Footnote to all the preceding

Do you remember David Gunn, shot in the back by Michael Griffin in Pensacola, Florida, on March 10, 1993 - murdered because he performed legal abortions?

Do you remember Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard Jim Barret? They were the ones murdered by a blast from a shotgun fired by Paul Hill outside a clinic, also in Pensacola, on July 29, 1994. Same "reason."

Or how about Dr. Barnett Slepian? He was the Buffalo, New York, doctor who was murdered in his home on October 23, 1998 by James Kopp, again because he performed abortions.

Do you remember any of the others?

Do you remember especially how all the anti-choice politicians, all the screeching preachers, all the Falwells and Robertsons and yes, all the Terrys, all those who vociferously, viciously, repeatedly, denounced abortion as "murder," labelled a fetus a "child," called legal abortion a "holocaust" and those who performed them "babykillers," how when the disturbed, the fanatical, the Griffens and Hills and Kopps and Shannons took them at their words and acted on them, they scurried away like cockroaches and hid? "Oh no no no, I didn't mean that! You can't blame me for that! That has nothing to do with me! Oh no no no!" The sniveling cowards, hiding behind the brutality of others, too low, too craven even to take responsibility for the meaning of their own words.

And now, amid the cries of "murder" and "barbarism," amid the charges that Michael Schiavo is a slimy adulterer who abused his wife and even tried to kill her, that he's only interested in the money, amid accusations that Judge George Greer "wants her dead," comes word that a North Carolina man has been arrested on a charge of offering a $250,000 bounty to anyone who would kill Michael Schiavo.

"It is my understanding that whoever eliminates Michael Schiavo from the planet while inflicting as much pain and suffering that he can bear stands to be paid this reward in cash,"

the message said. And that wasn't the only example.

In recent weeks, [Schiavo] has received death threats, and a dozen police officers have been guarding his home, his attorney, George J. Felos, said.

For his part,

Pinellas County Circuit Judge George Greer has been under the protection of armed guards, and friends say his family also is protected

because of death threats - and he's been kicked out of his Southern Baptist congregation for his failure to "side with the angels."

(Sidebar: The same nutcase who put a price tag on Michael Schiavo's head also said that "an additional $50,000 has been offered for the elimination of the judge who ruled against (Terri) in Florida." The judge was unidentified by officials but may have been Greer - or it may refer to US District Judge James Whittemore, who refused to order the feeding tube replaced.)

If someone does try to act on any of this, if someone does, again, take the slimebags at their word, if someone does accept the claims of those who have done more to dehumanize Terri Schiavo, more to turn her into a thing, than her brain damage ever did, who have turned her into a mere sack into which they can stuff their narrow-minded, reactionary agendas, if someone does try to "avenge her death," what do you think are the chances that any of them, just one of them, will accept an iota of responsibility for the results of the bile-spitting hatred they have roused and espoused? Will the Limbaughs, the Scarboroughs, the O'Reillys, the Buchanans, the DeLays, the Frists, the Terrys, will any of them breathe a single sigh of contrition?

You know the answer as well as I do: There's as much chance of that as there is of Terri Schiavo coming out of PVS.