I can’t resist here- yes, I’m disgusted by the Cecil the Lion story. I read people saying on Twitter I should be more disgusted by the Debouse murder story, and by the Planned Parenthood “video scandal.” When I have people on all sides telling me i’m worried about the wrong stuff, I feel pretty good about my priorities. Don’t get me wrong, I’m concerned by the Debouse story- it appears that a man was unjustly killed by the police. I just am capable of multiple cases of outrage at once.
I’m not at all outraged about the Planned Parenthood “scandal” though. Yes, Planned Parenthood offers some abortion services. It’s a minority of their services, many times over, but they do it. That’s legal in the United States, and I support the right to choose. Yes, an anti-choice group has videos of Planned Parenthood personnel offering to sell body parts from the aborted fetuses. They’re not selling them to me though, or randomly on the street to people though. It’s fairly understood that Planned Parenthood sells the body parts to scientific research. That’s scientific research that saves lives. That’s a good thing. Given that abortion is legal, and there are body parts left afterwards, I’d rather see them sold to research than discarded as trash.
Abortion is a topic I really don’t discuss much, because I honestly don’t like it. I don’t think that legally there is a good argument to ban abortion, nor do I think that abortion is a good thing. I also don’t think that I, as a man, should make the decision of what a woman can do with her own body. Even so, if I got a girl pregnant tomorrow, I would strongly urge her to have the child, because I do think that in my life situation, it is the right thing to do. How I feel though does not constitute a good reason to set public policy. For that reason, I’m pro-choice- a woman should make her own choice. Ask me to make these decisions when I can get pregnant.
So, I’m not at all bothered by the Planned Parenthood fake “scandal,” or the push by those creating the “scandal” for a new national debate on abortion. I’m very concerned that men are paying $35,000 or more to kill lions that are increasingly rare, using illegal poaching methods, and skating just beyond the rule of law that protects those magnificent animal. In fact, I’m not at all moved by the Planned Parenthood “scandal.” You may think what you would like about that, but I’m also a pro-choice supporter of the environment, so I guess my position is not at all shocking or surprising. I’m not going to be troubled by a clearly hit-job video that in no way should move anyone’s position on abortion from where it is before. I’m going to be very troubled by an incidence of poaching of one of the world’s greatest creatures, a creature man is putting into peril. I’m even more troubled by worse cases of poaching, too.
I’m actually kind of perplexed as to why conservatives are linking the two, in the first place. There are plenty of people who are pro-life and pro-choice that agree that poaching is wrong. Attacking people for being concerned about poaching seems counter-productive to their message, for me. Other than trying to force people to pay attention to their false controversy, I can’t see any point in linking two totally different stories.
Richard the Third 