http://www.flickr.com/photos/39038726@N04/sets/72157619136003386/

I also wonder to what extent OR and the right wing pundits are responsible. Maybe under the law they are not criminally responsible but they definitely helped set these events in motion. Also, as far as I have seen, they have not condemned the killer without reservation. It seems like they are giving him tacit approval. They are doing nothing to stop this from happening again. Did the murderer have friends like himself? I could see someone else out there wanting th glory of becoming a martyr for the cause. There statements that doctor’s murder are hollow and insincere when the immediately shift to demeaning Dr. Tiller? I hope there are no copycats because there is no one in their own community publicly trying to stop them.

IAny clinic that provides abortions is at a higher risk than they were 10 days ago.

I understand and respect the decision of the family. They have certainly sacrificed more than almost anyone else in the fight to keep choices viable. But that the terrorists are going to win, that murder as a tactic for political change is going to prevail, that all providers are less safe is sickening. God, the thought that these people can just murder enough people to get their way is really astonishing.

And in case you’re still reading anyway, sekanblogger, to say this:

Sorry. I just didn’t know life was that serious.

on a thread about a doctor who was murdered in his own church is about the stupidest, least self-aware thing you could possibly do.

Which is infuriating coming from men, but from women it’s just depressing.

Can you really not see the similarity to the concept that other people have the right to decide what a woman is allowed to do with her body? What both share is the idea that some people (children, women) are not really full citizens in the sense that adult men are and that therefore other people are allowed to breach their bodily autonomy FOR THEIR OWN AND EVERYONE ELSE’S GOOD.

Now, do you see why so many women see that underlying assumption and find it so incredibly offensive? You can say that you don’t mean to judge all you want, but you’re still supporting the underlying ideology, and that comes across loud and clear whenever you use the word “moral”.

Yeah, I suspect you may be right. I mean take the example of my husband posted above – he’s always been aware that his mother really didn’t want to be pregnant with him because her marriage was in trouble at the time, and that if abortion had been avaliable she may well have had one. But he’s firmly pro-choice, and would indeed react with “well if she had aborted me I just never would have been born and thus never would have known any different”. The fact that he’s a Buddhist (though he was raised Catholic) may well have something to do with that, or it may just be that some people are naturally less inclined to automatically go “but what about me?” just as a personality trait.

OTOH I used to know a guy who was anti-abortion purely on the grounds that he was adopted and his mother might have had an abortion if she’d been able to. But he was one of the angriest-at-women men I’ve ever met so again, I think basic personality and circumstances are interacting there.