The organization specializes in advocating for prosecuted and oppressed ethnic minority groups worldwide. I'm working with the Near-Eastern department (my boss is originally can often be heard yelling into the phone in German, Kurdish, Arabic or any of the other five languages he speaks), and am learning a great deal about the Baha'is, Kurds, Ahwazi Arabs and all the other minority groups in that region of the world.
I finally moved into my new apartment today, and while having dinner, my housemate and I started talking to get to know each other better. We began talking about politics and religion, and pretty soon, the topic of abortion came up. While I am adamantly and vociferously pro-choice, my new friend, a med student, is somewhat religious and views fetuses, after two weeks or so, as more akin to living babies, with little beating hearts. But even she agrees that, ultimately, women must have the power to make her own choice, as unsavory as it may end up being.
The power to control one's own body and make decisions regarding one's own health is a fundamental human right. To deprive women of such a right, especially in a case of rape or incest, would be sexist, demeaning, medieval and cruel. To allow poor innocent children to be born to parents who may not want them and may be unwilling to provide adequate care for them would be heartless.
This year on May 31, Dr. George Tiller, a reproductive health physician and medical director of an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, was gunned down at his church because of his willingness to perform medically necessary late-term abortions. The murder of Dr. Tiller is, simply put, a terrorist act. It is the use of violence for an ideological goal, the use of terror to discourage and demoralize the opposition. And this should not be tolerated. A movement that spawned and, in a sense, nurtured such hatred - I'm looking at YOU Bill O'Reilly - should take a step back and reevaluate itself. This is religious fundamentalism at work, pure and simple: zealotry inspiring violence against those who think differently.
So please, before we go looking elsewhere for those damn terrorists, just take a goddamn look in our own backyard first.
