Great show tonight and especially regarding the "protection" real people aren't getting, but should be, from the Roe decision forty years ago. I know you'll keep us up to date ... every incident of protest requires prompt arrest by police in order to retain the commercial space (and some nuts belong in the can). Good grief, when you've got to fly in and out to provide medical services...it sounds more like Pakistan than Kansas.

I just watched TRMS's Kansas Women's Clinic piece. So much for the land of the free and home of the brave.

It's terribly sad that in a country that prides itself on freedom, and boldly states that all might enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a doctor has to hide her identity and disguise her voice to protect her life for doing what is legal, safe, and medically necessary.

Just amazing. Thank you for bringing this to the fore.

If someone threatens to kill a dr./staff that does abortions, nothing happens. If someone threatens to kill the president, that someone is immediately put in jail. So...what's the difference here? Oh...I get it--women still don't matter...we still don't matter.

Now make the connection between guns and abortion. The Republican Party has been taken over by the (unholy?) trinity of Christians, the NRA, and the Tea Party. The connection, as well as intensity of emotion, is related to the Christian Commandment "Thou shall not kill." The NRA and the Party have successfully convinced Christians that this commandment refers ONLY, exclusively, to unborn fetuses. War and gun deaths and the frequent killing of human by other humans with weapons are NOT the situations this commandment refers to ...... only abortions. Guns, like God, protects them and their families from evil.They have been told God's intention in this matter by Christian leaders who initially (the Catholic Church) opposed abortion because they know that good Christians are born into good Christian families (best source of butts in the pews). Thus the incredible emotions whipped up by the manipulators in the moral community of Christianity are misplaced and wrong and often, as in Dr. Tiller's case, lead to the breaking of that very commandment to protect NRA/Tea Party/Christian God's Commandment of "Thou Shall Not Kill Unborn Fetuses". We need to see how the Right has been manipulated and how these good people just want to do the "Right Thing"....they have accepted false truths. We need to understand the relationship between the Christians, the Tea Party, and the NRA.

Dear Rachel,

I need to start by saying that I am married, male, over forty years of age, and a Republican. I just finished watching your discussion on abortion for the second time. I felt it needed a second look, as it made me extremely emotional the first time I watched it.

What I would like to say is that I don’t know if abortion is right or wrong, but I would hope that in all cases it is a last resort. I have never been in a situation in my personal life were it was an issue. And that is the point for me, abortion is a personal issue. I do not want the government telling me how to live my life, so I don’t believe the government should tell women how to live theirs.

What upsets me is that abortion is part of our Constitution. Whether it should be or not is a matter of debate. The fact remains that it is and has been for decades. As an American, I recognize the Constitution as the law of the land, the laws that have made America the great country that it is today.

Being anti-abortion is being anti-Constitution, anti-American, and anti-patriotic. We do not get to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution we wish to support and follow. The entire document is the foundation of our country, and to undermine it is detrimental to us all. The greatest thing about being an American is that we decide as a nation what laws we will be governed by, and we can always change our minds, as we did when we overturned the Eighteenth Amendment with the Twenty-first Amendment.

It should be clear from the decades of court battles that this is a settled issue. What I don’t understand is why our government and the officials we elect to run that government continue to shirk their duty to defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Is that not part of their Oaths? When civil rights became part of our Constitution, the federal government had to step in and enforce it as the law of the land, because many opposed it. Many of those same people now stand once again on the opposite side against our Constitution, and yet the government does nothing.

I do sympathize with those who are opposed to abortion, and believe that they should do what they can to prevent it, within the law. If an abortion clinic opens in your town, open a clinic right next to it that provides an alternative. Create foundations and charities that will pay for the health care and adoption expense for women who choose to keep their child to term.

If you cannot make your case without violence, then you do not have a case to begin with.

It must be horrible to live in Kansas if you are sane.

Women smile on average 67 times a day, men smile an average of 8 times a day.

.

Resource; my dentist's office.

What a foul piece of no-context reporting on "Ruby Ridge," Mt. Carmel. Bad enough you ignored the sellout of Current, a voice of Progressive views rare on TV, to some Oil Sheiks, who will offer bland nothing to replace it, but to commit the Sin of Fox and completely ignore context in your report makes me wonder just what your real agenda is. Certainly it is not objective and complete reporting. Have you gone so anti-gun that you have to twist the facts as badly as Fox to make your point?

Before "Ruby Ridge," we had at least two major incidents of massive urban violence perpetrated by the Fascist wing of the Federal government (ATF, DEA, FBI) against people who could have been arrested without incident any time: the actions in Chicago and Los Angeles that left way too many people dead, unnecessarily, in open urban warfare of the Federal Government against the people.

Then there was Wounded Knee II, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the Forces of Fascism invaded the Rez not to protect the people, but to intimidate and kill people in order to back up the dictatorial, murderous regime of Dicky Wilson, thug boss of Pine Ridge.

"Ruby Ridge" and Mt. Carmel were totally unnecessary, and done apparently only to show the Federal Fascists could go anywhere, kill anyone, with the impunity characteristic of Banana Republic and East Asian dictators. Three law enforcement officers could have captured Randy Weaver any day he came in to Bonner's Ferry for food and supplies. Instead they went way up in the mountains to launch a murderous attack on a poor and non-threatening family, and in the process take target practice on the family dog, and brag about it. Just plain sick. Their action was morally foul and degenerate, and rightly outraged the people of the Northwest, who knew the facts of the case.

Again at Mt. Carmel, David Koresh could have been captured any week by three law enforcements officers when he went running on the rural roads north of Waco, or went into town for supplies. But no, the Federal Fascists had to mount a massive military campaign out in the country, to terrorize the locals and dissidents everywhere with the overwhelming (and totally unnecessary) military force of those Federal Fascists. The blood of all those adults and children who died in the stupid, stupid attack on the compound is on the hands of Janet "Butcher of Mt. Carmel" Reno, and her boss, Bloody Bill Clinton.

And you completely ignore Rainbow Farm, another, smaller, assault by the Federal Fascists, on some Hippies in semi-rural southwest Michigan, whose great crime was growing a little pot for their own consumption and holding an occasional rock mini-festival. In this case, the Federal Fascists just plain assassinated some dopy (pardon the pun) Hippies to show -- that they could, and get away with it completely. Only 9/11 took Rainbow Farm off the front page.

In short, there is an extensive history of mass assaults by Fascist forces of the Federal government, that make a lot of people very, very scared of and hateful toward the government, and rightly so. The fact that having a bunch of semi-auto rifles will not save them from the full force of massive Federal military action has not yet penetrated the fear and hate. Only a change in Federal policy on internal military action against minor political dissent will do that. You'd better spend your time attacking the Federal policy of impunity in the use of mass military force to suppress dissent.

Free Leonard Peltier!

Some years ago, I had a horrific realization when it comes to abortion. It's that we are overvaluing human life. Now, before anyone accuses me of being psychotic, let me explain what I mean.

Some time ago I was reading an essay written by E.B. White, in which he made the case that human beings value human life more today than we've ever have before. Since we've had sanitation and modern medicine, more children have reached adulthood. Prior to sanitation, many children died before they became adults. People had 17 children because 10 of them wouldn't make it to adulthood.

As a result, people in those days were accustomed to losing children. It was a part of life. Since then losing a child has become an increasingly rare thing, and it's far more devastating today than it would have been 150 years ago.

And then you look at our population growth. It is amazing to think that when Columbus landed on Hispanola, total human population on this planet numbered in millions, not billions. When man first landed on the moon, 4 out of 7 people that exist today, didn't exist at all back then. Since my birth, the population of the human race has doubled.

Today we're looking at 7 billion people during into 11 billion people within my life time. And this tired old world that we live on is finite and it is dying.

When we live in a manner that assumes that the earth is an endless resource, as well as an endless trashcan, then it doesn't take an Einstein that things are going to end very, very badly.

This puts a new twist on the moral notions of abortion, doesn't it? The bible may say "be fruitful and multiply", but that was 7 billion people ago.

Here comes the scary part: Here is a historical graph of the world population.

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/World%20Population.JPG

As you can see, throughout all of human history, world population remained below 1 billion people, until the 1800's. By the 1900's population growth skyrocketed at breakneck speed.

What happened to facilitate this? Sanitation. And cheap energy.
Here is a graph of historical oil production.

http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/world_context.jpg

Now here's the scary part: We're running out of oil.

Sadly, I think all of us are living on borrowed time. Without cheap abundant energy, we cannot sustain human civilization. And so long as we don't have clean energy, then it won't be long before climate change makes this planet incapable of supporting life on the scale it is currently.

Many states have passed personhood laws stating that "life begins at the moment of conception". I can not find that anywhere in the Bible. I did find three scriptures which stated that "life begins at first breath". If this is the case, then a fetus is unable to breathe in the womb and only can take its first breath after it is born. Therefore, an abortion is not against any of the commandments of God in the Christian religion. So, anti-abortionists should stop arguing that it is.

These bible illiterates can't even give you the name of the last disobedient

child they stoned!