Dr. George Tiller Didn't Have to Die
George Tiller did not have to die. He was assassinated while in church in Wichita, Kan., on Sunday, targeted for legally performing abortions. His death might have been prevented simply through enforcement of existing laws. His alleged killer was seen vandalizing a Kansas City clinic, Aid for Women, both the week before and the day before the murder, putting glue into its door locks. The manager of that clinic, who calls himself "Jeff Pederson" to protect his identity, told me he called the FBI and local police both times, but the vandal, the alleged killer Scott Roeder, was not arrested. Pederson had Roeder's first name and his license-plate number. He had images of him on the security video. He recognized him from previous protests.
Pederson said: "The clinic was closed on Memorial Day weekend. A worker tried to get in on Memorial Day but couldn't. The locks were Super-Glued. I went to the videotape and I saw the same guy on the videotape who had done it in 2000." Pederson called his contact at the FBI, agent Mark Colburn. "He [Colburn] said the videotape wouldn't be clear enough, and since I had touched the locks, I had ruined it with my DNA. So I bought new color video cameras."
On Saturday, May 30, the clinic manager said "Scott" struck again: "My head nurse calls me, 5:40 Saturday morning. She had come to prep for the patients. When she was coming back from the store she noticed the Taurus [Roeder's car]. She made her way to the back door. She saw him. He saw her and bolted. She followed him to his car and started talking to him.
"He tried to stand in front of the license plate, but she got it, 225 BAB. As she ran back to the clinic, he shouted 'Baby killer!' at her."
Pederson called Colburn, reporting the second vandalism and letting him know he had better video. Pederson said Colburn told him, "The Johnson County prosecutor won't do anything until the grand jury convenes." The next day, Tiller was murdered, allegedly by Roeder.
I called the Kansas City FBI and reached Colburn. He immediately referred me to FBI spokesperson Bridget Patton. I asked her about the incidents at the clinic and why the suspect hadn't been arrested either time. She said: "I am not sure of the timeline, but whenever an act of vandalism occurs at an abortion clinic, we are notified of that vandalism and respond appropriately."
Tiller's medical practice, which included performing late-term abortions, drew rage, protests and attacks during the decades of his career. His clinic was bombed in the mid-1980s. He survived an assassination attempt in 1993, when he suffered gunshot wounds to each of his arms. Bill O'Reilly on Fox News Channel demonized him as "Tiller the Baby Killer." He was the target of a political prosecution by a former Kansas attorney general, Phill Kline, and was acquitted just months ago on misdemeanor charges that he violated state rules on providing abortions.
Roeder was picked up shortly after the shooting Sunday in his Ford Taurus. On Tuesday, he was charged with first-degree murder.
I asked Pederson if he thought Tiller's murder could have been prevented if the authorities had simply arrested Roeder after he vandalized the Kansas City clinic. Pederson paused. "I don't know," he said.
But Dr. Susan Robinson was adamant. She flies to Wichita every month to perform abortions in Tiller's clinic. She said, "It is generally regarded amongst those who do clinic security, if local authorities are not responsive, if they don't show up or they don't vigilantly enforce the law, that it encourages the anti-abortion people to push it further and further."
She said: "In Wichita, Dr. Tiller was constantly dealing with the same lack of enforcement. Wichita prohibits placing signs on city property. But they allow the anti-abortion protesters to set up dozens of crosses and leave them all day. Dr. Tiller went to the city attorney over the crosses, and complained that people block the clinic driveway. He told me that the city attorney said, 'I would rather be sued by George Tiller than the anti-abortion folks.' "
The 1994 federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) makes it a crime to block or damage a reproductive health service facility.
Enforcing FACE saves lives. George Tiller will be buried on Saturday.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback.
© 2009 Amy Goodman
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Thank you for calling Dr. Tiller's murder what it is. An assassination. I hope something more is done to interfere with these home-grown domestic terrorists.
http://theoreticalmusing.blogspot.com/
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. "
Oh hai Jane! How's that running working out for you?
Sigh. Another repetitive and illogical screed. A fertilized egg is not a child it is a fertilized egg. An undifferentiated mass of cells (zygote) is not a child it is an undifferentiated mass of cells. Everyone of us here were once a tiny collection of cells in a womb, BUT the majority of fertilized eggs do NOT survive through the entire reproduction process and result in live births. Sometimes I'm glad I was allowed to live and other times I am not.
Abortion is the only possible solution to a dead fetus, a non-viable fetus, a fetus with severe genetic abnormalities, a pregnancy which threatens the mother's health. Refusing abortions in these cases, precisely the type of cases where Dr. Tiller specialized is a death sentence for the mother in a case where the fetus is already doomed. No reasonable person feels that two deaths are more 'moral' than one death. Anti-legal abortion assumes that women are disposable assets.
Correction: Dr. Tiller performed legal, medical procedures for women. Don't convolute the debate about choice. You're entitled to your own opinion, not you're own set of facts. I pray a brave doctor will proudly continue Dr. Tiller's work. And, shame on Wichita and Kansas City law enforcement for not enforcing the current laws.
It may seem absurd (or paranoid) to think that the Republicans have unleashed SeeJaneRunning here on this blog. Right? But someone who agreed with me, pointed out that this person has been a member since June 2009. Who hasn't heard of their policy of trying to instill division among people? Interesting, I thought. Of course, we have to welcome them here...that's only right. But what a waste of breath she turned out to be. She just pranced over here and laid one contradiction upon the other and people kept responding to her. Man. I'm sorry, but you guys have been a bunch of suckers. That person (whomever they may be, because I couldn't figure out if it was a male or a female) walked and sunk her jugular here. No different from what Dr. Tiller endured on a daily basis.
I thought it was kind of interesting to interact with SeeJaneRunning -- it's been a while since I had a go-round with someone whose communication style is a combination of 'you can't make me happy' and 'that's not good enough either'. She certainly didn't have much to say about her own positions, in fact the inherent contractions revealed that she obviously misrepresented them in places, but she did indeed get everybody else to jump in to try and 'make' her understand. I finally gave up because the whole point of the posts was to establish that all the other commentators needed her/his/its permission to hold their views. With little to contribute and little ability to understand others contributions, she/he/it became boring pretty quickly.
I guess that's one of the risks when you engage through the Internet. You never know who is going to drop in.:) He/she/its goal was to provoke. That was it. Nothing more. When someone asked her a direct question: "Why are you defending the no-action of law enforcement, BTW?" she/he/it zipped up. Not much later, poof, he/she/it was gone. In here just long enough to cause some distress.
Less than 2% of all abortions are late-term. How many could be eliminated if early-term abortion were more accessible?
For that matter, many early-term abortions could be avoided if there were better and more accessible birth control options, sex education, and better public and private infrastructure to help support mothers and families?
It's the rare pregnant woman who wouldn't choose to bear and raise her child if she felt she could. Women are being boxed into increasingly small spaces regarding work schedules & expectations, finances, marriage , balancing childrens' needs with everyone else's, domestic violence, schools, day care, health coverage. The very layout of our lives---roads everywhere, few bicycle trails, sidewalks to nowhere, diminishing green spaces---is anathema to young families.
Instead of picketing, protesting, and murdering, why isn't the Holier-Than-Thou Religious Right pushing to reduce the need for abortion by better accommodating real human and family needs?
What? Don't that you know accomodating real human and family needs is humanism, probably ahtiestic and/or Satanic AND anti-Christian? Real Christians NEVER accomodate human needs - they focus on GOD! And their conceptualization of God isn't interested in human needs either - just smiting.
You got it, crowepps, and what we who are NOT in that fake-Christian-camp need to do is make them own up to it!
Killer-Christians. Anti-Christians. That's what they are, after all.
Dr. George Tiller Tribute -- Union Square Park, NYC 6/1/09
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39038726@N04/sets/72157619136003386/
I think this shows a great lesson for all of us. Many people have learned the lesson that the police cannot protect you until a crime has happened to you. The Supreme Court has ruled that the police have no liability if they are unable to protect you.
Sometimes the best protection you can have is to live in a nice neighborhood..lock your car and if necessary, install an alarm system
But you are right, there is a "Threshold" that must be reached before your local police can do anything.
I have to disagree dan-o. I think the lesson here is that MORE laws will equal MORE laws the police do little about. The laws that were already in existence should have been applied. I'm a firm advocate of having very few laws, but the laws we do have should be strictly enforced.
It is obvious that the police were negligent in this case. When someone is so obviously targeted, by a nut, police should have arrested this man for his stalking and vandalism behavior or at least for his comments on the Christo-terrorism website which purports to be anti-abortion -- for all of his behavior which adds up to a real, concrete threat.
Dr. Tiller, also, should have had a guard at all times, even if his clinic had to pay for it. I hope other clinics take note and protect doctors and nurses -- in addition to the marshals who are guarding, I hope, the clinics.
-- It is very good to see Amy Goodman on this blog. Her articles should be here more frequently. Very often she has reported background information on crucial stories (some of which get 'trickled down' to network media the next day or eventually) and sometimes these get overlooked. I hope Huffington Post news monitors will retrieve more of her articles and put them on Huffington Post.
All of this is true, but the prochoice movement has a responsibility that supercedes laws. We have to create the climate in which women who need abortions and the brave people who provide them (including clinic staff) are supported 100% of the way. Before abortion is a right, it is a need and a medical procedure. We never seemed to want to really talk about abortion, only about rights. The major prochoice organizations seldom if ever honored abortion providers, or learned the facts about later abortions, and therefore the field was clear for the anti-abortion crusade to demonize all women for having abortions and all providers for meeting the real needs of at least a million women a year. We have needed as effective an education campaign for abortion rights as the anti-abortion crusade has maintained for 36 years. Their campaign has always been full of lies and distortions, but it has never been countered. Such a campaign costs a lot of money, but we can surely divert some of our assets from the legislative process to an educational process.
Of COURSE he did not have to die ~ the headline of this article is a bit absurd and, to me, trivializees the issue.
But to the main topic ~ I have spent many years wishing that someone would PLEASE explain the truth about late-term abortions to the whack-jobs ~ women do NOT get these procedures done because they simply decide late in the game not to have a baby! And that's not even to address the inexcusable past murders of more mainstream termination providers.
Now that Obama has so eloquently addressed the sensitive Mideast divisions that have racked the world for centuries, maybe he can some up with an analogous speech on this equally divisive issue. We need someone to bring sanity to the debate.
As Joseph Welch challenged Sen. McCarthy in 1954, I ask those who take their anti-choice beliefs far too far, I ask, "Have you no sense of decency, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
Exactly. Why does the twisted and inaccurate fairy-tale that the extreme pro-coathanger groups are so effectively pushing get to be the ONLY story they hear?
What are our pro-choice groups doing wrong in that we have not gotten the truth and a clear picture of who really are the patients and what the majority of circumstances are that make up the cases of late-term abortions? Also, why do they get to define what partial-birth abortion is? First calling it partial-birth is entirely a strategy on their part.
Why can't we get the real truth out there?
pro-coathanger? c'mon.
I think Goodman is right here: had authorities done their job, Tiller probably would not have died. Since he's had an assassination attempt previously, it stands to reason that he deserved to have the laws that already exist enforced more securely, no?
Don't you think that was just a "bit" over the top? I mean stalking the man into church on a Sunday,duing services and pointing a gun and shooting and killing him?
Most of us don't do that right?
The fact is that Scott Roeder was a severely mentally ill person who should have been in a mental hospital. He had the classic symptoms..."Personality Change" Obsession. He had even been violent in the past and had been found to have bomb making equipment in his car , not to mention the fact he was anti tax and anti governent.
Now, maybe I might listen to you when you start to realize that there are folks this sick out there ok?
Please. Stop spreading misinformation about mental illness. First of all, if Scott Roeder is a "severely mentally ill person who should have been in a mental hospital," well, did you personally examine him? Were you his doctor? It seems we have so many specialists out there who have never had any medical training, or actual contact with people who suffer from mental illness. Your "facts" to support a profile of those who suffer from mental illness are attached to nothing.
Having said that, after reading about Roeder's odd behavior after the arrest, I have to say that he probably does suffer from mental illness, but his mental illness may have had nothing to do with the actual murder Dr. Tiller. Other more powerful factors were probably responsible for the murder: hate and indoctrination, which are not symptoms of mental illness. Stop sending the wrong the message out.
It is my humble opinion that these laws were probably enforced laxly because of the political pressure anti-choice activists brought to bear on local authorities. After all, they were able to bring Dr. Tiller to trial on trumped-up charges of improper referrals. Cowardice led to murder.
Thanks for your article Amy, I read it before on Democracy Now! but it's good to see your byline over at the Huff, I daresay they need more like you around here.
Thank you for your work, Ms. Goodman. Please don't ever stop.
I am so fed up with these laws not being enforced. I wonder what the GOP percentage is among those in uniform. I do know that a high percentage, relatively speaking, of those in uniform perpetrate acts of domestic violence.
Have also noticed that most serial killers seem to be members of the GOP (such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer and oh yeah - BTK, too).
Coincidence? Have fun, trolls.
Remember... Dr. Tiller was a man of uniform also.
Nice Monday morning quarterbacking. It's a big leap from vandalism to murder.
What the he-doublehockeysticks are you talking about? The guy broke the law, was not arrested, then carried out a plan to murder a doctor. To your point, its obviously NOT a big leap from vandalism to murder, since the SAME person accomplished that leap in ONE DAY.
Obviously the concept of statistical significance is hard for you to comprehend. Would you feel better if it had been jay walking instead?
Roeder didn't have any trouble making that leap.
So, you want law enforcement to start operating under the premise of the worst case scenario for every crime that is reported? Perhaps the FBI should haul in anyone who drops a banana peel on the sidewalk around the White House?
If the FBI or the police had arrested him for vandalism, he would not have been able to kill someone.
Unless you think he had a contingency plan to break out of jail...
It's highly unlikely that he would have remained in jail on a vandalism charge.
Reading comprehension problems, eh? Let me break it down for you: the point of the article is not that anyone who vandalizes an abortion clinic is about to become a murderer.
The point of the article is that vandalizing an abortion clinic is against the law, and if authorities had acted properly to enforce this law, they could have prevented a murder.
Simple enough now? Or does the ringing of the cognitive dissonance in your head make it impossible to hear for the moment?
Littering is against the law, too. If we find evidence that he was spotted littering before the murder, but then let go by the police, shall we blame law enforcement for that as well?
It's not a big leap that your saying this is connected to your far right opinions.
If you are counting on the FBI to protect you then you might not have to die but you're gonna die. I can't decide on whether the FBI is another raging Christianist governmental agency like the military, or another incompetetent bunch of political lackys like the SEC, FEMA, DOJ, EPA and the rest of our GOP tainted government. Either way, they protect, you die. Unless of course one of their 'undercover' agents sets you up to be a terrorist mastermind ala Dr. Evil. Geeze, is this a great country or what???
Thank you Amy Goodman for your thorough honest fact finding reporting day after day. We need more journalist like you..
Dr. George Tiller was not only a compassionate caring doctor but he was a Martin Luther King for Women and W omen's rights. He saved so many of their lives. It's sad this country doesn't know more about this kind of human being. And even sadder that main stream media is allowed to propagandize such lies and hate like O'Reily's do.
It is time America knew!
Enforcement of existing laws...you mean like our immigration laws too...?
How about enforcing the law against torture, or even that old thing we used to call the Constitution..?
Until we complete purge The Justice Dept. of the Federalist Society and other zealot sycophants such as those who attended Pat Robertson's Talmudic Sanhedrin School...of Law and Torture we really don't have a Justice Dept...!
Also everyone should know that attending a church in America is incredibly dangerous, due to all the regular gun play in them...!
Amy, Thanks so much for your collumn here. It's quite apparent that not enough is being mentioned that it's never been Dr. Tiller's intent on stopping pregnancies, but rather saving the mother from such awful consequences as a braindead child, or a fetus that has developed abnormally, in the great majority of his cases. This is why his clinic was so important.
The opposition occupies what they believe is a moral high-ground based on the fact that they mention Dr. Tiller as a a doc who just wants to kill as many babies as he can, which is absolutely untrue and wrong on the face of it.
Amy, please visit us here with your comments more often. It's such a joy to hear from you
.
Thank you! The information about the reasons for the abortions that Dr. Tiller performed can not be mentioned enough. Thanks to the misinformation that has been spread about his practice, there are too many people who simply do not understand that his procedures all had very serious and valid medical reasons.
Please point me to the documentation that provides the data on reasons for late term abortions.
No woman's life should be scarred by having to bring a teratogenic fetus to term; raising physiologically/anatomically ordinary children is difficult enough, and the Third World is bursting its seams with a surfeit of 'babies.'
Any so-called PRO-LIFE(???) activities more agressive than quiet leafletting should be BANNED!
Shall we extend those same limitations to war protestors? union protestors? or anyone else trying to make a difference using their free speech rights? And what exactly do you mean by "BANNED"? Are you advocating some kind of gulag for pro-lifers who are not willing to be restricted by your proposed "quiet" rule?
advocate:
I disagree with you strongly that pro-life protestors should be restricted to quiet leafletting. They should be afforded the same rights, protections and responsibilities as any other protestor.
Amy Goodman,
I hope to see your byline more often on HuffPo. Please support the single-payer health care initiative. You can use your bully pulpit so well, and this is one cause that needs every influential spokesperson on board NOW.
Thank you for all you do, day in and day out on DemocracyNow!
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