Shortly after Sunday’s atrocious shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub, both celebrities and journalists took to Twitter to bring up a completely separate issue: abortion. Instead of focusing on mourning the victims, big names – beginning with actress Rosario Dawson – compared gun access to abortion access.
To her 569,000 followers, actress Rosario Dawson (Men in Black II, Sin City, Daredevil) compared compared the two issues:
What would it be like if it were as hard to get a gun as it is to get an abortion...?! https://t.co/bdQBVV6nia
— Rosario Dawson (@rosariodawson) June 13, 2016
Actress Michelle Clunie (Queer as Folk, Make It or Break It, Teen Wolf) made the same comparison to her 33,000 followers:
It is easier in this country for a man on the Watch list to get an assault weapon than a woman to get an abortion.
— Michelle Clunie (@mischaclu) June 12, 2016
Singer Jaxon chimed in with the same idea to his 40,000 followers:
There is a more intense screening for a girl to get an abortion, than for someone to buy a gun... Smh.
— WILDWEST (@Jaxonoys) June 12, 2016
But the sentiment didn’t just come from Hollywood. Liberal British journalist and reality TV star Piers Morgan tweeted at Dana Loesch of The Blaze for all of his 5 million followers to see:
If you gun nuts put 'right to life' before your beloved 'right to bear arms', fewer people would die.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 12, 2016
https://t.co/cmyXrY5le3
Also British, actress and author Emma Kennedy, who has drawn attention to herself as a lesbian in the past, compared the two issues in her definition of America to her 95,000 followers:
@Thorpey85 @Bill_Rhodes54 Abortion? Ban it. Birth control? Ban it. Gay marriage? Ban it. Guns? No, they're fine. America in a nutshell
— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) June 12, 2016
But some on Twitter stood up against the comparison. National Review writer Charles C. W. Cooke tweeted:
@DFerrisi Bad analogy. Abortion is analogous to murder in the pro-life view; guns are analogous to forceps or vacuums. It’s the act.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 13, 2016
Former Cosmopolitan writer and Guardian columnist Jill Filipovic compared the shooting to “abortion clinic shooters” for her 38,000 followers. While both events are inexcusable, the tweet drew due attention away from Orlando in the name of an abortion agenda:
People pointing to ISIS for encouraging this attack will put the same responsibility on those who encourage abortion clinic shooters, right?
— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) June 13, 2016