Everyone calm down!
By Gabrielle Martin
Let me just get this out there first: I am 100 percent pro-life. I do not in any way support legal abortions and I find them to be an act of murder. Want to know what else I find to be an act of murder? Firing on a Planned Parenthood and killing three people. Just for the record (not that it would make any difference as to the atrocity of this situation) none of the people who were killed were even there for an abortion. Two of the victims were male and the one female was there with a friend.
Here is my problem with the response of anyone and everyone to the Planned Parenthood situation: everyone wants to generalize. See what I did there? This is nothing new. People are eager to say that all Syrian refugees are terrorists in disguise, people on welfare are lazy and/or on drugs, Planned Parenthood only does abortions and pro-lifers are only concerned about the baby.
It’s easy to do—until it’s your group that’s being generalized. Then suddenly everyone is up-in-arms. “You can’t judge an entire group of people by the acts of a single person!” Oh, really? You were just doing it yesterday; yet, somehow, “it’s not the same.”
I think the other problem is that people too often speak without researching or combine research with opinion. Fact: only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortions. Fact: that still means Planned Parenthood performs over 300,000 abortions per year. Not a fact: women who receive abortions are sluts who sleep around. Also not a fact: pro-lifers don’t care about women.
One problem that evolves from generalization is that it gets us nowhere. Why would someone who is pro-life want to work with someone who is pro-choice when both sides are spewing hateful untrue messages about each other? Why would someone who is pro-gun regulation and someone who is anti-gun regulation work together when both sides are adamant that the other side is wrong before even hearing them out? I think we can all agree that mass shootings need to stop. If we worked together, rather than generalizing everyone and causing more tension, we could find a way to reduce these horrendous acts.
As someone who works very hard to make sure I don’t generalize people, I feel that I have a right to say a couple of things in conclusion – both for my defense and the defense of many pro-lifers that I know.
I am pro-birth and I take no shame in that; I think everyone has a right to be born. I do not think women are here for reproducing. I do care about women. I do think that women know what’s best for themselves. I do not think of women as property.
Anti-choice rhetoric leads to violence
By Marisa Loranger
America, the land of the free, where women can’t access a basic health care clinic. A country where we don’t call the man who murdered these people a terrorist because of his skin color. Where white men can do and say whatever they want, and we all just have to live in their world because someday we might be their next victim. A world where white men are victims even when they are murderers.
The only feeling I have when I think about this act is anger. Anger that a man could do this. Anger that our politicians believe prayer is the only action they can take against terrorism. Anger that as a woman, I would feel safer providing my own abortion at home than going out and risking my life in a shooting or a bombing at a clinic by a so called pro-lifer.
Violence and threats against women’s health care clinics are on the rise again. Violence and threats by people who claim to be pro-life, because somehow, killing an adult is okay but the termination of embryonic cells isn’t.
There is nothing pro-life about the pro-life movement. The pro-life movement is pro-birth. They believe in an old way of thinking: women are here for reproducing. They don’t believe that women know what’s best for them, they believe that they do, because women are property to them, not living, thinking, beings.
Why, even when the facts are right in our faces, do people still think that Planned Parenthood only provides abortions? The biggest service that they provide is STD testing and treatment. They also provide contraception, cancer screening and prevention, prenatal services, and abortion services. Only three percent of what Planned Parenthood provides are abortions.
I hate that we even have to bring up numbers of abortions Planned Parenthood provides. If 100 percent of what they did was abortions, the attacks against them are still unwarranted and disgusting. Planned Parenthood provides what women need. If that means only abortions, that is the people’s choice.
Let’s support women and their healthcare choices. Let’s protect women. If you think that bombing, arson, or shootings will stop women from getting abortions, you are wrong. Women will not stop having abortions. Filling women with fear and taking away clinics that provide abortions just creates a trend of back alley abortions. We’ll see women using hangers, swallowing pills, throwing themselves down the stairs and probing themselves with a knitting needle. Women will find ways to end unwanted pregnancies no matter what is thrown at them. So, to the people who find these acts appropriate, I hope you can handle the amount of blood you have on your hands.