are people who criticize Islam and not Christianity. There are some people on each side who think that a crime is only wrong if the other side does it, and not wrong if one of their own does it. I think that a crime is wrong regardless of the person's religious beliefs.
Getting back to the two muders you mentioned, I think the only way a certain group may be considered responsible for these muders is if some other people actually helped plan them. They are both wrong.
- J. M. 713
Stopping by from a rec.
Very well said. These two murders are, sadly, a great example of the hypocrisy and double-standards people hold to.