In the wake of the Tucson shooting, as Americans debate the best way to prevent another such tragedy, Arizona State Senator Linda Gray has weighed in with her own special brand of crazy:
Training of people to respect human life. It is ironic that today today is the day 38 years ago that the Supreme Court said we do not have to respect the life of an unborn and we have gone through now more then a generation of people, a large number of people who believe that it is fine to take an infant prior to it being born and to kill it. What type of respect is that for human life? So now we have this generation of people who have that idea and it continues on, that why respect life if we can kill an infant who can’t defend themselves. It goes back to the value in the creation of life and the respect for that life and if your not trained and have that type of character in realizing that all human life deserves respect this is what our country has come to.
Got that? Jared Loughner attempted to assassinate Rep. Gabby Giffords because abortion is legal. Let that one sink in for a minute.
Like all forced birthers, Senator Gray is confused about how to show respect for life. Because the very laws that self-proclaimed proponents of life endorse actually have nothing to do with respecting life. Denying women access to reproductive health care doesn't save lives; it takes lives. These are the laws that drive desperate women to seek dangerous alternatives, like this clinic in Philadelphia, putting their own lives at risk because legislators like Senator Gray have made it damn near impossible for women to obtain safe, legal abortions in most of the country.
Protestations about valuing life would be a lot more believable if they came from people who didn't support policies that so devalue life. In Senator Gray's state, for example, people are dying because the governor and the Republican-led legislature slashed coverage for transplants from the state budget. So a fetus is sacred and must be protected at all costs, but a man who needs a bone-marrow transplant is on his own because it's just too expensive to keep him alive.
If Senator Gray is so concerned about teaching today's youth to value life, she might want to spend a little bit less time obsessing about fetuses and a little more time figuring out how to keep her fellow Arizonans from dying because her party doesn't want to spend the money to keep them alive. That would be a good start.