Scott Roeder showed up at Tiller’s church one Sunday and gunned the doctor down. Roeder will surely be imprisoned, if not, one day executed for his crime against all humanity, which murder is if fully fleshed out.

Tiller’s life was taken from him and he from his wife, children and grandchildren. That kind of loss can never be compensated.

What also changes, at least temporarily in Wichita and Kansas, is, regardless of your political or moral conviction, the cessation of late-term abortions or at least legal ones.

For supporters of life, this is a positive result out of something so heinous, the taking of a man’s life.

For supporters of abortion as a legal right, this is the realization of a worst nightmare, a fight to be accelerated in the media and courtrooms.

The story of late-term abortions didn’t die with Tiller. He now becomes  a martyr. The story is just beginning.

How it ends no one knows but the anger and disgust between the two sides will be as passionate as ever.

What’s not wise and will prove shortsighted and foolish is making cuts in education, cuts that will punish teachers and students.

As a society we cannot continue to minimize the importance of those whom choose education as a career path. Those professionals have to start being more valued and better compensated. The disconnected ones have to go but the ones that care, that show with action that they passionately care about students and learning should become higher profile citizens within the community.

It is criminal to society that so much government waste exists and that politicians earn often outrageous salaries, even if less than they might earn in their business, and then they support more waste and cut necessities or fail to support critical care areas like police, firefighters, education, health care and psychological care.

It’s an embarrassment that we often allow politicians to continue. Accountability is lacking. Being in office doesn’t create credibility nor does it indicate there are men and women of character holding those positions.

When enough citizens speak out, loudly, and demand change, or else, it will happen.

The daily danger officers must face, the risk of not going home healthy or at all are always present. It takes a different kind of person to want to do that job, do it well and show up each shift.

For those who die on their job as a result of violence, a possibility most of us, thankfully don’t have to face, little community recognition is offered, at least not what is deserving.

Maybe the media could do more, maybe broadcast such remembrance ceremonies. The police would surely appreciate the respect and caring. If we as society showed more support, not just financial, of our law enforcement, firefighters and teachers, and if we found a way to allocate more of our tax dollars to them for their service, it would speak volumes about how valuable we show them to be to us.

By all impressions he is not only a criminal of small and large deeds he is most likely a seriously disturbed character. Not all murderers are as some just lost total control over one issue in their lives. They are criminals but wouldn’t be classified, clinically, as mentally ill. Roeder’s media detailed behavior would indicate he is ill and like many ill people, was running around the streets as our neighbor.

The act of violence in response to violence rarely brings resolution and peace and in the war that pro choice and pro life is, violence will only further divide the sides, similar to the war in the Middle East.

Only intellect, finding common ground, open conversation, compromise for the overall good can hope to bring about change. If change wasn’t coming fast enough for someone you just stay where you are and keep working, keep trying, be flexible and creative. You don’t get frustrated and throw an adult temper tantrum and use an adult toy (weapon) and kill.

Tiller was a human being. Whether you find his behavior evil or humanitarian, the cowardly shoot and run of the suspect is shocking and should be condemned. The law allowed Tiller to run his practice if he wished. In a secular manner, he was doing what was permissible. In a spiritual realm, the order would have been to let God or a higher power resolve the issue, not become a vigilante.

Any murder shakes a community and regardless of one’s social and political views on abortion, Sunday’s murder, in a church, where women, children and families were, was an outrage that no one in their right mind can applaud or be dismissive about it.

If we allow assaults or murders solely for different points of view or poor governing we aren’t really living in the country our forefathers founded and our military and other great Americans have fought for and defended.

If we become reactionaries to all those whom viewpoints and behavior we disagree with we will find ourselves living in a more lawless society and eventually a police state.

Killers are bullies, people with “off switches” for their rage or anti-social and delusional psychological conditions.

As a close friend once was fond of saying “no answer is still an answer.”

Abner’s silence, whether the defense and legal experts want to admit it or not, is damming. He doesn’t have to indict himself legally but the psychology behind it is clear — there is nothing he can say that wouldn’t either help convict him or be defined as perjury.

Victim Joyce Patterson has had her character questioned by the defense, had those same attorneys question her statements to police, and heard the insulting, insensitive and cruel assertion that the the sex was consensual.

Most rape victims hear such idiocy and many see that approach help offenders escape accountability and punishment.

Hopefully Patterson won’t be victimized again, this time by the courts, who are often abusers themselves. If she is, it will also be another victimization for women, children, and our society.

That legislators have decided that’s an issue that needs correcting and wants to fine drivers $ 135 is honestly revealing and a head scratcher.

Maybe they could be honest and say in difficult economic times we desperately need more revenue. Maybe they could be responsible and focus more on empowering law enforcement to better protect society from crime, serious crime.

That this issue was given more than a minute of thought by politicians, must less became a law, again reminds the public what an out-of-touch, unregulated boys’ club lawmakers show themselves to be to us.

It’s a psychological flaw. They’re suffering, and I might be off clinically on this, from mental illness. They’re not evil. Their behavior is but the person is significantly sick. They don’t see victims as human, don’t feel any empathy for them.

So when a man rapes, sodomizes a girl as in the link above and shares that it’s o.k. because it’s in the name of the Lord, realize this person long ago showed signs of mental illness and should not be living without supervision and treatment. People close to him ignored his sickness, likely out laziness and society, children paid a dear price.

So ugly is the reality that women are so violated emotionally and physically in this world, terrified and then to have the courts not stand up for them and us, as society to allow the courts to ask this way.

What’s ironic in this case is a woman, Jama Mitchell, doing her job or not, is heading the deceit.

Where are the solutions we need to stand up for rape victims?

That young perpetrators are becoming more brazen, to the point of raping fellow students on campus, with occasional teachers also acting as predators the environment has become too much of a crapshoot for parents, educators and especially children.

While the last thing this spot is anything that drives us more towards a police state, maybe that’s what we, as a society need at times, more people watching over us making sure we don’t violate each other. The schools could employ hall monitors. The concern is cost. That’s the problem to worked out.