Preventing ‘Back Alley’ Suicides in San Francisco

Originally posted at American Thinker.

Once again, the confused logic of liberals is almost impossible to comprehend.  Take, for instance, the multi-million dollar steel suicide barrier about to be constructed in San Francisco.  After 1,600 people, tragically died since 1937 by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, an obstacle to suicide will soon run the 9,000-ft. length of the bridge.

What’s perplexing is that this compassionate enterprise is taking place in a liberal state where assisted suicide is legal, and where, in 2011, out of 802,400 pregnancies, 184,552, or 23%, ended in abortion.

San Francisco is a city whose majority likely endorses the 3,000 abortions performed every day in America.  Yet Bagdad-by-the-Bay plans to spend 211 million in taxpayer dollars to deny one person, every two weeks, the right to choose to do what California law otherwise maintains should hinge solely on personal choice.

In other words, by erecting suicide barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco liberals, who, for the unborn denounce the right to life, and, for the sick and dying support the right to die, want to inflict life on those who prefer death.

Even still, liberal Californians would probably argue that jumping off a bridge is different because, according to state law, to qualify for death with dignity one must be succumbing to physical, not mental, illness.

Sorry to have to be the one to say it, but, especially in a liberal bastion like San Francisco telling one group, they have a right to die while refusing another that same right smacks of the sort of discrimination liberals usually pride themselves on avoiding.

Nonetheless, if the rationale behind the Golden Gate Bridge safety net were to thwart ‘back alley suicides,’ maybe a better idea would be to gather up distraught bridge jumpers and shuttle them to a clinic where the downcast could be administered the legal End of Life Option drug secobarbital.   After all, ending one’s life in a less public place would be tidier, would shield the iconic reputation of the bridge, would spare the U.S. Coast Guard having to spend hot afternoons fishing bloated corpses out of the celebrated city bay, and, most importantly, would safeguard the left’s highly-prized right to choose.

Either way, except for when it comes to limiting things like guns and junk food, liberals typically insist that deterrents fail to work. As a matter of fact, it was San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi who once said that if the GOP denied funding ‘safe and legal’ abortion, via Obamacare, women would have to resort to rusty hangers and, in turn, “die on the floor.”

So, if banning abortion doesn’t keep women out of back alley clinics, how does Nancy explain her contention that curtailing the legal Second Amendment will save “90 lives a day?” Or, more germane to the Golden Gate Bridge conversation, how does steel suspended from a bridge keep those desperate enough to end it all from finding another bridge?

Notwithstanding the belief that gun control and suicide nets impede fatalities, when it comes to building a wall on the border, liberals like Pelosi argue that physical restrictions do nothing to prevent dangerous immigrants from entering the US illegally.  Meanwhile, in 2015, a woman named Kate Steinle died on a San Francisco pier after she was shot to death by an illegal felon named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez who, despite being deported five times, repeatedly snuck back across the southern border.

The stunning contradiction here is that this tragedy took place in a Sanctuary City where liberals who claim that walls do not stop illegal felons are now stringing up a steel barrier to stop suicides.

That’s why, even though San Francisco has strict gun laws, and thanks to their backing of open borders, a bullet from a .40-caliber handgun, stolen from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger, ricocheted off a sidewalk, entered Steinle’s back, and severed the 32-year-old’s aorta.

Recently, at the Golden Gate Bridge Suicide Deterrent Commemoration Ceremony, Democratic Leader, Catholic-abortion-supporter, and open-borders-advocate Nancy Pelosi had this to say about the steel suicide barrier:

What a bittersweet day. The joy of the prospect of saving lives, the sadness of those we’ve lost. The Golden Gate Bridge is a source of immense pride in the Bay Area, but for far too many families it has also been a place of pain. We are honoring a deep moral responsibility to save lives whenever and wherever we can.

Likewise, for those yet to be born, Nancy Pelosi also ‘honors a deep moral responsibility’ to ensure pre-born bridge jumpers never make it out of the womb alive.

Under the banner of choice, when not hindering suicide, San Francisco continues to feverishly abort human beings and dispense legal euthanasia drugs and does so while refusing to enforce laws necessary to protect the likes of those who, if given the choice, would have chosen to live.