This post has been updated in the wake of the Orlando shooting.
A Facebook post comparing gun laws to anti-abortion laws has gone viral, and it's alarmingly spot on.
On Oct. 3, Facebook user Brian Murtagh posted a quote that imagines what it would look like if a man trying to buy a gun had to jump through the same hoops as a woman who wants an abortion. While the author of the quote and its origins are unknown, the comparison it makes is incredibly timely.
In the wake of another tragic mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon, and the GOP's recent efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, the post is a powerful reminder of how much women in the U.S. have to go through to get a safe and legal abortion -- and how little mass shooters have to go through to obtain a weapon.
Read the full quote below (as posted by artist Michele Pred since Murtagh's original post is no longer available):
"Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun," the quote reads. "It makes more sense to do this with young men and guns than with women and health care, right? I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds, right?”
The post definitely struck a nerve, receiving over 82,000 shares and 44,000 likes.
Murtagh points out that the author of the quote may have been inspired by William Hamby's 2013 Examiner article where he likens anti-abortion laws to gun laws in the U.S.
"The Supreme Court has ruled that owning guns and getting abortions are both rights granted to Americans, but the laws governing each are remarkably different," Hamby wrote. "Legislators have made lots of 'extra-constitutional' laws and regulations about abortion... They've worked long and hard to give pharmacists the right to refuse to sell morning-after pills if they don't want to. If this practice were instituted by every pharmacist in a state, it would effectively make it impossible to buy morning-after pills."
Some of these "extra-constitutional" laws Hamby's referring to includes the over 200 abortion restrictions that have been enacted into law in just the past five years. When it comes to buying a gun in the U.S., however, these restrictions are far and few between. Most of the guns used in mass shootings were purchased legally.
While women around the country have to travel insane distances and are subjected to invasive questioning, procedures and harassment in order to get an abortion, almost anyone can walk into Walmart and buy a gun.
In short:
H/T Addicting Info
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story placed the most recent school shooting in Portland. The attack occurred in Roseburg, Oregon.
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