swoop

imjustaboywithadream:

To say “Just have the baby” is to tell someone they should just casually take on what can be an experience where you’re thrust into both love at first sight and devastating fear, anguish, and possibly heartbreak in a very short period of time. A time, no less, when you may be at the very end of your physical and emotional endurance. There’s no “just” about having a baby. And not necessarily any justice, either. … Just have the baby? Only if you want to. Because no one else can take on any of the pain or risk, and it’s rare that you’ll be helped significantly with the costs—something I think anyone capable of becoming pregnant understands all too well and that forced pregnancy activists work very hard not to acknowledge.

Now that Zimmerman has a legitimate reason to fear for his life, the threshold for what constitutes a personal threat has got to feel awfully low. What about an unarmed person wearing a t-shirt with George Zimmerman’s face in crosshairs who sees him on the street and swears at him? Could Zimmerman shoot him? Trayvon Martin was unarmed and was wearing a plain sweatshirt. What about a group of protesters shouting hostile messages about him as Zimmerman happens to walk by? Based on the jury’s handling of the Trayvon Martin case, it seems Florida law would allow Zimmerman to pull out his gun and, if he continued to feel threatened by these people for whatever reason, shoot them all in good standing under the law.