Ending a "sabbatical" to comment on a horrendous crime

I've been on a sort of sabbatical leave from blogging over the past three weeks as my wife and I have gone through the logistical discomfort of moving back to our New Jersey home from our winter residence in Florida. I often wonder how people like Sen. John McCain and his wife, who reportedly own eight or nine houses, handle such residential moves.

I am still awed by the fact that I now own two houses. I was raised during the Great Depression of the 1930s and early 1940s when my father was frequently unemployed. During those years, I never knew anyone who owned a single house. My psyche has been framed by my boyhood experiences, much to the annoyance of my wife and two children who are distressed over what they regard as my excessively frugal disposition.

I have been impelled to now return to this blog to comment on the horrendous murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kan. on Sunday. Dr. Tiller was one of the few American doctors who still perform late-term abortions. He has thus been exposed to continuing violence and harassment by so-called "pro-life" advocates who oppose women's right to have an abortion.

I have always been enraged by the hypocrisy of these alleged protectors of "life" who have tormented women who want to choose to have an abortion. No pregnant woman casually decides to have an abortion. It is a traumatic decision invariably based on personal tragic circumstances. And in the case of late-term abortions, these are very rarely performed and only because of critical medical factors that threaten the mother's health or the viability of the fetus.

I am unimpressed by the leaders of the anti-abortion organizations who have denounced Dr. Tiller's murder. It is their hysterical, extremist efforts to block a woman's right to choose to have an abortion that emboldened a fanatical crackpot like Dr. Tiller's murderer.They created an atmosphere with the hateful rhetoric that encouraged this so-called "pro-lifer" to take another man's life.

Dr. Tiller was murdered during religious services in a Christian church. It is an extraordinary irony that anti-abortionists base their opposition to abortion on their own religious beliefs.