Last May, Dr. George Tiller was gunned down by a pro-life activist in Sunday church. Yesterday the activist, Scott Roeder, was convicted of Dr. Tiller’s murder.

A Kansas jury deliberated just 37 minutes before convicting an anti-abortion activist of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of an abortion provider.

Roeder says he has no regrets concerning his actions and justifies them by claiming he killed Dr. Tiller to “save lives”.

Prosecutors initially fought to keep abortion out of the trial, claiming that Tiller’s death was a straightforward case of premeditated murder.

Tiller was no stranger to life endangerment. He was regularly attacked and received numerous death threats throughout his career. He figured it was only a matter of time before someone succeeded in his death. No matter what your personal beliefs are on the issue, what happened was a tragedy and an example of extremism.

Roeder will be sentenced on March 9 & faces life in prison.

As the recession drags on and deepens, people everywhere are looking for ways to save and cut back wherever they can: the grocery bill, alternate transportation, family planning.
Massive layoffs all around the country have infused uncertainty into the future in all areas. People are asking themselves: ‘Should we have a(nother) baby?” “Can we afford it?” Most are answering “no, we can’t”. For many, a more permanent birth control has become a viable option.

In Ohio, the Cleveland Clinic has seen a 50 percent increase in vasectomies since last October, when the economic crisis exploded.

Jones was told by patients that they were getting vasectomies because they were losing their jobs and health insurance, or concerned about being out of work soon….They realize they don’t have the financial security long-term with what’s going on.

It’s not just men having this ‘permanent’ birth control, women are having procedures done too-tubal litigation’s as well as abortions.

Planned Parenthood of Illinois clinics performed an all-time high number of abortions in January, many of them motivated by the women’s economic worries, said CEO Steve Trombley

Experts say it’s too early to tell if this will negatively impact the national birth rate, though note that during the Depression and previous times of economic downturns, the birthrate “did go down”.

I will admit that I cringe whenever I hear someone say, “Guess what? We’re pregnant!” The phrase really rubs me the wrong way. I think it’s because I never romanticized the whole pregnancy process, so to me “we’re pregnant” just feels so corny and cloying. Couple that with my bit of anal insistence on proper language use and disdain of malapropisms, and the eyes tend to roll back into my skull — not exactly following the rules for politeness on hearing such joyous news from a friend (perhaps that’s why I don’t have many of them).

So imagine my reaction reading this piece from the L.A. Times about a Christian group — quelle surprise — that’s trying to “change abortion’s pronoun”:

These days, he channels the grief into activism in a burgeoning movement of “post-abortive men.” Abortion is usually portrayed as a woman’s issue: her body, her choice, her relief or her regret. This new movement — both political and deeply personal in nature — contends that the pronoun is all wrong.

“We had abortions,” said Mark B. Morrow, a Christian counselor. “I’ve had abortions.”

I don’t doubt that some men may feel a sense of loss, but slapping a label on it and treating it like some sort of syndrome is a bit much, is it not? He goes on:

Morrow, the counselor, described his regret as sneaking up on him in midlife — more than a decade after he impregnated three girlfriends (one of them twice) in quick succession in the late 1980s. All four pregnancies ended in abortion.

Years later, when his wife told him she was pregnant, “I suddenly realized that I had four dead children,” said Morrow, 47, who lives near Erie, Pa. “I hadn’t given it a thought. Now it all came crashing down on me — look what you’ve done.”

What have you done? You prevented yourself from lining up “baby mamas” like you were P. Diddy, that’s what. I was prepared to write it off as a guy a bit too much in touch with his feelings until I read that this melodrama was part of a bigger plot — to use the passionate stories to try and influence the Supreme Court:

Therapist Vincent M. Rue, who helped develop the concept of post-abortion trauma, runs an online study that asks men to check off symptoms (such as irritability, insomnia and impotence) that they feel they have suffered as a result of an abortion. When men are widely recognized as victims, Rue said, “that will change society.”

Abortion rights supporters watch this latest mobilization warily: If anecdotes from grieving women can move the Supreme Court, what will testimony about men’s pain accomplish?

“They can potentially shift the entire debate,” said Marjorie Signer of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith group that supports abortion rights.

I say not to worry — we all know that when a large group of privileged white men feel they are suffering an injustice, nothing is ever done about it, right?

Oh, shit.

Sales analytics are showing that the sale of the controversial morning after pill is skyrocketing, much to the dismay of conservative and Christian activists who consider the pill a form of abortion.

Putting politics, religion, and morality aside, are blessings and consequences fully being considered in the light of objectivity?

Of course, the morning after pill is nothing short of a miracle for those women who are raped or have a night of indiscretion (after all, everybody makes mistakes) in preventing a pregnancy before it’s really viable, but what are the real consequences? Could it be the lack of consequences?

Some more moderate pro-lifers may be grateful in as far as the morning after pill might affect how often an invasive abortion procedure is needed or done, but is a society free from accountability and responsibility one of integrity and boundaries?

We keep creating policies, products and procedures to circumvent consequences. While some of these inventions and policies are miraculous and life saving, is it possible that diminishing the need or skill to control ones impulses or negate sound judgment may be counterproductive? Isn’t there a benefit of second guessing oneself or making an attempt to be responsible?

One would think it’s not good practice to mix politics with business, but a New York storage facility likes to use their advertising as a venue to promote their personal politics:

In case you can’t read the photo, it says, “Your closet space is shrinking faster than her right to choose.” There’s one group that thinks it’s bullshit, and that’s the (surprise, surprise) Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. (There’s a Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights??)

The president of the organization says this:

“Why a storage company finds the need to advertise its support for abortion is a story all of its own, but when it seeks to depict the pro-life community—which is primarily Catholic and Protestant—as oppressive, then a line has been crossed.”

Personally, I think it’s really crass (hello, a coat hanger?) and cheapens the message it’s trying to convey. But I also think that if a business wants to wear their politics on their sleeve and face the consequences, they have the right to do it (I would feel the same way if this ad had a “pro-life” message).

Would this billboard inspire you to store your crap there, or would it make you never want to give them a dime of your hard earned money? Or does it not matter either way?