Dr Tiller’s murder
The pro-choice movement, specifically our abortion providers, are in the greatest danger of violence when we take power. When the anti-abortion movement loses power, their most extreme elements appear to move to the fore and take control. The murder of Dr. Tiller suggests that violence against abortion providers may be far more linked to the power, or lack thereof, anti-abortion groups have politically than to laws designed to increase penalties against such acts.
This has very scary implications, including an uptick in violence.
What can we do? Well, we can start with the suggestions posted over at Feminist Philosophers. If Page’s analysis is right, though, we need to consider demanding that the department of Homeland Security treat Tiller’s murder as the beginning of a terrorist threat. Maybe that’ll get the message across that the anti-choice forces are not welcome to harass people and it will start making the connections between the murders and some of the anti-choice rhetoric.
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I am not quite sure how you’d go about doing that: Teaching everybody to perform abortions. That’s like suggesting that everybody should learn how to repair their own teeth…
Democratize abortions. Forget government aid. Everyone should know how to kill a fetus, then it will be unstoppable. I know this is unpleasant but relying upon bourgeois doctors means that there will be only a handful of rockstar doctors who anti-abortion fanatics can concentrate upon and eliminate.
I don’t know… As I stare at the Gallup charts I am wondering if this is some sort of data error. The pro-choice numbers have been consistently been above 45% and the anti-choice below 45% and now in 2009, they switch dramatically? Seems odd to me. If there had been a downward trend in the pro-life support during the Bush years, it would make more sense. But why this dramatic and unprecedented drop? The top graph also doesn’t seem to be consistent with the graphs below it.
On the other hand, they mention other surveys: “Americans’ recent shift toward the pro-life position is confirmed in two other surveys.” And
Why?!? That’s a big shift all the sudden. I guess that’s your point: The anti-choice people are coming out of the wood-works but wouldn’t that have shown up on previous surveys? I mean, assuming that Gallup does the surveying right, their samples are representative samples. And people couldn’t just hide…
Here’s what Gallup speculates:
Still seems odd…
Thanks Wiebes & Elsie! This is interesting, though disconcerting, data…
Backup for previous post – very interesting indeed!
http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspx
To lend support for your theory, I read today that polls show that more Americans are now pro-life than pro-choice. Anytime you have a polarizing administration in place, the opposition will be motivated to circle the wagons and redouble their forces. That’s not meant to detract in any way from all the good that the Obama administration is doing, but it is an unfortunate fallout.
Excellent point, Wiebes! You are right – one data point does not make a pattern. But if you take a look at the statistics, you’ll see that not only murders went down in quantity, other “extreme violence” did, too.
Page points out: “During the Bush administration, not only were there no murders, there were no attempted murders. There was one clinic bombing during the Bush years. […] In the last year of the Bush administration there were 396 harassing calls to abortion clinics. In just the first four months of the Obama administration that number has jumped to 1401.”
I hope all of this is just a coincidence – and, again, you are right to caution us to draw a conclusion based on one murder – but if we include other violence and the change in “chatter,” there is enough evidence pointing to a pattern worth taking note.
I don’t know, I would like to play devils advocate for a second. Murder in 1998, murder again in 2009. Is that really enough data to form a pattern? What if there were attempted murders, or arsons, or other violence against the abortion doctors during that time? It just seems that two cases separated by nine years is not really enough to link it all to Bush vs. Obama.
Although it’s awful, I don’t think one murder would qualify as as an “uptick in violence”. I mean, technically yes, since it is up from zero, but it is not really a huge trend like hundreds of people breaking the law the day after Obama took office.
Yes, I agree — this was horrible and shocking, and it made me feel like I was living in the ’90s again (when I really did live in Kansas!).
Blech.
— Lisa