Murder of Abortion Doctor Shows Obama's Common Ground Approach Is Empty
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Salon.com's Broadsheet sports a headline that asks whether the Internet can save one of the few remaining doctors in the U.S. who performs late-term abortions, Dr. Warren Hern.
Dr. Hern and others' pictures, home addresses, clinic addresses and so on have been posted online by activists whose ulterior motive, in view of what happened to Dr. George Tiller, may be to incite violence against these doctors.
But Broadsheet also notes that liberal online social networking has linked them up and galvanized possible political change:
This time, the conversation has been strongly influenced by what Seltzer calls "an engaged, savvy and active blogosphere and twittersphere of feminists that have been able to launch accurate, appropriate language into circulation and gather evidence that this assassination was part of a larger pattern of purposeful hate and intimidation."
Gosh, I hope so. It's so beyond ridiculous that medical providers must spend huge sums on security, put up with daily body blocks, protests outside their clinics, threats to their family members. It takes courage beyond my comprehension to put up with the physical and emotional abuse suffered by these doctors.
But I also think Dr. Tiller's murder has beyond question shown the possibility of so-called common ground to be a non-entity, and one that President Obama must drop if he's to continue to earn the respect of his female supporters:
And meanwhile, our president continues to insist that we should be looking for the common ground between people who trust women to make their own healthcare decisions and fanatics who need handbooks to tell them how to avoid "appear[ing] callous by showing no concern for women who die." It's heartening that the Internet has made the public response to this tragedy so different than it was after the last. But until the folks in power step up to call terrorism by name, to unequivocally denounce not only the deadly violence but the thuggish campaigns of harassment dressed up as "peaceful protest," all the passionate retweets in the world aren't going to change the national discourse as much as it needs to be changed.
President Obama suffers from people-pleasing disease. If you try to satisfy everyone, you end up satisfying no one. That's right where he's headed.
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Tags: abortion | Barack Obama | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
Thuggish capmaigns of harrassment?
You wrote, 'But until the folks in power step up to call terrorism by name, to unequivocally denounce not only the deadly violence but the thuggish campaigns of harassment dressed up as "peaceful protest," '
There have been thousands of peaceful protests in front of abortion clinics where pro-life supporters have been able to exercise their constitutionally protected right to assemble and make public their disagreement with abortion. These activities were not terrorist, no matter how much you may dislike them.
Would it be correct or appropriate to call you a terrorist journalist out to wage a thuggish campaign of harassment of law-abiding citizens? We must protect our right to peacefully disagree with each other without fear of reprisal or recrimination and without resorting to namecalling.
As the anti Prop 8 supporters supporters angrily but peacefully chanted/shouted when the announcement was made that the California Supreme Court had upheld the rights of Californians to change their constitution, "Shame on you!"
The "common ground"
is acknowledging that individual women, not assorted moralist philosophers, are the final arbiters on whether individual women will or will not be mothers at any particular time, PERIOD,
AND,
the "common ground" is simultaneously working to help every individual woman avoid the COMMENCEMENT of any pregnancy except in the life times when that pregnancy is appropriate and desired.
This means birth control, education, and demanding the MEN in our culture to be the responsible avoiders of unplanned pregnancy. It is in large part a task of convincing the Levi Johnstons of the world to not be USERS of the Bristol Palins of the world--a social task barely even started because we're all chickens to confront the source and endure the derision for doing so.
So, yeah, there is a middle ground, and Obama is not its only believer or spokeman.
the greatest crime ever committed in history.
"We talk about killings, concentration camps, gulags, but really thousands and thousands of children are sacrificed in the wombs of their mothers. This is so absurd that it cannot be compared with any other genocide in history ,
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