Domestic Terrorists

By Baxter

Another day, another mass murder in America. And we cats were already noting this as a somber anniversary.

Ten years ago, Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was shot and killed in his church. His murderer, an anti-choice nutcase, is currently serving a life sentence — and has been known to pass along threats to Tiller's successor, who reopened the doctor's clinic after buying it from his widow.

Julie Burkhart's response: "We cannot let fear dictate our lives. People in Wichita and beyond need access to healthcare and it would be irresponsible of us not to reinstate that."

In the years since, Benedict Donald and his right-wing fanatics are busy making abortion providers' lives even harder. Only by the ruling of a single judge in Missouri has the state's last abortion clinic managed to remain open today, and anti-choice legislation — mostly enacted by men — is on the march in a slew of mostly Southern states. (Yes, Democratic Governor of Louisiana John Bel Edwards, we're looking at you.)

Meanwhile, voices of reason manage to poke through — at least from our Neighbors to the North, who are unencumbered by our history of fundamental evangelism. "As a government, as Canadians we will always be unequivocal about defending women's right to choose, defending women's rights in general," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. "It's a shame that we increasingly see conservative governments and conservative politicians taking away rights that have been hard fought over many, many years by generations of women and male allies."

America is peculiar: With our open, liberal society, we're progressive in some ways, but still backward in others. And the push and pull that we go through on social issues is made exponentially worse by the presence in our country of some 300 million guns.

A shooter killed 11 people in Virginia Beach today. Coincidentally, the number of people killed at abortion clinics since 1993 is also 11. And we'd bet that all of the murderers responsible for their deaths would style themselves as unfailingly pro-life. We cats HISS.