Religion is the enemy of freedom. Always has been. Always will be until mankind wakes up to the lie that is religion. R.I.P. Dr. Tiller, American hero.

He broke fewer laws than you, Erica, you thief!

that makes me wanna cry.

"patients are emotionally, mentally, morally, spiritually and physically competent to struggle with complex health issues and come to decisions that are appropriate for them."

Unfortunately, the religious fundies are not.

He was a courageous man.

Thanks for posting this. I found his words quite inspirational. He was a rare and courageous individual indeed.

Well said, ECB... And boy-howdy am I ever glad I got that anonymous comment blocker thingy going on. Thanks again for that!

Fuckin' tragedy.... I hope that deluded piece of filth who killed this man doesn't get all puffed-up thinking he's a martyr to his faith or something......... but he probably will.....

And, what #1 said... Religion is the enemy of freedom... It will be a great day on this planet when we wipe the schmutz of religion from our eyes, finally, and can see reality and one another in the clear light of day...........

@9 - I obviously meant my comment to land in the previous ECB post... I suck at the internet!

Wonder how many people will be at the park on Capitol Hill tonight for the memorial/protest?

Can we donate money directly to his clinic?

Also, stupid question, but I want to donate to Planned Parenthood in his name and I'm confused about the form. I found where it says you can donate in honor or in memory of someone. When it asks where I want the confirmation sent, is that supposed to be my address or the address of the person in whose name I'm donating?

W was right. The terrorists hate our freedom.

Dr. Tiller was murdered in his church. Religion isn't the enemy of freedom; hatred is.

The piece of shit who killed him was apparently one of the Montana Freemen who took over a ranch near Jordan, MT for a while in the 90s. Anti-abortion + militia kookery = murder.

My family were early settlers in Jordan, the most isolated town in the lower 48; my grandfather graduated from Garfield County High School in a class of three. The good people there deserve better than to be remembered for crap like this.

@13, I don't think you can donate to his clinic online. In fact, they appear to have taken down their entire website in the wake of his murder. You can find their address and phone number all over, though, if you want to call and try to donate that way. They may not be answering the phone for a while, though.

To make your donation in honor of someone, you just need to put his name in the form, not an address. The address is only if you want them to send a notification somewhere (his family, for instance) that a donation was made in his name. You don't need to put anything.

Allow me to state my story. I was the sixth of seven children, all of whom were born out of wedlock, all to different (absent) fathers. Catholic Charities was personally involved in my mother's choice to keep me. When I was nine, my mother's new boyfriend decided that he wanted to start beating me; he did so until I attempted to hang myself. I was placed into "residential treatment".

In state-provided protective custody, there is a bid for contracts to see who would be the "first responder", that is to say, first place that children will go to upon being placed into state custody. Catholic Charities uses the coffers of the Catholic Church to supplement its bids against other, more secular non-profits--and therefore wins the bid every time.

Many times, these facilities are retrofitted orphanages of the previous century or earlier. Other providers of care to at-risk children, who have more modern accommodations--and more modern philosophies of child care--are prevented by this process from providing care to children until after the CC's facility is full. In my lifetime, several have closed due to funding cuts.

The reason for this competition on the part of the Catholic Church and other religious organizations is that these at-risk children, without a visible means of support or role models to look up to, are easily made to feel that what in others would be kindness without ulterior motive is "God's grace" through the instrument of the one true faith. Treatment centers, for displaced children as well as drug addicts, are veal-crates of evangelism.

I was given candy to learn Bible verses, and excused from chores to attend religious services--in effect, bribed to become Christian. I cannot help but feel that this exploitation of tragedy is the primary reason behind the Church's institutional support of the so-called 'pro-life' movement. It also accounts for the fact that as the child grows to independent age, he or she becomes less susceptible to conversion, less "innocent", as the saying goes. Hence, these religious types lose interest in the child's welfare after it ceases to concomitantly serve their religious interest.

One of the effects of this dogma is that, for the purposes of evangelism, all children are considered 'equal'. Children from broken homes are put in the same facility as juvenile sex offenders, child psychopaths who are capable of unpredictable violence, the children of non-Christian immigrants who have fallen on hard times (but who are nonetheless solicited through being a captive audience away from the faiths of their parents through being a captive audience).

Additionally, many of the staff of these institutions are religious idealists who are taken in by the supposed "innocence" of all children, and quickly burn out when faced with the reality. This means that there is a high turnover rate in staffing, and that many children, lacking any consistent care provider, go on to develop attachment disorders and many other social problems as a result of this "God will provide" belief system and its attendant poor planning.

Pro-lifers, have you seen a developmentally disabled child burst into tears because his parents terminated their parental rights while he was in the care of these places? Have you seen a child who has been institutionalized for over seven years because no parents were found for him and has seen his ability to relate to others atrophy? Have you seen headlice and other contagions race through a ward due to it being overcrowded, or the mess that special healthcare problems present in an understaffed environment? How about the heavy handed ways in which emotional difficulties are handled when people have insufficient training for dealing with them, where restraints are used to incapacitate a child for misbehavior, some of which were determined to be abuse only after a child had DIED from them? Look it up.

I think that by far the worst was seeing children who were sent back to abusive homes, literally pried off of the legs of the staff, because they needed to make room for another 'soul' to save. The fact that they bid for children's lives is beyond sickening; 'priceless' indeed....

The fact that you truncate the discussion of abortion to babies and forcing mothers to carry children to term is evidence of not only selfishness but overt cruelty in order to sustain your viewpoint. That you are also willing to kill for it speaks to a lack of sanity as well. Seriously--think of the children.

Groucho, that post deserves a thread of its own. How horrific. Thank you for posting that, and I absolutely agree with your final paragraph.

I hope that deluded piece of filth who killed this man doesn't get all puffed-up thinking he's a martyr to his faith or something

That's definitely an argument against the death penalty. The worthless piece of shit would likely be happy to die for his cause.

Geni,

Those antiabortion folks are seriously whacked-out. While I was in foster care, there was one couple who took me to Promise Keepers (I'm not going to tell you how creepy that was). There was a photograph of this couple and their baby on the mantelpiece, along with other photographs of the baby in various cute clothing items. It looked odd to me, and I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized that these photographs were recent, and that the couple's youngest child was around ten. The pictures were of a stillborn child. They had taken the dead child and dressed him or her up for studio-quality prints, which they then displayed publicly in their home! I was appalled. Granted there may be divergent viewpoints on this in regards to the grieving process, but I would hope that this would be a private thing....

So I think that there really is no room for discussion. Serious crazy is what we're dealing with in many cases.

I really don't understand why these "pro-life" people are more appalled by late-term abortion than earlier, more routine procedures. If they truly believed that all abortion is murder, why would they care about the age of the "child"? Do they think murdering a 22 year old is significantly worse than murdering a 21 year old?

Well it looks like it has been reduced by one consumer...Thankfully !!!

In 2004 the FBI infiltrated protest groups preparing for the RNC on the pretense of anti-terrorism.

In 2005 the Justice Department cut a deal with Eric Rudolph in the spring to avoid having a trial about an abortion clinic bomber in the news the summer before two Supreme Court nominations went forward.

The Right has played hardball with anti-terrorism as a political tool. It is time to make the case that the anti-abortion movement, the militia movement, and the NRA are domestic terrorist organizations. This is not as much of a leap as the infiltration of teachers unions, Greenpeace, and soup kitchens by agents provocateur.

Some people who support abortion were fooled by the pro abortion fallacy that a fertilized egg is not a child.... nor is an undifferentiated mass of cells but this is a lie. If not a child what ? Each one of us reading and submitting comments were once a tiny collection of cells in a womb. Are we not glad we were allowed to live?
I pray for the Tiller family ;it is awful to lose a loved one through an act of violence and I also pray for Scott Roeder who sadly like Dr Tiller resorted to violence as a solution Abortion is never a solution for anyone It is always a death sentence for the baby and a life sentence for the poor mother A deliberate decision to abort goes totally against the natural instincts of a woman to nurture and protect and it is very damaging to the body heart and mind of any poor soul who endures such an experience.If we really care about women's health we can neither condone allow or encourage abortion.There are some things in life which are simply wrong Both slavery and abortion treat a human being as if it is a disposable asset. The child in the womb is not the property of the mother nor is it the property of the father It is a new citizen with rights that should be upheld and respected in Law. "