Perfect Example of Why I Don't Do News

I don't listen to the news. I don't read the news. I don't watch the news.

This may come as a shock to some of you out there who know my ambition 15 years ago was to become a journalist. I used to read every, and I mean EVERY article in the Star Phoenix, and watch the 6 pm & late evening news. But after spending 2 weeks in Mexico in 1998 completely cut off from any media, I came back cured of the news fixation. I do still read the local rag, but seriously, we can't classify that as news, can we?

Today, traveling with Puffy from K'town back home to Dodge, we listened to the news on the radio. The top story ~ a shooter opened fire inside a Montreal College, killing 1 person, injuring 19 others before cowardly turning the gun on himself.
The second story ~ St. Elizabeth Hospital in Humboldt has cancelled all tubal ligations due to the board's Catholic ideals, without input from the doctors who performed the operations.

I can't even express how much both of these stories piss me off. I don't even think that I can choose which one upsets me more.

Story one: I am not a gun person. I grew up in a household that contained guns used for hunting, but I never touched one until a few months ago. I saw what that gun did to the skeet, & I can't imagine ever wanting to do that to another human being. When I hear stories like this, I am almost more saddened than enraged because that person, the shooter, must have been battling some amazing demons to think that this would be a good solution. I don't know the whole story, and I never will most likely.

Story two: I firmly believe in the right of every person to chose & follow their own religion {as long as it does not advocate or encourage hurting others} but to force their beliefs onto others in this manner makes me so mad I can't even speak. Women have been oppressed since farther back than language can tell us, and to have a HOSPITAL in the 21st century deny women the right to chose their own method of control over what happens in their own bodies is an outrage! This isn't the doctor refusing to perform a procedure based on his religious ideals, this is the bureaucracy of the hospital telling every woman in Humboldt & the surrounding area, Catholic or not, that they will not provide them with a medical procedure that some women MUST have, not on a whim, but for health reasons. I think the big money question here is: do they perform vasectomies?

I'm so mad I could spit.