Nothing compares to it. No aspect of American life is so explosive. No dispute so completely insoluble. Race, class, inequality: all the other issues tearing America in two can be set aside. Abortion trumps them all.
This struck me years ago when I was reporting on the campaign trail during the Obama election. I was talking to a group of Republican voters in rural Ohio. It was a sunny day. They had been complimenting me on my English accent. The mood was light.
But when I asked about Obama it darkened. He is ‘a murderer’ they said. He would kill babies.
They didn’t shout this, they just said it matter-of-factly. And they believed it.
Obama’s views on abortion were not particularly extreme: he upheld the constitutional right to an abortion in every state, but wanted fewer of them. Most Americans agree with that.
But plenty do not. And while the overwhelming majority of anti-abortion campaigners are peaceful, the language and the tactics of others in the movement have been anything but.
There have been murders. Beginning nearly 30 years ago when David Gunn, a gynaecologist who carried out abortions, was shot dead after a protest in which his face had appeared on wanted posters. Two receptionists in an abortion clinic in Massachusetts were killed in 1994.
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Source: Daily Mail
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