on the growl

After spending seven of a twenty year sentence in jail, convicted of homicide because of a still birth, Regina McKnight is going home. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that her 2001 trial was unfair.

Regina McKnight was caught doing coke a few MONTHS after the poor woman suffered a stillbirth. So it was argued that her coke use caused the stillbirth. Seriously, this happened.

If I experienced a stillbirth you can believe me I'd be on every drug I could get my hands on to escape the depression I'd be feeling.

A minute of grace and thanks for extremely overdue justice for Ms. McKnight.

Now, a long while to wonder why the hell are we so into punishment? What have we lost that we think we'll get back by decimating Regina McKnight? Why are we so weak that we prey on the most vulnerable, the grieving, the unlucky?

This morning and everyday I escort at the abortion clinic I wonder why the middle-aged male protestors won't just ask me to arm-wrestle. Let's do that, hell, I'll easily lose. Let's do that big man and you can feel big and the patients can walk into their appointments without having to muster up some extra heroic shield. Already facing growling self-judgment, do these women really need to defend themselves against strange angry men? I offer up my arms, until perhaps the moment I might become a patient, then I would like someone else to.

I get very angry; I am not a court so to punish I get angry and look with a look that cuts down like a machete. No matter that my anger is relatively benign or at least irrelevant, I still regret being so angry and everyday am reminded that compassion is more productive. So, compassionately, a handshake for the SCSC. But how to both growl at McKnight's prosecutors AND plead for a culture of compassion when it comes to reproductive matters?