Words Matter

I'll admit, I'm probably more into words than the average person.  I talk for a living.  Beyond that the thing that I talk about is basically words, which we call Scripture.  I also do a fair amount of writing and even more reading, some of which is job related and some of which is just for fun.  I love playing games with words, like crossword puzzles and Scrabble (Words with Friends as well).  There are certain words that I find amusing in their own right, regardless of any context (salubrious, halcyon, coniferous).  One of my college English professors challenged the class with defining the following: sesquipedalian logophile (neither part of which is recognized by the Blogger spell check).  It means someone who likes big words, which I knew, because I am one.
I fairly regularly get quite angry with the way words are being used and abused in our current culture, whether it is through the mercenary (possibly sinister) efforts of advertisers, or the blatant disregard of the rules of rhetoric and discourse evident in politics these days, or whether it is just the run of the mill illiteracy of every day folks (actually that last one bothers me the least, because there is no malice in it).  Because of my awareness of the power of words and language, I want to be very careful how I deal with today's subject.  It feels almost like reaching out to grab a hot wire, and knowing you're going to get shocked, but here goes.
Let's talk about Abortion.  I'm not going to hedge and say something like reproductive rights or women's issues.  I'm going to talk specifically and as directly as I can about the practice of terminating a viable pregnancy through a surgical intervention.  Since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on the case of Roe versus Wade in 1973 women in this nation have had the legal right to choose this procedure for reasons other than imminent danger to the life of the mother.  In the 1980's some religious groups seized on the "Abortion issue," as a key moral issue facing our nation.  Ever since then it has been a dividing line for our nation.  Politicians have to clearly declare whether they are Pro-Choice or Pro-life, and only the most careful parsing of the "legal but rare" stance is allowed to those who would seek to stand in the gray area.
I am trying to become more comfortable in this gray area.  Here's what I believe for what it's worth: Life is sacred.  I am in this sense extremely Pro-Life.  I try to be as consistent about this as I can, I believe that all life is sacred.  This means I am an advocate of non-violence, I am anti-capital punishment, I am pro-adoption (my mother was adopted by my grandparents, I'm so in on that one), I am also in favor of Planned Parenthood and the help that they give, especially to poor women, in the arena of healthcare and birth control and general care and support to women who are pregnant.  I would like to live in a world where no woman felt like she needed to choose between her own health and life and the life and health of her child.
But we don't live in that world.
We live in a world where sometimes children are conceived in terrible circumstances.  Their mothers are too young, too poor, too something, to be able to care for them, or even carry them to term.  A choice is made. It is not an easy choice.  It is often a choice that leaves lasting emotional scars.  It is a choice that is rarely made casually or quickly. It is not a choice that I would ever want to make myself.  So I do not presume to make it for anyone else, nor do I believe it ought to be made by the government.
I am extremely skeptical that even the politicians who so gladly accept the votes of the Pro-life crowd, are ever going to do anything constructive and meaningful in that direction anyway.  After all it has been almost 43 years since Roe V. Wade, we have had Republicans in power and Democrats in power, we have had a conservative SCOTUS and a Liberal SCOTUS, and there has not been even a meaningful challenge to the fundamental decision on Roe.  I think maybe what we have now is the only legislative answer that is available to us, the only one that truly accounts for the weight of this issue. This means that all the division and anger has been for nothing.
These words: life and choice, are words we should use with reverence.  They are not words that should ever be used for crass political posturing, but they have been.  They are not words that should be shouted by angry mobs or waved on picket signs, but they are.
And people (born and unborn) are dying.
I'm not going to blame anyone in particular for the guy in Colorado who shot up Planned Parenthood.  I would like to suggest that terrorism is a product of cultural forces.  Within a certain segment of Islam, anti-western sentiment runs strong enough to create things like ISIS.  Within a certain segment of White-American Christianity, racism runs strong enough to create the KKK. The rhetoric and the emotions surrounding the abortion issue have been overheated for decades.  You can't just deny culpability when some unstable person blows a gasket and starts shooting. Does accepting culpability mean blaming or taking blame? No, but it might serve well to watch how you speak.  Does being shocked and appalled by the latest act of terror mean you should re-evaluate your position about the value of unborn children? No, but it might serve you well to be kinder about how you express those convictions.
I think we're capable of looking around the obvious defensive reactions on these sorts of things.  I think we need to start to address racism and not just write off Dylan Roof as a deranged lunatic, but rather understand that his violence and terror was directed and channeled by a culture that fed him on racism and hatred of black people.  Robert Dear (The Colorado Springs shooter, in case you haven't had his name seared into your memory yet), apparently was absorbed with enough rage at the baby killers, abortionists and President Obama (another story entirely) that it was time to unleash the terror.  Some will undoubtedly explain this away, but I think we do so at our own peril.  It's time to stop writing all of these people off as lone wolves and start to take stock of what is really driving them to murderous behavior.  I think our words have a lot to do with it.