November 10, 2009
John Muhammad, burn in hell!

Posted at 9:53 pm, in: Abortion
Tags: Carol Everett, John Muhammad

Two weeks ago, on a Friday night, I came to my apartment, put on some comfy clothes, took out the contacts, and put on the glasses to read a book as part of my thesis research. Over the next four hours I read a book that at moments made me want to cry and at others made me want to puke. The author was Carol Everett, the book was Blood Money: Getting Rich Off a Woman’s Right to Choose.

I read the book. This is my job, at this point. I have been researching abortion for the past three years, on and off. I have read, seen, and heard every possible thing you can on the subject. Other than almost getting sick a couple of times, it never got to me like this.

When I was done reading for the night, my mind was lost. I got up and fell back into the wall…and started crying (damn emotional, unstable women!). And, I cried. And, cried some more. I cried for what I just read. I cried for the children that were never born, the children that were accidentally born and put to rest shortly after, the women who had been butchered by greedy abortion doctors, and the women who had died. The women who had all been told it would all be OK; that it was just a routine surgical procedure. The women who came to realize, too late, that was a lie.

Now, I’m not a soft-hearted, heart on my sleave, easily brought to tears kind of girl. I’m a guy’s girl. I grew up with three older brothers. Not only was crying unacceptable, I was taught to fight. And, if I lost a fight, I was getting my a** kicked twice: once in the fight and again when I got home for losing the fight. But, suddenly, there I was sitting in the corner crying.

I realized that I had taken in so much over the past three years that I have been researching abortion. So much of what I have learned will never make it into my thesis. It sits in my head. It weighs on my brain. It eats away at my heart. Finally, it had broken me, momentarily.

Living in DC, all I have heard about for the past week has been about John Muhammad and his impending death. John Muhammad, some of you might recall, is the DC Sniper. Yes, there were two. The other guy was a 17-year-old, who is currently serving a life sentence, due to his age at the time of the crime.

My heart strings have been pulled so hard for this man, they’ve been plucked. Poor John, he’s mentally ill. Poor John, he suffered abuse as a child. Poor John, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I assume that you are getting the point.

I must have almost blocked it out, preoccupied with my approaching thesis deadline, but this morning I caught a news report about one of the jurors in the case. If only she had known about poor Johns tragic upbringing. If only someone would have shared with her his supposed mental illness. She would have never voted for that awful death penalty then. No, not her, not ever. Blah, blah, blah.

I’m OK with the death penalty and I’m OK with this guy dying. I know, shock!, gasp!, but I’m against abortion? How contradictory of me! I’m such a hypocrite. But, not so much. And, here is why. No matter when you believe life begins, we all know that if a terminated pregnancy were in fact brought to term we don’t know what that person could have offered the world. That “fetus” is an innocent life.

John Muhammad is not innocent and, therefore, the taking of his life is not the taking of an innocent life. He is responsible for the deaths of many people. And, this isn’t based on religion so resist the temptation to raise the strawman argument that this is very un-Christian of me, because I’m sure I have a Christian friend who could explain why it is not.

I firmly believe that if you take someone’s life, unless it was justifiable like in cases of self-defense, then your life should be taken. We shouldn’t show you mercy because you didn’t show the person(s) you murdered mercy. In fact, I am willing to go eye-for-an-eye on this. A murderer should die the same way their victim died.

I am proud of our society in so many ways. Like, I’m proud that we have these discussions and that we take death seriously enough to continue debating it. But, it sickens me when I see more support and the urgency to show caution when we are dealing with a murderer, rapist, child molester, or terrorists, rather than for the more than one million innocent lives we extinguish every year.

I don’t care if John Muhammad was abused as a child. We all have our own crap to deal with and yet most of us don’t go around killing people, terrorizing them in the places they feel safe. This man doesn’t deserve a second chance and I’m glad we are not giving him one.

I feel terrible. I feel terrible for all of those family members who lost someone because this man decided to go out and kill. I feel bad for those who lost their own lives because of John Muhammad, and I feel bad for all of those whose lives were impacted by it. If you believe in God, then this man has worse to deal with it than being put to death in our legal system. If you don’t believe in God, then it’s a good thing we punished him because there is clearly no other being that could.