.

I like to consider myself very tolerant of the views of others. I believe in arguing with anyone who can argue honestly and without reliance on logical fallacies or bad evidence. But we all have our limits. I hate to say this, but I have no sympathy for pro-life arguments. I don't. I try not to, but I honestly can't help but look down on someone who tries to tell me that women shouldn't be able to snuff out a life for convenience. It is the most trite, glib, and misleading thing a person can say. Reducing the argument to a caricature of a sexually loose woman is dishonest and I have no respect for it. I know where it comes from, but well intentioned as it may be, it's a place of ignorance. The biggest reason that I am pro-choice is that I don't think the moralising of strangers has any place in a doctor's office. No one should control a woman's body but her--women don't get pregnant to murder fetuses out of spite--but there's another reason, too. Women are too often terrorised, and I've witnessed this first hand, out of acting in their own interest. Without options, many women kill themselves or die trying to solve their problems.

It's a convenient fiction that terrorism is something that is done elsewhere and to us by people from elsewhere, but I find the most upsetting acts of terror to be those committed by people at home. By Americans. And yes, I'm talking about this. Dr. Tiller isn't the first person to die because of hatred of women's bodies and sexuality, and he won't be the last, but I'll be damned if he is forgotten in a haze of straw-feminists and caricatures. Abortion is not an issue taken lightly by either the women who seek it, nor by the doctor's who perform it. Dr. Tiller was threatened, harassed, and assaulted many times before his life was finally taken. And the moralisers and the hardcore fundamentalists who celebrate the murders and murderers of other doctors before him will dance on his grave for many years to come.

Providers of these kinds of services aren't in it to make money. The eight years they spent getting their M.D.s and the thousands of dollars they borrowed to get there could be used to become fabulously wealthy in any area of medicine. Going into a profession in which people will hunt you down, send fliers to your neighbours disclosing your profession with photos of foam rubber fetuses in petri dishes full of red dye and corn syrup, follow your children to school, petition the local grocery not to serve you or your spouse, and have death threats sent to you every day of your life is not the way cowards and the greedy choose to make their money. And I assure you there isn't enough wealth or distinction to justify the risk and hassle.

So I'm sorry if I refuse to suffer you if you don't agree from time to time. Things like this happen too often. I've followed this man's career for the last four years... After everything that's happened, I can't believe he's gone.

--

Features



Feel free to make suggestions. You can suggest anything, even your own work. Send me a note or leave me a comment with your suggestions.