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Whether or not you (the collective you) believe abortion is necessary or not, the fact remains that it is legal. If you disagree with it, appropriate responses might include fighting the battle in the courts, helping to improve adoption services so that those women who carry to term but choose not to mother have viable alternatives, lessening the social stigma and huge financial costs of being a single parent, helping to increase access (including financial access) to contraceptives, improving sexual education in schools so that teens have accurate information about their fertility (or, if you don't think adolescents should be having sex before marriage & therefore they shdn't need to know about contraceptives, fight for Life Skills education which teaches teens how to reason through big decisions), supporting any way you can the parents that you do know, having civil conversations with people about why you don't believe abortion should be legal, volunteering for foster care, be a big brother / big sister, fight for a liveable mimimum wage so people can afford to raise children, fight for day care reform so parents can count on safe and affordable childcare, the list goes on & on... but taking a gun into a holy place and shooting a person in front of their family, friends, and God? hopefully we can all agree that this is not the act of a loving person or one who truly values life. & for those who say he was trying to save the children, i am quite sure there were children in that church who witnessed the murder and who will never, ever forget what they experienced that day. Incidentally, late-term abortions, often referred to as partial-birth abortions, are very rarely performed and it is not an easy decision for the parent(s) to come to. These are not women who just decided that they no longer wanted a baby. It is not a whim. Even if you don't and will never agree with it, please try to understand that you are speaking of real women and men when you make blanket condemnations (and this is true for all of us, whether we're in the right, left, or middle). ****************************************** Paula Jayne, MA, MPH Doctoral Candidate Department of Women's Studies Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn