The past few days I've been working a temp job. One I've worked before that pays pretty well, but that tends to make me grumpy because it has a tendency to take over your life for those few days.
This morning I was going in early and took the bus. It took me close but the next street over parallel. So I had to walk through a side street. Now what I had forgotten if it had ever registered with me was the fact that the side street I was using houses a Planned Parenthood location. A group of men were walking by praying out loud. I walked past a bunch of graphic antiabortion posters.
In some circumstances a journalistic instinct or just plain curiosity might have made me chat with a few of these people or even accept a pamphlet from the guy trying to pass out literature. Not today, though.
2 comments:
Bill Maher had some interesting things to say about the abortion issue. I understand that the Roe vs Wade decision had nothing to do with constitutional law and should never have been taken as an order made by the Supreme Court since their purview is to interpret laws rather than make them. Laws are made by legislators, either state governments or the national one and, so far as I know, an abortion bill has never been debated in Congress.
Publically, it's been a flashpoint for radicals on both sides of the issue. Not wanting to have anything to do with the protesters is understandable.. even on a not busy morning.
It's a sufficiently volatile issue that I think a lot of passions would have run against the decision regardless of how well-balanced it was. But yes, in a legal sense it's always been built on sand. A cynic might say that it suits the pro-choice side to have abortion rights constantly in jeopardy for the purposes of elections and fundraising. Which is what a lot of the protests triggered by the leaked document come down to, I think.
There are different viewpoints on it, I recognize, and respect that. But you don't always have time to discuss them.
Post a Comment