In Memoriam: George Richard Tiller, MD, 1941-2009

[thatcrazycajun]

I had never even heard of Dr. George Tiller before last weekend. To a great many women in dire need of an abortion, he was a life-saver...in some cases, quite literally. And in the eyes of a greater many on the self-styled "pro-life" side of the national debate on reproductive health, he was a despicable killer of unborn children.

Yesterday, one of those in that last group decided that since the government would not stop Dr. Tiller from doing this work, he would take it upon himself to do so. This alleged human shot Dr. Tiller dead in the vestibule of the Lutheran church in Wichita, KS where he was serving as an usher. The surpassing irony of taking an innocent life in the name of saving other innocents, or of profaning the very house of the God to whom this killer and his ilk profess fealty, is doubtless utterly lost on him, as is the idea that the Fifth Commandment (or Sixth, depending on which church you grew up in)—"Thou shalt not kill"—might apply equally to both himself and the good doctor. Tiller had already been shot once previously and his clinic bombed, and he was a frequent target of threats and harassment from the anti side; Wikipedia's page on him lists some of the history. What made Dr. Tiller especially controversial was his willingness to perform so-called "late-term" abortions (or as the antis prefer to call them, "partial-birth" abortions), i.e., after the 21st week of pregnancy, well beyond the cutoff point of most US and Canadian abortion providers.

Police have today released the name of the suspect apprehended yesterday: one Scott Roeder, 51, of the nearby town of Merriam, who is alleged to have been a subscriber to a militant anti-abortion newsletter and a member of a radical militia group. The New York Times reports more here. Naturally, Your Humble Correspondent will not speculate on whether Roeder is in fact the gunman, as that is more properly the purview of the judge and jury which shall shortly be empaneled to consider the case. Anti-abortion groups including the National Right to Life Committee and Randall Terry's Operation Rescue, to their credit, have promptly and forcefully denounced the murder, insisting that they only practice and condone peaceful protest and political activism; how often they themselves have honored this proclaimed tenet more in the breach than the observance is left as a research exercise for the reader. This may be sincere expression of horror, or simple political savvy on their part in not letting themselves be tarred with the brush of extremism charges in a time when the pendulum of public opinion is swinging away from them; I leave it to you to judge which.

My heart goes out to Dr. Tiller's widow Jeanne, their children and grandchildren, and Dr. Tiller's staff, friends and colleagues. He becomes the eighth abortion-services worker, and the fourth doctor, in North America to be slaughtered for doing his job. May justice come to his murderer swiftly and harshly...and may this cause all of us on both sides to be more respectful of opponents' views and cautious about our use of incendiary rhetoric (most certainly not excluding myself).

Comments

[harmonyheifer.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the extreme right-wing anti-choice backwash would do if left-wing activists who are against the death penalty started shooting people who served on a jury that found people guilty in death penalty cases?

My guess? Howls of outrage. These folks can dish it out, but history proves they can't take it. That's the definition of a bully.

Double standards and hypocrisy really piss me off. My guess is most of the men who stand up and spew vitriol against abortion providers have sent a wife, mistress, daughter or niece to an abortion provider because it's "different" when it's one of their women. The ignorant 22 percent backwash that do most of the picketing and screaming might be sincere, but people like Terry have a darker agenda. I'm from a small town in the heartland, and the Sunday morning church-going values that mask the cognitive dissonance of what those men do on Saturday night when no one is looking used to make me sick to my stomach. Still does.

My heart goes out to Doctor Tiller's friends and family. He was a brave man to stand up for what he knew to be an ethical choice by providing desperately needed gynecological care for women making heart wrenching decisions. I'm sure Tiller and his family knew after the first shooting that his decision to continue practicing might cost him his life, and they put the lives of his pregnant patients ahead of his. No physician should have to make that kind of sacrifice to practice his profession.

Terry's Operation Rescue promote hate and demonize abortion providers. They encourage this kind of extreme reaction with their hate mongering. I have known too many of them not to know that those people are celebrating a victory for their misogynist cause in private and mouthing pious denials in public. I've walked through an Operation Rescue picket line to get an abortion, and walked friends through them. If these people gave a flying shit about children after they are born, I might cut them some slack, but the vast percentage of them don't. Anti-choice isn't about unborn children, any more than rape is about sex. It's about keeping women in their "proper place," burdened by unwanted children and dependent on abusive men for survival.

May someone fuck Randall Terry, Scott Roeder and the rest of his misogynistic followers, especially the smug, sanctimonious men, and impregnate each of them with just one unwanted child. I would love to sentence each and every one of them to a life of poverty and hardship while they struggle to raise that child with no support or assistance.

You are much kinder and diplomatic than I will ever be about the real power behind the anti-choice crowd, but I'm a woman. I've been shoved, spit on and intimidated by their ignorant minions while accessing legal medical care or helping a friend access it. I don't believe in Hell, but live in the hope that because these people do, some thoughtful deity will provide it for them. It would be a shame to disappoint such devout Christian souls.

Justice for the unborn, my ass.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

It has been suggested in several places (and I tend to agree) that the groups distancing themselves from this terrorist act are doing so only out of political expediency. If their rhetoric -- which included calls for Dr. Tiller and his too-few peers to die -- remains constant from this point, it's a certainty (instead of, in my mind, 99.9% so).

Note that Randall Terry (no longer with OpRescue) himself, made the following statement:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

That is both a more honest reaction (and likely reflects a large chunk of OpResc's people) and utterly execrable.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

"The surpassing irony of taking an innocent life in the name of saving other innocents"

Come on, surely you're not that stupid. Are you utterly incapable of seeing anything from a viewpoint other than your own? To call something a "surpassing irony" you must first see it from the killer's point of view. Otherwise it's not ironic, it's just a difference of opinion.

"An innocent life"? What was innocent about it? He was a serial killer, no different from Ted Bundy, and he had to be stopped. Every non-lethal means of stopping him had already been tried and failed, and every failure meant more innocent lives snuffed out. So what else was to be done? Just sit back and tell all those dead babies "we tried"?

Just remember, John Brown was hanged for murder, but ten years later armies marched in his name.

[janeg.livejournal.com]

Sorry that you see it that way. I am on the side of those who see Tiller as a hero, though Henry Morgentaler in Canada was even more a hero as he went to jail several times for his views yet continued to help as many women as he could. No jury would convict him but some judges followed an unjust law until the legal system intervened and set him free.

Canada gave Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his wonderful service to women. I hope the USA bestows a prestigious posthumous honour on Tiller.

[harmonyheifer.livejournal.com]

You seem to be the one unable to see anything from a viewpoint other than your own.

Your ignorance of what a third trimester abortion actually is and why it is sometimes medically necessary is profound. I know the anti-choice crowd like to portray "partial birth" abortions as belated birth control by horrible selfish women and "serial killer" doctors, but speaking as a nurse who used to work in Ob/Gyn I can assure you that those scenarios are as rare as the welfare queen draining your tax dollar to support her dozen bastard children in luxury.

Most of these procedures are done only as a last resort to women who must to make a tragic choices about the termination of a nonviable pregnancy because it puts her health at serious risk if she tries to carry it to term. Many are done to prevent the infant from suffering a certain lingering and painful death after delivery. Far from being uncaring monsters, these women are usually grieving the loss of their unborn child just as they would if it had died after being born and many must chose to have the procedure to save their own lives. When this situation occurs, these women are thinking about the welfare of their other children, and what happen to them if their mother died trying to give birth to a sibling that wouldn't survive anyway.

Dr, Tiller put the lives and welfare of his pregnant patients before the lives of their damaged or dead unborn children. He was a healer in every sense of the word.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Rubbish. The man did elective late-term abortions. Before viability he didn't even need an excuse. After viability he'd just put down the legal boilerplate "substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function"; "major bodily functions", for the purpose of this phrase, includes mental health, and "substantial and irreversible impairment", at least in Tiller's view, included depression over having to miss a concert or a prom. He had no expertise in psychiatry, and did not consult a psychiatrist; he just put down whatever he liked, and had an employee countersign as an "independent second opinion" which was nothing of the sort, and then he'd get down to murdering the poor baby.

As far as I'm concerned there is only one scenario that justifies abortion, and that is when the baby is killing its mother, and we must kill it in her defense, just as we would kill anybody who was attacking another person's life. The justification for killing such a baby is exactly the same as the justification for killing Tiller: defense of another's life. But none of this is relevant to my comment, to which you responded. There are different points of view about abortion, just as there were about slavery 160 years ago; I've given mine, but I'm perfectly well aware that there are others, and I'm perfectly capable of seeing things from those other viewpoints. And that is something that neither you nor Matt seem capable of.

That is the only way, the only possible way, to explain Matt's line about "supreme irony". And that was the entire point of my response. That you could not see that, and instead give me your pro-abortion view as if it could in any way invalidate my comment, indicates that you share Matt's blindness. Your opinion does not matter; for Tiller's killing to be ironic it must not make sense from the killer's perspective, it must expose a contradiction in his thinking, and to determine that you must be able to see things from that perspective.

[harmonyheifer.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand the viewpoint of the extreme anti-abortion terrorist, I just think it's clinically insane, and I'm qualified to say that as a former psych nurse who did those kinds of evaluations for a living. Tiller's assassin was just plain batshit crazy and you think what he did was justified. What does that say about your sanity?

I think that you are on the wrong side of history, bub. and time will prove it.

If my opinion doesn't matter, neither does yours, except you just championed assassination of a man who was performing a legal procedure.

Not only are you on the wrong side of history, you are also on the wrong side of the law.

Have fun with that.