"You're filibustering Ms. Walsh, stop talking."
If anyone knows a thing or two about filibustering it's Bill O'Reilly, who continually invites people he opposes onto his show (because, you know, his primary concern is presenting both sides of the argument and maintaining that "fair & balanced" Fox New credo
) and preventing them from speaking more than a sentence without some sort of aggressive and obnoxious interruption in order to steer the issue back in the direction he was trying to present it.
I don't believe for a second that Bill O'Reilly (and most likely many other conservative news commentators) is as genuinely concerned by the practice performing late term abortions (or even abortions in general) as he would like his viewers to believe. Abortion is nothing but a clutch issue that politicians and political commentators (on both sides) cling to in order to excite and incite their targeted masses. Truthfully, it is rare for there to be new developments regarding the issue and thus there should be little reason for it to be a constant topic of discussion.
At this point most abortion discussion only manages to reinforce preconceived notions of what it means to be a liberal or a conservative; it does not challenge people to investigate the issue on their own. And because we are not challenging people to investigate the issue, people recognize that it is so easy to identify where you should stand within the abortion debate, and it becomes (in some cases) the only issue they care to concern themselves with. This is what drives the extremists to violently act against people like Dr. Tiller and causes people to drive around with "Vote Pro-Life" or "Vote Pro-Choice" bumper stickers, which would seem to indicate they've only chosen to support a certain candidate because of that candidate's attitude towards abortion. As if it's somehow logical to base all of your votes on whether or not a candidate is a supporter of "baby killing". Your preferred candidates knowledge of abortion is DEFINITELY going to help them solve the economic crisis or handle foreign policy issues, etc...
So remember kids, if you're conservative it is important to oppose abortion at all costs, and if you're liberal you should be building an unauthorized abortion clinic in your basement as we speak.
I'm incredibly saddened by the death of Dr. Tiller, not because I am some radical pro-choice activist or rallying for the right for doctors to perform late term abortions, but because in the very worst instances, the constant attention given to the issue has been known to lead people to approach the subject irrationally and commit horrifying acts that oppose the moral code that's supposedly violated by abortion.
I know, I know, take it to my blog. It just pisses me off that this issue is so present in our culture and is continually rehashed, so much so that nobody can bring an original approach to the topic and the lectures you will hear about abortion by the token "religious girl" or the "staunch liberal" in your high school speech class are on usually par with those given by some sort of "expert" on the topic.
