Friday, January 29, 2010

sad.

Okay---so I hate to be depressing, but I have to just say how soul-crushing the whole idea that "the only way to fix the abortion problem is to kill people who provide abortions."

Scott Roeder was convicted today of first degree murder for the killing of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performs late term abortions. (see here for the New York Times article).

And now we've reached a moral issue of how one man can be put to death for killing a fellow human being, and how another continues to practice medicine for effectively eliminating fetuses. Part of me reaaaaalllllly doesn't want to touch this issue at all. I know that the comments I have on this particular issue are religious, political, moral, and scientific...so this post would A, last forever, and B, is more than most of you would ever care to know.

But maybe that's the point...it is that people pick one subset of a HUGE issue and pick that to be the only reason they have chosen that particular side...well...it's like being the captain in kickball and choosing one kid in over thirty students, only because he's wearing blue shoes, and heck..you like blue shoes. Which---sure, you made a choice. That's fine. But I'd rather you looked at the entire spectrum and choose as a well-informed kickball captain. And if you choose the kid with the blue shoes, more power to you. But you chose because you had done your research. And much of today's decision-making, for all of our blue book research on cars, Consumer Reports research on the latest gadgets...we don't do so well at really looking at the facts, then looking at other people's opinions, and then finally making a well-informed decision.

So one of these days, when I'm good and happy and it's sunny out and there is ice cream in the freezer and cookie dough in the fridge, I'm going to hammer out said post. One day. The idealist in me wants to make sure that all sides of the issue are heard, with copious bibliographic notes. After that, your decisions are your own. But ignorance, man. It hurts me.

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