NEWS ITEM FROM TODAY:
WICHITA, Kansas -- Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who performed abortions, was shot to death as he entered his Wichita church on Sunday.
By a large majority, anti-abortionists, euphemistically, and ironically, calling themselves "pro-life," support executions, killing of animals for sport, torture and preemptive war.
Gee. I wonder how their sex-lives are?
Well this is a sad event of course. And it makes no logical sense. But the overwhelming majority of people who are pro-life don't murder people in cold blood. To focus on that event in the context of the debate is a distraction. I hail from the left politically but then my spiritual value system implored me to "love my enemies" and after a great deal of prayer, I allowed myself to hear the perspective of pro-lifers with a neutral ear. I removed my political training which taught me to denigrate anybody who didn't share my belief. I came to the realization that by and large, pro lifers are not anti-woman or anti-choice. They simply and honestly believe that life begins at conception and should be protected - this includes girl babies, I might add. When you're willing to hear their viewpoint without all the conditioning, then you find that they are perfectly imperfect human beings with a good intent - not unlike the prochoice crowd - which I now find to be also perfectly imperfect. Indeed, how many abortions are performed in our country each year? Did you know that 1.6 million abortions were done in 2011? Now that I don't have any need to hold on to a political enemy, I somehow have a hard time defending that as a worthy cause. I would say that we have missed the crux of the problem if we want to continue to see this issue in the traditional polarized way.
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