SubscribeDr. George R. Tiller specializes in terminating late-term pregnancies after the fetus has been diagnosed with a birth defect: a deformed heart, missing kidneys, Down's syndrome, anencephaly.Yeah, sounds like he was doing the devil's work, alright. I can't stop thinking about the women who because of this act of terrorism today might now have nowhere to turn for late term abortions for fetuses suffering severe genetic malformations. But the people who will be cheering this shooting-- and you know they're out there-- can't spare a thought for women's suffering.
He calls his work a "reproductive ministry," and he offers his patients many of the same services as the hospice. Tiller encourages parents to hold, dress and photograph their aborted children, whom he delivers stillborn but intact. His staff takes ink-prints of tiny feet and hands; he brings in a chaplain for baptisms. Letters from grateful patients line the clinic's walls.
but damn, shooting the guy doesn't do anything to help the causeOf course it does. It's terrorism. It lets every doctor who performs abortions know that it's open season on abortion providers. The "legitimate" pro-life groups publicize their whereabouts, supposedly for "legitimate" purposes, and the crazies, whom the "legitimates" pretend to denounce, kill them. Every abortion provider in America now knows that to provide abortions is to risk being murdered. Only the incredibly committed and brave will continue to provide abortions under those conditions. And that means that the anti-abortion movement will accomplish through intimidation things that it can't accomplish through legal means. Abortion remains legal, but many women can't get one, because the doctors who would provide them aren't willing to risk their and their families safety.
And what young American medical student will elect to follow his footsteps?The ones who will are members of Medical Students for Choice, which is another good organization to donate to if you're interested in resisting anti-choice terrorism and intimidation.
"Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice," the group said in a statement. It offered its prayers for Tiller's family, "that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."Just.. wow. Where does one even start here? Abortion is legal, there is no "justice" to bring him to. This is blatantly code for approval of his murder. Operation Rescue is a terrorist organization by any metric, and I do not understand why the media grants them legitimacy like this.
Jesus, thanks for nothing, Mr. President. You might as well have told us to watch your drive after that.Huh?
If I believed that tens of thousands of innocent people were being murdered every year in my own country, I like to think that I would not stand aside and do nothing.If they believed that, they would believe that the doctor should be charged with murder, and the woman with, at the very least, accomplice to murder. But (obvious exception here aside) they don't.
I guess we're going to find out PDQ whether your new Administration is pro- or anti-terrorism.Because this is a perfect example of a cut and dried issue to map onto those two options.
"The murder of Doctor George Tiller is an abhorrent act of violence, and his family is in our thoughts and prayers at this tragic moment. Federal law enforcement is coordinating with local law enforcement officials in Kansas on the investigation of this crime, and I have directed the United States Marshals Service to offer protection to other appropriate people and facilities around the nation. The Department of Justice will work to bring the perpetrator of this crime to justice. As a precautionary measure, we will also take appropriate steps to help prevent any related acts of violence from occurring."
Hopefully there will be a full investigation into all the ways there could and probably was be an organized conspiracy behind this assassination.I think the problem is that it probably wasn't an organized conspiracy. What happens here is that "mainstream," "peaceful" groups like Operation Rescue publish the names, pictures, and addresses of abortion providers, claiming that they intend these details to be used for non-violent forms of harassment but knowing full well that there are nutcases out there who feel entitled to use the information to commit acts of violence. They can easily distance themselves from the violence when it happens, but they also rely on the threat of violence to intimidate potential abortion providers. It works out great for people like Operation Rescue. They distance themselves from the lone violent gunmen while relying on and benefiting from their violence.
One side effect of Twitter is that the stupid, bigoted comments people used to make at the water cooler now get preserved for future employers to find using Google.Tweets of Hate: The Crazy Right Twitters About the Assassination of Dr Tiller.
I am tired of the USA being the most dangerous, misguided, fucked-up country in the first world.I'm tired of you using this sentiment as an excuse to act like a complete jackass.
...the leaders of the abortion criminalization movement have consistently put their political weight behind policies which make little or no sense if they genuinely think that abortion is identical to child murder. And those same leaders routinely endorse policies that make a lot of sense if their goal is to penalize women who have sex - to, as I've heard many of them put it, make sure women "face the consequences" of having sex
How about I just STFU so that the delicate sensibilities here can go back to comfortably pretending that there's nothing wrong at all.I have no beef against you, but I'm curious about exactly who here you are referring to, who is comfortably pretending that there's nothing wrong at all.
Id love to see him canonized into a universal symbol for women's rights, choice, sanity, and secularism.You know, I don't know about secularism. The man appears to have been a pretty active and committed Christian. He was gunned down while serving as an usher in the church that he attended regularly. If anything, I think he's a symbol not of secularism but of religious pluralism, of the fact that anti-choice zealots don't have a monopoly on Christianity.
Q. Does insurance cover the cost of an abortion?
A. Almost two-thirds of insurance companies cover elective abortion to some degree. Contact your insurance company to find out if you are covered.
Two-thirds of typical fee-for-service insurance plans routinely cover abortion, and 9 in 10 routinely cover sterilization, according to a new study by The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). In contrast, half of typical fee-for-service plans provide no contraceptive coverage at all.To be clear about my stance: our health care system is profoundly fucked up, and there are certainly efforts to prevent insurance companies from paying for abortions. But dealing with the facts alone, it's impossible to say that insurance companies don't pay for abortion. Most do pay for at least some forms of abortion, ranging from the morning after pill to a termination prior to 12 weeks and beyond. Mine pays for a first trimester abortion after referral from my GYN under the family services program, which means a $25 copay and a prescription copay for Plan B and/or antibiotics prescribed alongside and abortion procedure. (A $40 copay for the Pill, making it almost market price. It'd be cheaper for me to have an abortion annually than to take contraceptives. That's quite a pro-life policy we've got there).
[T]here's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on "The Factor" on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."Video [01:41] from some of those 29 segments.
Tiller, O'Reilly likes to say, "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000." He's guilty of "Nazi stuff," said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. "This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union," said O'Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006.
O'Reilly has also frequently linked Tiller to his longtime obsession, child molestation and rape. Because a young teenager who received an abortion from Tiller could, by definition, have been a victim of statutory rape, O'Reilly frequently suggested that the clinic was covering up for child rapists (rather than teenage boyfriends) by refusing to release records on the abortions performed.
I had a late term abortion due to anaencephaly- the fetus had no brain, much like Baby Grace who recently got so much attention here on the blue. She wouldn't ever think, feel, or exist- she would be born simply to die.Before writing your reply, you will probably find it helpful to read the links provided by others responding to you.
And sadly, the same Operation Rescue that wants to prevent these kinds of abortions prevented me from giving birth to this child, this very wanted child. Because of all the random, extraneous laws pro-lifers have fought hard to get passed, I wouldn't have even been able to donate that infant's organs- without a brain, there's no brain death. We would have had to let everything shut down, making all of her organs unsuitable for donation.
Since we couldn't make someone else's life better carrying her to term, we opted for an abortion. 9 months and then childbirth to carry what amounted to a corpse, all to end in tragedy- well. Obviously some women- like Baby Grace's mother- are made of different stuff from me. But I couldn't bear the exercise in ugly futility.
What George Tiller did may seem ghoulish to those who have never been in the position- and being on Mefi, I'm certainly aware this is an appeal to emotion- but I know that I would have grieved more effectively, less hauntedly, if I had had the opportunity to terminate that pregnancy in the kind of clinic he ran.
The "attendance" fluctuated but there were always some constants: the "sidewalk counselors" (all women) or women who would talk very loudly next to the clinic walls, because supposedly those inside the clinic next to the wall could hear you. Everyone else seemed to do one of two things. The Catholics (Kapaun/Bishop Carroll high school students and some boomer-age adults) would usually stand silently with signs or pray the rosary. The fundamentalists/evangelicals would sing those annoying but innocuous praise songs but near the end of my protest "tenure" I noticed more and more reading of the Bible as well.Time was, all that had to be said was, Will no-one rid me of this turbulent so-and-so? to get a good and decent person assassinated in church. Nowadays, the anti-abortion movement requires such rhetoric as "'blood libel', aborted fetuses' 'blood crying out for vengeance', 'death mills', etc.'" to provide sufficient impetus for murdering someone as he hands out the church bulletin.
And of course they always seemed to choose the passages talking about "the LORD shall bless the righteous but sinners he shall smite" and the like. They said it with force, like they meant it.{...} These people not only spoke the language of the Old Testament but saw themselves as part of its narrative. They are Jonah warning Ninevah (Wichita) prophesizing about its wickedness (Tiller's clinic).{...}
Operation Rescue or Bill O'Reilly do not qualify every statement about Tiller with a parenthetical stating "oh, by the way, killing him is not the way to stop him" for obvious reasons. But even if they did, they can't stop someone from thinking that more drastic measures are "necessary". {...} Once you start perpetuating these loaded memes that excite people's emotions, all it takes is someone who is a bit crazier than the others for events like yesterday's to happen.
Scott Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., whom authorities have described as a suspect in Sunday’s fatal shooting here of George Tiller, was once a subscriber and occasional contributor to a newsletter, Prayer and Action News, said Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines who runs the newsletter. Mr. Leach said that he had met Mr. Roeder once, and that Mr. Roeder had described similar views to his own on abortion.
Commenting on Dr. Tiller’s death, Mr. Leach said, “To call this a crime is too simplistic.” He added, “There is Christian scripture that would support this."
There are pivotal patients in everyone’s practice. This girl on my left is nine-and-a-half years old. She can from Southern California with her mother and her aunt for a termination of pregnancy. I told them that I—she was too far along, and I couldn’t help. . . . I was trying to explain to my daughters, who were ten and nine at the time, about why I had planned to do this procedure. My ten-year-old daughter said, . . . “Daddy, a ten-year-old girl, a nine-year-old girl shouldn’t be pregnant, and simply not by her father or her grandfather or her uncle.” . . .
What one of the things that my father taught me was that to be credible in medicine, you must require for your patients the same care that you would require for your family. I made a decision that if my nine- and ten-year-old daughters at that time were in that situation, I would do the procedure. I did it for this girl. It turned out marvelously. There were no problems, no complications. And I made that decision at that time that I was going to help as many people as I possibly could. And age was—if a woman was or a girl was able to get pregnant, we should be able to do a termination of pregnancy.
I wish people wouldn't use the term "pro-life." As the murder of Dr. Tiller (may his God welcome him) shows, anti-abortion advocates are anything but.OK, so how about "pro-choice" and "pro-murder"?
I don't know much about abortion clinics, but I volunteer weekly with low-income children, and have worked in the past with an orphanage in Chicago in a poor area of that city. And whenever I went there I was always struck by how intelligent, brave, and persevering some of those children were. One girl I worked with was shuttled from orphanage to orphanage through childhood, but despite it all managed to test into a prestigious school in which she traveled more than an hour to get to each day (and performed quite brilliantly at, if I might add). If abortion was more available, I don't know how different that orphanage's members would be, but I am sure the bulk of them would rather be alive than aborted out of convenience.This argument irritates me to an irrational degree.
As a pastor I was appalled at the total depraved act of violence perpetrated in a house of worship, a place where family and friends gather to commune with God and one another. {...} I have come to the conclusion that the Christianists' aim is the simple denial of God’s grace to anyone who may have a broader vision of the love of Christ.That's far more reflective than the "I know not what thou sayest" line elsewhere from anti-abortionists who are trying to muddy the issue.
The following morning the protestors were there again but this time with a twist. They had a huge group of kids with them. These middle- to high school-age kids were out there on the street corner hollering at us. These children didn't have the slightest understanding of what we were going through but they were taught they had the right to judge us.
Tiller never set out to become an abortion provider, or even an ob/gyn. The son of a doctor, Tiller was working as a Navy surgeon when his father, mother, sister, and brother-in-law were killed in a plane crash. He took over his father's family practice, and soon women started asking him if he was going to do what his father did. That's how he found out his father had provided abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade. He committed himself to providing the same service.
"You're welcome"? For Britney Spears' music?Actually, I think he was talking about "Toxic," which is inexplicably awesome, despite being a Britney Spears song. So score one for the Swedes. I don't know if that makes up for Roxette, though.
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posted by keever at 10:45 AM on May 31 [5 favorites has favorites]