My heart needs a break from breaking

Have you been reading the news lately? I have, unfortunately. It feels as though current events have just been an unrelenting stream of examples of the horrors and cruelty that human beings are capable of inflicting on other human beings. Thanks, murderers and abusers and rapists and torturers, but we don't need more examples. We get it. You can stop now.

And in the last several hours I've done only two things: read about the latest awful case of kidnapping and almost-unspeakable abuse, the one in Cleveland, or stewed over it while unsuccessfully attempting to focus on other things.

But I'm here trying to write something because there's a part of me that's sure someone will ask. Or assume. How many hours or days til the half-witted comments hit, ones about how this is all because of the "culture of death" that abortion perpetuates? OR the ones asking why I "care" about this but "don't care" about the trial of Kermit Gosnell, a man who stands accused of killing babies and calling it abortion?

I ask because because it's so, so, so routine; these words have likely been uttered on several prominent anti-abortion blogs today. But I don't want to go find out.

Sometimes, despite being a super-famous internet celebrity (humble joke), and despite bearing the weighty mantle of spokesperson for ALL abortioneers and being asked for comments on ALL bad things that happen to babies or fetuses or embryos (angry joke), a person's got to have some time to themselves to deal with pain.

We often have stuff to say about things that show up in the news, but I'm not interested in being a ripped-from-the-headlines current events commentator. I just wanted to tell my truth, particularly in times when it wasn't represented elsewhere. But you're probably sickened and saddened too, and that's the truth for all of us.

Two Years

Take at the St. Louis Vigil for Dr. George Tiller on June 1, 2009.
It was two years ago today that Dr. Tiller was gunned down in church and brutally assassinated. In the wake of his murder, there were many calls and cries for increased security, for better laws, and more protection for these doctors who provide legal medical services to our citizens.

Just six days ago, Ralph Lang was arrested after accidentally firing his gun in a motel room, located near a Planned Parenthood he was planning to attack the next morning.

Thank goodness Ralph Lang is an idiot and was caught before he could take any lives, but that was a really close call. What would have happened if he didn’t accidentally shoot off his gun? What if more doctors, or even nurses, were killed? Lang didn’t seem to have a particular bias in terms of who he was murdering, stating that he wanted to "...line them up all in a row, get a machine gun, and mow them all down."

Today, two years after the death of Dr. Tiller, are abortion providers safe? Are they at least safer? I don’t think they are. Between the House’s completely messed up agenda, the Planned Parenthood debacle, terrible new state laws, it just seems like the environment is so overwhelmingly toxic.



Though many doctors, nurses, clinic staff, volunteers, and others are stepping up to the plate to help fill the void left in Dr. Tiller’s absence, it is still very apparent that he is gone. On one hand, it seems like so long ago that I spoke with patients, trying to help them make alternate plans after his death, hoping there was someone else out there who could see them. Yet it seems like just yesterday I got a phone call from Placenta Sandwich, letting me know the terrible news that Dr. Tiller had been shot.

I still have his picture hanging in my apartment. I still look at it often, thinking of what he did for people; he really made a lasting impact on so many women’s lives.

RIP Dr. Tiller. You are missed.