age and support for abortion

Curious comments from Pam Platt in a C-J editorial on the murder of George Tiller...

Can you think of another aspect of health care, another health-related service, undergoing such an onslaught for so long with so little outrage, so little protest, in response? I cannot.

C'mon Pam...Can you think of another aspect of health care, another health-related service, which results in the destruction of (at least potential) human life? I cannot.

And in a culture that trumpets every new erectile dysfunction drug, it seems beyond egregious that so many restrictions have been put on legal abortion by states...

Huh? What is the connection between erectile dysfunction for older men and abortion? Oh, I get it; they're both about sex and "health-related services".

And then in talking about a lightly-attended vigil for Tiller, Platt observes:

I was mostly struck by the lack of younger women at the service. That could have been for any number of reasons — family obligations, school, jobs. But I also suspect that many younger women do not regard this as their cause, or their fight, as did the older women at the vigil. The older women knew what it was like before Roe v. Wade. Younger women do not.

A possible explanation: taking rights for granted. Other possibilities? Younger women are more likely to be aware of more recent science on the beginning of life-- and are more likely to be progressive (less likely to be conservative and status-quo) on a variety of political issues.

Maybe the killing of Dr. Tiller will provide some new and added context for a struggle once thought to be moot, or finished. Maybe that will be the silver lining to the murder of one of the few American doctors who still provided late-term abortions to women who wanted and needed them.

It's interesting that it's ok for proponents of abortion to look for silver linings in this context. But that's probably consistent; the side which has been abused is allowed, rhetorically, to make such comments.

And can't women who "need" late-term abortions (to save their own lives) get them through a hospital? Did Tiller take care of elective abortions-- or do hospitals contract out necessary late-term abortion to outside providers?

Platt then closes with what is likely good news-- even for those who claim to want abortion to be "safe, legal and rare":

Fewer than 20 years ago, Kentucky had eight abortion clinics. Now, there are only two, run by the same provider.

Platt does not tell us what's happened with the number of abortions provided in Kentucky.