Weightier Matters

Let me link to Shakesville once again. There's an open letter to President Obama about the murder of D.r George Tiller.

There's not much I can add to that. Here's the comment I left:

Thank you. Thank you for once again refuting the position that this is a debate between two equally valid positions, in which extremism on both sides prevents the reasonable moderates from finding a solution. When one side argues that women haven't the right to control their own bodies, when they favor intimidation over peaceful protest, when their rhetoric, even when distancing themselves from acts of violence, is laced with hatred and with smug satisfaction, it seems to me that those reasonable moderates should be asking themselves how a cause that is served by such methods can be worthy of debate.

Perhaps then, the reasonable and decent people who oppose abortion (and, because of incidents like this, I found it hard to believe that they existed until I met some of them) can focus their efforts, not on limiting the choices of women, but on improving them, on working to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

I was raised by liberal parents in a very Catholic family, so I've been spoon-fed both sides of this debate for pretty much my entire life, and even as a small child it was obvious to me that the solution was simple. If you don't approve of abortion, don't fucking have one.

I can't even begin to tell you how much it pisses me off that these people get to go around calling themselves pro-life.