Dr. George Tiller was a lightning rod for anti-choice forces because
he performed late-term abortions—abortions after 21 weeks’
gestation—for girls and women whose pregnancies had gone
tragically, often life-threateningly, wrong. Some were women who wanted
their pregnancies, but found out late in their terms that their baby
had no brain, or that their twins were conjoined and could not survive,
or that their baby was already dead. Others were rape victims as young
as 10 or 11, some of them too young to even realize they had had
periods.
About 200 men, women, and children gathered at the foot of the
reflecting pool in Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill on Monday, June 1,
to remember the life and mourn the death of Tiller, who was gunned down
at his Wichita, Kansas, church last Sunday morning. He had been the
target of an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment by
anti-choice protesters at his home and clinic for the past three
decades. He was 67.
Rose Mineer, who spoke at Monday’s vigil, was one of Tiller’s
patients. Twelve years ago, when Mineer was 17, she was raped. “Through
a not-uncommon welter of emotions, including shame and fear and
confusion, I hid my pregnancy for four and a half months,” she said
Monday. By the time she came clean with her family and decided she
wanted an abortion, it was too late for a conventional procedure, so
she went to Dr. Tiller. “Looking back, the main emotion I remember
feeling was a sense of safety and a sense of respect,” she said. Tiller
“spent an unimaginable number of hours with me over the week I was
there. He was totally willing to take a sobbing 17-year-old and just
hold her for half an hour while she cried. I never felt the least bit
judged, and I think that’s how my own personal healing began.”
For countless women and girls like Mineer, Tiller was a godsend. His
death leaves the U.S. with just two doctors who perform late-term
therapeutic abortions—and a medical community in which providing
late-term abortions will be seen as more dangerous than ever. “The
clinics already knew that there was going to be an escalation, because
that’s historically what we’ve seen happen when we get a federal
administration that believes in women’s right to choose,” NARAL
Pro-Choice Washington director Lauren Simonds told me Tuesday. During
the Clinton years, she said, there were six murders and 17 attempted
murders of abortion providers and clinic staff. In the Bush years,
there were zero.
So-called mainstream anti-abortion activists were quick to distance
themselves from Tiller’s murder, denouncing it, in the words of
Operation Rescue director Troy Newman, as a “cowardly act” of
“vigilantism.”
If only that were true.
Tiller’s murder was not an isolated act by a lone, crazed
individual, as many officials, including President Obama, have
insisted. It was the culmination of a terror campaign whose primary
currency is intimidation. If you believe, as anti-abortion extremists
do, that abortion is murder, then murdering in retaliation makes
perfect sense. An eye for an eye. “When the so-called peaceful
anti-choice protesters use language that dehumanizes and demonizes our
providers by calling them murderers and baby-killers, they are inciting
those who are more violent,” Simonds said.
In a speech two weeks ago at Notre Dame, Obama encouraged both sides
of the abortion “debate” to “open our hearts and minds to those who
might not think like we do,” to find “common ground” with our
ideological opposites. The problem with such lofty supplications is
that they presume each side is equally responsible for the
contentiousness of the abortion “debate,” and that if we’d just sit
down and talk, we’d figure out a solution that works for everyone.
But there is no common ground—not when “common ground” is code
for ceding women’s rights to calm a storm we didn’t create. And not
when the difference between the two “sides” is that one side believes
women have the right to determine their own destinies, and the other
side believes women should cede control of our bodies to the state.
Terrorism only works if we give up that ground. You don’t negotiate
with terrorists, whether they’re killing doctors or “only” threatening,
harassing, and intimidating them. 
fucking GO, happy hedonist!!!!!
I’m with ya!!!!
Dear Brandon J, Maximus, and self-made stranger,
Okay. My sincerest heartfelt apologies to the three of you—-PROVIDED you AREN’T among the woman-hating talibangelists or pigheaded right-wingers.
And THANK YOU, happy hedonist and Sienna Reid!! I couldn’t have phrased it better, MYSELF!!!
I, too, have been having entirely too much fun!!!
The “my body my choice” argument is deeply illogical. There are far better arguments available, such as “it’s a fetus, not a baby, it has no working brain and therefore no sentience.” You have control over your body, you don’t have control over the bodies of those who live inside your body once they can be considered humans under the eyes of the law. It’s that point which we should be debating, not this nonsense straw man of whether women have the right to not have children. Why do you think they call themselves “pro-life” if all they want is to stop you from having sex and not having babies? Show me one example of a mainstream pro-life activist arguing that abortion is wrong because the state should control what a woman does with her body, and not the woman. If you could actually listen to people instead of sticking your head up your ass, you’d realize that the people we’re dealing with are not monsters (with the possible exception of the monster who slaughtered a law-abiding doctor) but rather individuals who define a worthwhile life slightly differently than you. Would you say the same sorts of things about vegetarians who wish the kind of murder that takes place in slaughterhouses were prevented by laws? The state has the right to prevent murder from taking place. It is up to you to convince the state that abortion isn’t murder. If a man kills a woman, he uses his body to do it. The state limits what he is allowed to do with his body in order to protect the body of another sentient being. If you would prevent any murder, you must tell people what they can and can’t do with their bodies. It doesn’t matter if the act takes place within a woman’s body, if the victim is also a person. The decision one of whether the victim, is, in fact, a person. It’s perfectly logical to say that a fetus is not a person, given its lack of reasoning, logic, and language. It’s even logical to say that the fetus’ personhood is debatable, wheras the personhoods of the people whose lives would be ruined by the fetus’ birth (including the future child the fetus would become) are not, and therefore the fetus should be terminated for the greater good. It’s just not logical to say that a person can’t possibly live inside another.
Late term abortions absolutely shouldn’t be done unless there is good reason. However, I have yet to see any hard and fast evidence that Dr. Tiller ever provided a late-term abortion hastily or without good cause.
This issue has a contentious debate around it for a reason; it’s a moral gray area. People who just want to protect helpless children are demonized as the worst kind of male chauvinists and totalitarians. People who just want to help rape victims heal and prevent unwanted children from ruining people’s lives are demonized as insane hedonists who would rather kill babies than use proper protection. What’s needed is prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for those who took the law into their own hands and committed clear murder in an effort to prevent murky murder. If abortion providers feel intimidated, the law should provide them with more protection, particularly if there are only two late-term providers left in the country.
Now please stop your moralizing and demonizing and go home. It doesn’t help anyone for you to mis-characterize the issue and paint with broad strokes.
Which is better for a child: having a parent who is uncaring a neglectful because they never wanted a kid, or being aborted before they’re even old enough to know pain?
And how can someone support life by killing? If you are pro-life, be pro-all-life. How is murder the best solution to what you deem to be murder (and, technically, killing a grown personis more likely to land you in prison and/or hell– while abortion is legal, shootings are not)? Remind me, how is killing a fully functioning being not worse than ending the life of something with the brain function of a sunflower? If you fight fire with fire, you only get a huge goddamn fire.
This IS terrorism. The aim of this crime was not only to stop the abortions this doctor alone was performing, but to intimidate other doctors into stopping the work they do for women. However you define it, that is terrorism.
Hmmm. With very few exceptions, I’m seeing a lot of extremism on both sides here. Sigh. Erica, you say that “‘common ground’ is code for ceding women’s rights to a storm we didn’t create.” Also “One side believes women have a right to determine their own destinies and the other believes women should cede control of our bodies to the state.”
This simply isn’t true.
I’m a pro-choice woman who has borne two children, parented two more, and semi-parented many, many young friends, neighbors and students. Abortion is a complicated decision, which is why I believe it should be legal. Sometimes it is the right choice. Sometimes it is not about empowering women, but abusing them.
I had a dear friend who was addicted to several different drugs and a heavy user of many more. Despite birth control, she accidentally got pregnant. I would not wish the state of her body on my worst enemy, much less on an innnocent child. I supported her decision to terminate the pregnancy. Though we both grieved the necessity, it was the responsible thing to do.
In the late sixties/early seventies, a friend of my mother’s had given birth to something concieved while on the Dalcon Shield (a disasterous IUD). The doctors refused to let her see it, and said they couldn’t tell whether it was a fetus or a false pregnancy. My mother had the Dalcon Shield and suspected she was pregnant. My mother had a D&C to ensure any potential pregnancies would be terminated. It was the right choice.
But when an woman gets pregnant and her abusive boyfriend/spouse says “get rid of it, bitch!” That’s not about empowering women.
When a teenager gets pregnant and is told that if she has the baby and shames the family, she will be thrown out on the streets. That’s not women’s empowerment.
When a man says, “Why should I pay for the damn kid? I told her to have an abortion!” That’s not women’s empowerment.
What about when a woman is told by her boss “Have a kid and you’re fired.”? What is that? Honesty or bullying? It’s certainly illegal. But it happens, frequently.
What about when society says “It is not our problem to support mothers. After all, the kid was their choice.” What is that? The societal norms and expectations are based around men and childless women. Women with children are considered “less”, and those contemplating abortion are often told they will lose everything valuable if they have a baby…school, career, independence, even the ability to think clearly. Are those expectations really about empowering women? In this situation, does abortion support women in determining their own destinies, or serve mostly to preserve the status quo?
How about when a 19 year old girl with Down’s Sydrome and a pregnancy in the 28th week is given a multi-day abortion procedure with inadequate medical supervision that ends in her dying from sepsis? Is that empowerment? Her name was Cristin Gilbert. Google it.
Sex, pregnancy, abortion, childbirth, women’s health care, medical consent, and parenting are complicated. There can be good reasons for any of the available choices. There can also be terrible reasons for these choices, choices that aren’t choices at all.
Because it is complicated, I don’t think a governmental, top-down approach is a good idea. But neither is screaming insults at each other.
Let’s talk. And yes, that means letting go of our righteousness ON BOTH SIDES and finding “common ground.” Because both sides have important things to say.