“They yelled stuff at me! I’m so controlled! I…I…just…can’t do anything with my body! How do I cast off their mind control powers? I know, I’ll call the police. They’ll probably care deeply and most likely do something about it.”
Police: “Did they hurt you?”
“They hurt my feelings!”
“OK, but did they actually hurt you physically?”
“They grabbed my arm and held me there! They wouldn’t let go!”
“Really?”
“Well…she actually just put her hand on my arm. And let go when this other lady yelled at her.”
“…”
:click:
I missed this display of retardation the first time around. For some perspective, there are over 800,000 abortions PER YEAR. If all those threats occurred in the same year, that’s one threat for every 2,000 procedures. And those threats for the most part aren’t directed at random women, but toward counter-protesters or others engaged in arguing with the protesters. And I haven’t even looked up how many threats there are against the protesters themselves.
Keep in mind that these are just threats- mere words. There are probably more death threats in any given U.S. high school per year than 400. Just how low would that number have to go before you’ll admit that it’s a non-issue?
Oh my god, are you *still *whining that I asked you whether or not you meant a typo in another thread? Holy shit, can I have your life? Because I wish *I had so little to think about that I could literally freak out all day that someone asked me if I meant $0.05 or 0.05 cents. (Literally, folks, that’s *what I asked. With no snark at all.)
I can tell you from personal experience, that phone call goes a LOT differently than you think it does. Hell, I’ve personally witnessed an arrest when a guy grabbed my arm and yelled something incomprehensible outside a bar in front of two cops. Guy passed the sobriety test, then got hauled in anyway for simple assault. I didn’t press charges because I didn’t give a shit, but you’re showing a pretty interestingly hilarious degree of ignorance about what simple assault means in most states.
Getting in someone’s face, touching, and yelling are simple assault in my state, and police WILL come and get involved if you call for it (at least in my medium-sized town).
Chessic Sense, you’re saying that charging a protestor with assault when they grab your arm to trying to stop you from going into the clinic is an overreaction because they kill people and make a lot of death threats? I’m not understanding the dis-connect here.
Oh, I’m not disagreeing that this is technically “assault”. It certainly is. But I highly doubt that any cop would actually arrive on the scene and arrest someone. At best, he’ll send the mob home. More likely, the cops will say “OK, we’ll get to it.” and never show up. Because cops don’t respond to every little offense. And when they DO arrest people for this sort of thing, they’re released without charge.
How do I know this? From the startling number of assault cases that show up in FBI files that I look at every day that get dismissed, dropped, abandoned, and nolle prossed. Convictions from simple assault are extremely rare.
No, I’m saying that this instance is an overreaction. Whether other instances are overreactions, I can’t say. It’s just tough for me to imagine that the circumstances laid out in the OP would result in an arrest.
And I’ve just demonstrated that protesters DON’T kill people and hardly ever even threaten to do so. Again, you would find more death threats in any single high school in a year than 400.
On the other hand, a group of protesters can get ugly right quick if even one person decides to get hands-on, so you’d think the cops would have an interest in making sure a mob didn’t break out. It’d surprise me if there were protest groups that didn’t already have at least one cop watching them just in case.
The idea that they could send the mob home and let some women peacefully enter and exit the clinic without having to be screamed at or touched sounds pretty awesome to me.
ETA: I’m not saying the average protester goes around killing and murdering. But from the POV of the person being manhandled and shrieked at, that’s not too comforting. The number of OB/GYNs who don’t perform abortions and who get death threats is pretty low. The fact that there’s any threat at all with going to or working at an abortion clinic is a frightening thing.
I guess we must be getting into subjectivity, because I think the way anti-abortion people act is appalling at any level. 400 death threats a year and the murders and assaults they’ve committed are all way, way over the line.
Yes, because it would be reasonable for me to assume that someone who freaked out about *two *innocuous posts from me in another thread and then referenced one of those freakouts in an unrelated thread is *joking *and not dragging the freak-out further. :rolleyes: Don’t give me such a good excuse to assume that you’re obsessing over me, next time.
Yeah. The fact remains that there is a lot of animosity associated with getting an abortion or being associated with providing them. It’s small comfort that there’s only “a few” deaths. I can’t think of any other doctors targeted for death because of what they do.
Zero’s a good number, and very under-appreciated number. I always wonder, is Zero a prime? Do the other numbers consider it a number? Do they threaten it? Does it get invited to parties?
Death threats should not be part of the political discourse between adults - at all. Death threats in a high school- your comparison point- are more common I’m sure, but those are kids, not adults, and at school, not engaging in political activity, debate or legal protest. Plus, once the first abortion-providing doctor was murdered, the threshold for threat tolerance dropped to pretty much nothing.
And, as we’ve learned the hard way, death threats at high schools should also be taken pretty fucking seriously, so I think your example is not particularly apt.
You don’t need to know the circumstances - the woman doesn’t want to continue the pregnancy for whatever reason and that is her right, so yes it is none of your business. There are simply far too many people out there that pretend it is their business because they pretend to believe that abortion is murder and somehow “circumstances” make a difference. They don’t because it isn’t, simple as that.
I still don’t get why it upsets you so much. Why does it matter so much if someone doesn’t learn from their mistakes, if it isn’t affecting you?
I think it is a totally loaded descriptor no matter how it is defined.
Thanks! I got 12 hours of sleep last nite so that should help, tho the dang hard bed hurt my back. Can’t win…
Because stupidity bothers me. (You haven’t figured that out yet from many of my reactions to *you *in other threads?) I’m not sure why you’re still on this, though, since I already admitted I was wrong.
To add–I do think it’s wrong to lump in all pro lifers as violent freaks who think that it’s OK to kill a human but wrong to kill a fetus. But I don’t think it’s wrong to be afraid when someone from that group starts laying hands on you. You can talk about God all you want, you can say you think abortions are sins and everyone pro choice is going to hell but the minute you lay hands on me is the moment you’ve gone too far.
