Sorting through feelings as well as strategies in the face
of the enormous defeat that the passage of a health care reform bill that so
severely and punishingly restricts access to abortion will take time and hard
political decisions. One wants to punish those who voted for the Stupak
amendment and especially Stupak as much as they have punished women. At some
point in time one has to put women first and above all else for no else will.
Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH)
is, in many ways, a typical pro-life American. He opposes abortion and,
because of that, supports every effort to prevent the need for it. Just
like most pro-life Americans, Ryan supports contraception -- primarily
because it is the most effective way to prevent unintended pregnancy,
and thereby abortion. And yet because of this, Ryan no longer qualifies
as "pro-life." He was recently banished from the board of a national
pro-life group he served on for four years. Ryan, in return, has turned
vocal.
"The data presented in this report indicate that many young persons in the United States
engage in sexual risk behaviour and experience negative reproductive
health outcomes." That is the very clinical and polite way a new Centre
for Disease Control and Prevention reporton the rise.
I am sickened by the death of Dr. George Tiller, a physician who
displayed lifelong respect for the woman and her body. Operation Rescue
condemned his murder, though in language that tacitly encourages
violence. Randall Terry, calling Tiller a "mass murderer," even accused
him of performing late-term abortions for women who had simply decided
they did not wish to have a baby. Terry never lets facts stand in the
way of his vicious war against the rights of women. Grand juries in
culturally conservative Kansas rejected Terry's charges.
Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow devoted much of their MSNBC shows last night to the assassination of George Tiller.
Maddow actually led with a headshot of Michael Griffin, the first abortion-doctor murderer, who killed Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida in 1993. She then moved on to copycat Shelley Shannon, who wrote letters of support for Griffin shortly before she shot George Tiller in both arms, an ominous foreboding of his murder 16 years later.
