Right-to-lifers who kill: We're missing the point

The justification for killing an abortion provider is that you're trying to prevent abortions. You know, the old, "If only someone had killed Hitler..." rationale.

But here's the thing: If that were truly someone's goal, it seems fairly obvious that the way to do it lies far opposite gunning doctors down in church.

You do it by reducing unwanted pregnancy and giving truly useful alternatives to women who believe they have no choice but to terminate a pregnancy but would prefer not to. You do it by realizing no one actually wants to get an abortion, and would much rather just not get pregnant in the first place. I mean, no one wants to go to the freaking dentist, and getting an abortion is a lot more unpleasant than that.

Which means making contraception affordable, safe, and accessible. It means giving young people comprehensive sex and reproductive education. It means funding programs like Planned Parenthood. It means putting your money where your mouth is and helping provide education, free childcare, and in-home support services for struggling families. It means accepting that teenagers and other unmarried people are going to have sex.

That is how you reduce the number of abortions. Note how it does not involve guns or funerals.

But of course, these self-righteous warriors for the unborn don’t do those things, mostly because very little of their passionate drive comes from the desire to reduce the number of abortions. It comes from a desire to control other people's bodies and sexual behavior, to punish people for doing things of which they don't approve, for being uppity and sexual and out of control. And of course, by "people" I pretty much mean "women."

So called "right-to-lifers" with this mindset can't accept any solution that involves making things easy on sexually active teens and single adult women. Some of them apparently would rather blow a man's brains out in church than teach their sons and daughters how to use condoms and spermicidal foam.

People who are genuinely convinced that what I see as a blob of protoplasm is actually a human life, and who are so moved with reverence for human life that they want to see an end to legal abortion, are not the ones shooting people. I disagree with them but respect their belief. I recognize there is a divide between how they see the world and how I do, and that's something we're all, as a nation, going to have to continue to live with for the foreseeable future.

But the crazed moralistic control freaks? The self-righteous, the violent, the obsessive stalkers? This isn't really about abortion for them. It's about the sickness inside their heads, their desire to force everyone around them to live according to their beliefs – not their beliefs about abortion, but about sex and freedom and right and wrong.

Being able to get a legal, safe abortion after one has fornicated is, in that world view, being allowed to escape your punishment. So is getting free childcare and having someone come in and help you with the laundry and watch your baby while you go out on a job interview.

Because sex is immoral, and pregnancy is the punishment, and that goes double for your little child, too.

Comments

[Sharyn]

Brava, Christie!

[Scottee]

Beautifully said, Christie!

[G.Sanders]

Thank you my friend for saying it so well. I'm still so heartbroken. He was a shining star for showing that Kansas could be progressive and now this is just another black eye for us.

[Meryl]

Exactly!

[Lori]

You'll generally find that that particular person you've described is also pro-death penalty, which has never made any sense to me. A woman can't chose, but a jury of 12 can decide who should live or die?

[Reeta]

Do you really think a late term baby is a "blob of protoplasm"?

[Christie]

Reeta, I have no idea when a blob of protoplasm becomes a baby. Neither do you. This is a medical decision that needs to be made by a woman and her physician, not two people arguing on a blog.

But let me ask you this: Do you think there is some epidemic of women in late pregnancy who decide oh what the hell, I think I'll go get an abortion? Those surgeries are virtually always done for medical reasons, many of them lifesaving. If you think otherwise, you're believing a lie.

[Reeta]

Christie,
I wasn't arguing, just asking you a question.

[Christie]

You asked a very loaded question. Loaded questions are a debate tool. Debates are arguments. So yes, you were arguing.

I don't mind. I enjoy a civil debate. I am not one who thinks that people who disagree with me are evil or even necessarily wrong. I'm simply saying, asking loaded questions is arguing.

[Susan]

Christie,

Will you be getting that late-term abortion before or after you stop beating your wife?
Sorry I missed this entry when it was first posted. When they catch this murderer, it has to be life without parole, to minimize his martyrdom.