It seems we have renegades out there fighting a war - a war against the Constitution, a war against women and a war against rationality. They kill in the name of a cause in which they believe, and they are indiscriminant; they kill anything in their path.
Unfortunate for two innocent people, that path runs through every abortion clinic in the nation, including one in Birmingham. That path ran through an off-duty police officer and a nurse who were both either doing their jobs or on their way to work. The officer was killed for nothing more than performing his job, the nurse injured for nothing more than showing up early for work.
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| Josh White
Jumping |
The fact of the matter is that just a week after people nationwide celebrated the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that granted women abortion rights, someone decided that the Supreme Court wasn't good enough for them and that the laws of this nation didn't apply to their little bomb (which incidentally shattered windows a block away). Where do these people come from?
I would like to think that I don't know anyone like those who would kill others over an argument such as abortion rights - what I fear is that I do. Perhaps these are the people who sit next to us in class, who stand next to us in line and who work with us on a daily basis. Perhaps they are our friends or relatives - the sad truth about a bombing such as this one is that we may never know who they are because they were too cowardly to face their decision and they were too crazy to think correctly enough to stop it ahead of time. The really sick part of this whole incident is that it probably was not the work of just one person but of many.
To be completely honest, I abhor abortion. I think it is terrible, disgusting and wrong; I think it is overused as a form of birth control and I know that it can be extremely dangerous - even life-threatening - for women who decide to have it performed on their bodies. But I, like most people out there who decide to have an opinion on this issue, don't have even an inkling of a clue what abortion is really about. I am not a woman and will never be faced with waking up in the morning and learning that I am pregnant. I hope abortion will never directly affect me or my friends - but it already has affected several people I know. I have the leisure of speaking to an issue I will never face on a personal level, and I bet the person who set that bomb is in the same position.
Given all of that, I support the pro-choice movement. I support choice because I know that my opinion about abortion is not the right opinion, and I know that no one else knows the "right" opinion either. This is about one thing: civil liberties.
See, those who want to kill the doctors who help women take stock in their lives and who help women make the most difficult decisions they will ever encounter don't understand personal choice. They don't understand that one woman's abortion is one woman's abortion - it is her problem, her situation, her decision, no one else's. It doesn't affect me, it doesn't affect you, and it certainly doesn't affect the bomber.
John Salvi shot a few people in Brookline, Mass., just outside of Boston, a few years ago. He shot them in the name of the same cause the bomber killed with. From one clinic to the next, he mercilessly shot at innocent people who were either working at or going to planned parenthood services. They think they are better than the law, they think they are better than society, and they clearly think they are better than you.
What I find exemplary is that people on both sides of the issue condemn such actions, as Randy Tate, executive director of the Christian Coalition, openly stated Thursday. But there are people out there who truly believe that killing others will solve this problem. Killing will scare women away from getting their abortions, will steal their choice from them by making them stay at home and forcing them to have unwanted children. Something tells me that if they started bombing ice cream parlors, people might not want to go out to buy a cone, but does that in any way address the problem?
Those who disagree can exercise their choice to speak out against policies they don't like - that is what this country stands for. I only wish there were a way to alert the mad bombers out there that this is how our country works, to protect all of our interests.
- Josh White can be reached over e-mail at jswhite@umich.edu.
02-03-98
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