Give Bill O'Reilly and his kind some credit, they are good at what they do. For years O'Reilly crusaded against Dr. George "Tiller the Baby Killer," stirring up the duller members of the Fox News Fan Club, especially. Longtime anti-abortion (and anti-government) nut Scott Roeder presumably did God's work, murdering Tiller as the doctor served as an usher one Sunday morning at church.
It took a Wichita jury half an hour to convict Roeder of the first degree murder of Dr. Tiller, one of the nation's few doctors to perform late-term abortions before Roeder shot him to death in May. I don't intend to heap too much credit on O'Reilly for Tiller's demise; truthfully, I have no idea how much, if any, immediate influence the Fox News pundit had in Roeder's decision. My point is only that O'Reilly and his ilk champion the culture that Roeder championed in eliminating Dr. Tiller.
Officially, I'm sure O'Reilly and his comrades frown upon Roeder actualizing the emotions they so often instigate. But Tiller's abortion clinic was permanently closed in the wake of his murder, and in this case I'm sure we're all sure the Godfather of Fox News has concluded that Roeder proved sometimes the ends do justify the means.
Speaking of abortion, why can't we all join hands and thank God for that procedure? It has been a quick solution to an awful lot of problems. And speaking of Roeder & O'Reilly's Christian Lord, if ever there were a woman who would have felt justified in terminating a pregnancy, it would have to be the Virgin Mary. Way back in the day, whilst she had her fiancé Joseph taking perpetual cold baths, she found herself expectant without ever doing the deed (that was her story and she stuck to it).
Poor girl, motherhood around the corner and apparently she'd never even gotten laid! I'd hope the hardiest of Catholics would understand her feelings and decision, had Planned Parenthood opened an early branch in Nazareth back in 9 months, B.C.
And who knows, maybe Mary wasn't ready to have a family; maybe the pressure did get to her; maybe she tried what she could to induce miscarriage with some kind of primitive abortion. But, if ever there were an indestructible embryo, an "iron ovum" if you will, you'd have to assume Jesus was it.
But I digress, and I'm not sure Christ has anything at all to do with the right, or wrong, to make these decisions. Evangelical Sen. Sam Brownback disagrees. The Republican is as pro-Jesus and pro-life as they come, despising the apparent dead baby fetish of those bloodthirsty liberals. How awkward.
Aren't both sides on the wrong sides? Shouldn't Democrats be sensitive to the plight of the poor, defenseless children-to-be? Why aren't they screaming and carrying on how cruel and unusual abortion is, while O'Reilly's Republicans trumpet the efficiency and long-term fiscal responsibility inherent in that piece of sound logic Roe v. Wade guarantees? Abortion should be nothing if not conservative.
According to CNN.com, Brownback said this: "Abortion ends a human life. It destroys an individual who could have lived, worked and contributed to our society."
Scott Roeder and Bill O'Reilly would concur, but let's think on that for a moment. "Could" is a tricky word. Anything "could." In recent years the United States has been sidestepping land mines at a rate of more than a million unwanted pregnancies annually. This is America, where we proudly proclaim any one of those pregnancies could have resulted in the president of the United States. Probably not, though.
What would happen a lot more than Brownback's fantasy is an awful lot of lives turned upside down, or worse. If there were no more abortion in the United States, how many of those unwanted children would be born to mothers and families able to supply a responsible upbringing and a fair shot at life? How much and how many of them would have "lived, worked and contributed"?
In his book "Freakonomics," quirky economist Stephen Levitt went so far as to posit the 1990's downturn in crime is a direct result of 1973's Roe v. Wade. Demographically speaking, he said, thousands upon thousands of those aborted would have been born into lives leading to crime.
Levitt's logic failed to convince Scott Roeder last spring, and widow Jeanne Tiller now attends church alone. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," I'm told, and I wonder: where are the armed left wing nuts? The conservative base may be the official home of the ignorantly indignant (and indignantly ignorant) contingency of America, but in a country more than 300 million people strong there must be plenty of liberals who are just as creatively dysfunctional.
Bringing us back to Bill O'Reilly. I am confident that the world would be a better place if a couple loony lefties -- or a lone misguided liberal patriot -- took a page out of the Scott Roeder-autographed Fox News playbook. Americans would no longer be subject to the influence of hearing Bill-O declare on national television that our president is a racist. Or listen to him ask Lou Dobbs, of Barack Obama, "Is he the devil?"
I am, of course, not calling on or encouraging anybody to actually travel to Fox News' Manhattan headquarters to shoot the host of "The O'Reilly Factor." That would be illegal, and America is a country of laws. Scott Roeder is the last person anyone of any political persuasion should hold up as a role model. I do, however, think the nation would be a better place if "The O'Reilly Factor" no longer aired, or had never aired in the first place. Do I suppose myself a hypocrite for the fact I, myself, would never in a million years consider such a proactive role in American politics? Maybe, or perhaps I simply don't love my country enough to risk my personal future.
Concerned with that future, I began interning with a prominent DC think tank located not far from Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. I walk past Planned Parenthood most mornings, where I trade pleasantries as I pass a couple sign-holding sidewalk protesters; maybe Carolyn brought her "Smile, your mom chose life" placard today.
"We get saves," veteran abortion protester Dick Retta proudly asserted outside Planned Parenthood. The Rockville, Md., man said he has been performing "sidewalk counseling" here for eight years. "This is going on in a number of abortion mills in the area, and in the last eight years we've had over 900 saves; the women change their mind about having an abortion. So we are having an impact."
Carolyn is a retired school teacher living in Arlington, Va. She stands her post outside Planned Parenthood for at least 90 minutes every Monday through Friday. "I'm praying. I'm praying to Almighty God, and I'm using the rosary," she told me. "I'm praying for the abortionists, that their hearts will be changed."
If you honestly believe there is a man in the sky, who knows even more than me, denouncing abortion and that is the reason you hate it, I understand. It is a big leap of faith, but I will then accept your being "pro-life" if you will concede that in the practical sense, many women face much more manageable, forgiving and better lives, because of abortion.
While considering what kind of relationship Scott Roeder and Dr. Tiller each have with Jesus Christ, I wondered: WWJD if He went to medical school? My first thought was pediatrics, or maybe geriatrics. I pondered where Christ could better the most lives as I read Psalms 137:9 in the New Testament: "How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies and smashes them on a rock!"
I am confident that Jesus Christ, MD would be an abortion doctor, likely specializing in partial-birth abortion.
