Let’s Hope This Bullet Did It
The other day, a celebrated man with a long life-history of helping and healing others completed his life in a truly awe-inspiring fashion: By losing his life to a bullet fired in a Christian Church, Dr. George Tiller became the ultimate symbol of the moral bankruptcy and core illegitimacy of the so-called “pro-life” movement.
Martrydom is never a solace to the loved ones left behind, and presumably Dr. Tiller’s wife of 45 years, his four children and ten grandchildren won’t be able to be happy about what his death stands for. They will have to struggle, not only with the cold-blooded murder of their loved one, but also with the poisonous rhetoric that will try to claim, in truly Orwellian fashion, that somehow this murder was about saving lives. I can’t imagine how that must hurt. Then again, they knew firsthand how passionate he was about women’s rights and reproductive health, so perhaps in time they’ll find some comfort in what he accomplished, in death as well as in life.
Make no mistake: There have been other murders. There have been bombings (one of which targeted Dr. Tiller’s clinic in the 80’s). There have been minor riots; acts of terrorism against innocent women, volunteers, and medical workers; and an endless stream of harassment, assault and behavior designed to incite violence. But sometimes it takes a really loud example to drive something home…and what could be louder than a 51-year-old white Kansas man killing a doctor in cold blood, while the doctor volunteered in a mainstream church?
Scott Roeder, the killer who I predict will go down in history as taking the entire anti-abortion movement with him, was a member of Operation Rescue — an organization that had this to say about the cold-blooded murder of a beloved family-man and selfless healer of the sick:
Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, has issued a statement:
“George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder. Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.”
Mr. Terry is available for comment at 904-687-9804.
(Thanks to jblaque for that info!)
Here we see how smoothly “pro-lifers” are able to capitulate, demur and completely fail to apologize or accept any responsibility for FIRST DEGREE MURDER. But it is nice to know that the murderer himself isn’t alone in trying to bring down the radical anti-abortion movement: He’s got the top brass helping him out, by showing everyone at this sensitive time exactly what kind of monsters we’re dealing with here. Surely there can be no doubt left, now.
(There will be some cries of “but I and some other people are good people and we’re anti-abortion too!” To which the answer is simple; the President said it a few weeks ago: If you’re anti-abortion, get out there and help prevent unwanted pregnancies, or help improve adoption services. There’s nothing morally bankrupt about trying to prevent abortions by helping women avoid needing them. But if you’re “pro-life”, then you’ve got a choice, ironically — you can change, or you can admit to siding with terrorists and cold-blooded murderers, plain and simple. Your group–by which I mean the entire ideological cadre of victim-bashing and victim-creating extremist anti-abortionites–has shown everyone what they really are. It’s officially time to change your tune…or face the music.)
Now. Let’s hope that Dr. Tiller didn’t die in vain. Let’s hope that people everywhere finally see the absurdity of calling a movement of violent racicals “pro-life”, and that the last shreds of their pathetic fantasy-based arguments against women’s reproductive rights are blown away on the wake of what, God(s) willing, will be the last bullet they fire.
I’m saying it one more time:
Pro-lifers no longer hold any moral or political legitimacy.
Their one and only legacy is as homegrown terrorists and murderers.
It’s time to make that known and let this violent, radical movement die, before it takes any more productive members of our society (be they women, children or doctors) with it.
I say this as a mother: No fetus in the world is worth the price of letting this shit continue.
Amen.
5 comments
Just this morning I thought, out of the blue, that the world would be a better place if everybody would do whatever they want – as long as they don’t intrude (affect, disturb, [insert many more fitting words]) other peoples life*.
Then I read this. I am SO disgusted. I don’t even know what to say, because it feels impossible to kill somebody just because you have a different opionion.
* That could actually replace nearly** every law.
** nearly, because I want to be on the safe side… just in case I forgot something…
What frustrates me most is that the majority of pro-lifers do not take pragmatic steps to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Every woman who has an unwanted pregnancy was in need prior to ever conceiving, but was not given that support. In my opinion, the focus to overturn Roe vs. Wade only seems an attempt to shape the environment such that coercion to carry a pregnancy to birth is easier and completely misses the point.
However, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call all antiabortionists terrorists. Frank Schaeffer of the Huffington Post wrote a great article that I think exhibits the kind of communication we need between each side. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/how-i-and-other-pro-life_b_209747.html. I don’t agree with him about re-regulating abortions according to fetal development, but I can read his opinion with respect. I prefer the preventative approach rather than making it law. And luckily for both of us better sex education (which he supports) and access to abortions (which he supports up to some point in development, I do not know at what point) will help to mitigate those late-term abortions.
I don’t think calling half of America a terrorist really works.. What are your thoughts on a pragmatic approach?
Hehe, have you ever read any Alestair Crowley? One of his ideas (well, one of his less-batshit ideas…great writer, nifty thinker, total whackjob) was that the only real law you needed was that everyone has the right to manage his or her own affairs, and to kill anybody who attempted to take that right away from them. I’m not much on killing, but I have to admit, if you actually implemented that, it’d smooth out the issue of “rights” pretty darn fast–! (Unfortunately it’s way too simple for the real world…but it comforts me to re-read his “man has the right” passage now and again anyway.)
I feel you, though. Revulsion isn’t a strong enough word for what people who behave like this, and who condone it (openly or otherwise), make me feel. *gak*
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Brice. (By the way, is that picture really you? If so, I’m terribly sorry but you’re far too cute to be on my blog…better get yourself a facial scar or something. ;)
I suppose I did a bit of freestyle differentiating between anti-abortion types — people who are against abortions, which really includes almost everybody, since they suck and are gross and emotionally horrid — and “pro-lifers”, defined (rather on-the-fly, I admit) as those who support (and/or don’t openly condemn) organizations that use harassment and victimization of women and abortion-providers as ways to express their displeasure with abortion. Aggravatingly, as you point out (and as George Carlin famously illustrated as well), these same people (both groups of them) often don’t do crap to support the things that could actually prevent abortions without victimizing others: sex education, birth control availability, adoption services, etc.
I’m not at all opposed to pragmatism — in fact I mentioned the Presidents speech at Yale, where he made the *awesome* point that both pro-and-anti types can and should get behind prevention, and I’m with that 100%. But I don’t think pragmatism can include tolerance of the intolerable, which includes but isn’t limited to murder. I think that in order to make productive forward progress, we have to not only get the people together who are ACTUALLY anti-abortion, but to single out and put the spotlight on those who are simply using their crusade against abortion as a cover-up for misogyny. (We’d end up including a lot of “pro-family” and “sanctity of marriage” types too, since the one thread that permutes most of their arguments is the control and subjugation of women.)
I’m all about people working together to end abortions — in a perfect world, they’d never be necessary. There would never be rape, or coercion, or incest, and individuals and couples who wanted children would choose to have them; or in the case of an accident (which, come on, in the real world accidents are *going* to happen, and we can stop demonizing the people they happen to already), it would be easy for the birth parents to give the child a good home with people who want children but can’t have them biologically. But we need to stop letting people frame the argument as pro- and anti-abortion…NONE of the major groups involved are “pro-abortion”.
And “pro-lifers” certainly aren’t pro-life. It just seems to me that clarifying what the positions actually are in this debate would go a long way towards making the answers (sex ed, birth control, adoption, etc.) much more easy to discern. What we have now isn’t a fair debate: It’s a social movement that’s been hijacked by an extremist group that uses deliberate obfuscation and misleading statements to muddy the waters for everyone, and in doing so manages to protect their violent and radical behaviors under the guise of a free expression of the other side of the issue, when that’s not what they are at all. They — what I’ve labeled the “pro-lifers”; those who are anti-woman not anti-abortion, as their actions reveal — ARE terrorists, and I think they should be publicly called out as such. Once they’re removed from the debate, and stop being seen as a legitimate side of the argument, I think it’ll be tons easier for the rest of us to make real progress in preventing abortions.
Yeah?
My gravatar is a picture of me, thanks :P
Thank you for your response. I can understand where you’re coming from. The more I think about it, anyone who aims to control “another person’s affairs” as you put it and especially if that person is not known to you generally is acting amorally.
I think I may have made too many concessions to pro-lifers out of respect for their submission to religion. However, I’m starting to feel it’s merely a facade to shield themselves for taking consequence for their behaviors (I’m just carrying out god’s wishes).
As always, your blog sparks thought. Thanks!
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