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No Mercy
I felt just sick today when I saw the bulletin about the murder of Dr. George Tiller.
Sicker still when I saw the "sympathy" letter issued by officials at Operation Rescue, the virulent anti-abortion organization that dogged this poor man for the past two decades. The statement said, "We pray for Mr. Tiller's family."
They had better say a few prayers for their own souls. They had better pray for forgiveness for relentlessly working to make this man a target.
Operation Rescue's Web site said the organization was "shocked" by the murder.
Well, I'm not.
This has been a long time coming, and no one has played a greater part in the run-up to the doctor's death than Operation Rescue. Their leaders -- and all of the group's enablers -- should be cowering in shame today.
I was in Wichita, Kansas in 1991 covering Operation Rescue's cruelly misnamed "Summer of Mercy," a six-week ordeal when thousands of anti-abortion protesters descended on Dr. George Tiller.
These "rescuers" -- sweaty mobs of zombie-like true believers -- swarmed across the street in front of the clinic like angry ants. They crawled over the hot asphalt toward his office on their hands and knees. They collapsed onto the stairs, chained themselves to the fence, shrieked prayers and threats and bellowed the Biblical equivalent of evil spells at anyone who approached the place. They fell lifelessly to the ground, some of them swooning and crashing spectacularly to earth.
When I went to Wichita to cover this, I thought I would be assigned there for a day or two. But this became more than a single protest. It turned out to be the birthplace of heartland civil disobedience against abortion and it went on and on and on.
Like the protesters, news people at the siege had a regular daily schedule.
Every day we rose early and raced to the clinic, set up our cameras in the hot Midwestern sun and waited for the anti-abortion performance art to begin.
Like clockwork, Operation Rescue's fleet of air-conditioned buses would pull up an hour before the office opened. Out would pour hundreds and hundreds of protesters eager to lay their lives and their bodies on the line for the "babies."
Wichita police were overpowered and overworked. The protesters were over-excited and overweight.
Day after day, weary local cops had to pick up and drag away protesters by the ton, literally. By the end, all the officers were wearing wide leather lifting belts in an attempt to protect their backs as they struggled to hoist and carry off so much dead weight. Police complained to us bitterly about colleagues who had seriously damaged their backs.
I remember one cop telling me he was praying the protests would stop before he ruined his back and his career.
Every night in the hotel that Operation Rescue designated as its home base, the organization sponsored a "worship service" that featured singing, prayer, sermonizing and a whole lotta snake oil.
Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry, an egotistical, self-aggrandizing super-nerd, commanded the room like a rock star. Women fainted and lay trembling on the ground when he entered to thundering applause and the screams of people who love Jesus so much they act like they're crazy.
The chemistry in the room was unlike anything I've been around, before or since.
In just a few weeks in Wichita, Operation Rescue forged an unholy alliance of sexually repressed super Christians, men who hate women and women who hate themselves and turned them into a supercharged army of bullies for Jesus.
And they were bullies.
In 1991 and until his murder, Dr. Tiller was one of the few doctors in this country who performed late-term abortions. Despite what Operation Rescue claimed, none of his clients were ending pregnancies on a whim. None of them wanted to be there.
Each case was a tragedy -- a much anticipated child discovered to have only a partially formed head, a baby that was dying in the womb and had to be delivered, a child with medical problems so profound as to be unimaginable, a diagnosis that meant a child's life outside its mother's body would be both brief and brutal.
Tiller's clients often included couples who had been hoping to become parents but had their hearts broken late in pregnancy when they received horrifying medical news about their much-wanted babies.
These people got no mercy from Operation Rescue.
They were hounded and harassed, shoved and shouted at on the most heart-breaking day of their lives. In order for patients to make it to their appointments, clinic supporters had to coordinate each woman's arrival with walkie-talkies. They shielded the patient by forming a flying wedge of bodies that rushed through the crowd to escort her into the building.
I watched one woman sobbing as she and her husband were helped into the clinic. Her tears went unnoticed by the hundreds of protestors surrounding her who shrieked and wailed and tried to trip the people escorting her to the door.
It was horrible.
And now, finally, after all the heavy breathing about heaven and God, evil and innocence, Operation Rescue by all appearances has goaded someone into killing George Tiller.
He was shot to death as he worked as an usher at his longtime church. His wife was close by in her regular place in the choir. The circumstances of his murder highlight precisely how hypocritical and grotesque this brand of "morality" is.
The zealots are already feigning shock that something like this could happen. Their partners in crime will soon be doing the same.
I can already envision the backpedaling and rationalizing that we'll hear from longtime Tiller critic Bill O'Reilly. Dr. James Dobson, who hosted the triumphant closing "Summer of Mercy" event that summer in Wichita, will undoubtedly declare himself deeply saddened.
I keep going back to Operation Rescue's catchy slogan for the "Summer of Mercy." They yelled it at everyone within earshot.
"If you believe abortion is murder, act like it's murder."
Maybe they have a point.
After this country's seemingly endless assaults and murders of clinic doctors and staff, the explosions and fire bombings, the vandalism and harassment, it's clear that this violent behavior is not a natural outgrowth of religious belief or moral concerns.
This is not part of a disagreement over when life begins.
This is terrorism.
And if we believe this is terrorism, we need to act like it's terrorism.
No mercy.
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BRAVO, Mary Mapes!
No mercy.
Will the N.Y. Times blame itself, Keith Olberman, congressional Democrats, or any left-wing anti-war activists for the shootingS (plural) at the Arkansas recruiting center? I won't-that would be just as silly as blaming O'Reilly or anyone else other than the perpetrators of these crimes.
Well since the suspects name is Carlos Bledsoe, aka Abdulhakim Muhammed I'm guessing he's not a liberal. So why in the world would the N.Y. Times or Olberman apologize? Rush, O'Liely et, al. have been generating hate speech for decades now...they just make things up. Operation Rescue certainly bares some responsibility with their hate speech and violent acts. I'll say it again. Eight doctors have been killed by these terrorists associated with the right wing in this Country. How many left wingers can you count that have killed someone. Some of the Operation Excuse members are still in State prisons. Can you say the same for the "left". Nope!
Hallelujah, sister!
I agree with virtually every word of this article. These people are true terrorists, filled with self-righteousness and hate. None of them, not one, would be willing to help living children who exist in lives of poverty, abuse, or severe medical problems. They sit smugly now, feigning sorrow that this "lone" nut killed Dr. Tiller, but behind closed doors their joy erupts.
There isn't an iota of difference between these terrorists and the ones who brought down the World Trade Center. Both groups are utterly convinced of the rightness of their cause, and both don't care who gets in their way.
What is even worse, is like the Islamic terrorists, these zealots are performing their acts of inhumanity "in the name of God, in the name of Jesus" or in the name of Allah!!
It's is all the same, Terry is the real anti-Christ and his robot followers act in hatred: as judge, jury and executioner effectively elevating themselves to godlike creatures with "all knowing" powers.
Thank you Mary Mapes.
Thank you, Mary Mapes, for defending women's reproductive rights to contraception and abortion. By his hate speech, Mr. Bill O'Reilly (and the Fox News Corporation) is responsible for inciting the murder of Dr. Tiller. Even worse, Mr. O'Reilly used the news of the doctor's murder as an occasion to further target you and other journalists who speak out. I am grateful for Dr. Tiller's courage, and for your courage to write the truth despite intimidation by extremists like Mr. O'Reilly. Sadly, in this new Millenium, it is necessary for Attorney General Eric Holder to send Federal marshalls to protect family planning clinics and their staff from attack throughout the country.
"Wichita police were overpowered and overworked. The protesters were over-excited and overweight."
Did you really need to make a fat joke? Really? Because all fat people must be ignorant, screaming, Jerry Springer Show stereotypes, right?
The comment was germane here, as the discussion that followed was about the physical strain being placed on the officers having to drag these people away.
Further, you are making a nonsensical logical leap in your assessment of Ms. Mapes's statement: the protesters were overweight and excited DOES NOT EQUATE TO all overweight people are "ignorant, screaming, Jerry Springer Show stereotypes".
You should really do a gut-check and determine what caused you to react so virulently.
Was that pun on purpose? I think perhaps their 'gut' is exactly what's behind the outrage. I haven't met too many people at a healthy weight who get all outraged about the fat being disrespected.
All of the people out there who claim to be 'true' Christians and say that Christianity does not embrace violence and that the acts of a few murdering individuals do NOT apply to all- DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!! If you want to convince the rest of your fellow citizens that people like the fundamentalist shooters in the article above do NOT represent you or your beliefs, then you MUST denounce the far right -wing evangelist organizations who support and nurture such killers and hatred.
It is not enough to sit and tsk tsk through your fingertips or post here that anyone who criticizes 'hates Christians' . If you truly believe that these acts go against true Christian doctrine, then stand up and say so loudly. Do not support false prophets or men who claim to speak for you and your religion through hatred and bigotry. Take back mainstream Christianity in the US from the hateful people who have hijacked it from peaceful believers. Otherwise, you are guilty of standing by and doing nothing, and deserve to be included with the people you allow to represent you publicly. These people are terrorists and deserve to be prosecuted as such.
Great points! I agree that "peaceful believers" need to stand up and speak out. We get a bad rap because we're not "flashy" or "news-worthy". Few news programs cover the "normal mainstream Christians", it's the "hateful false prophets" that get air time and print quotes.
Personally, I can say this much - in the New Testament, Jesus asks us to do two things - "love God" and "love others". No matter what choice a woman makes in terms of abortion, I am called to love her. No matter what area of medicine a doctor chooses to practice, I am called to love that physician. Whether or not I agree with anyone's "choices", they are not mine to make - or judge. Those who really read their Bibles know that it says that "we will be judged, in the same manner that we judge others".
Unfortunately, Christians are more "human" than "Christ-like". It's not an excuse for not speaking out, just a comment about reality.
doesn't Christ also say beware the man (woman) who calls themself teacher or master?
SAY IT STRAIGHT TO FOX!
If you want to be heard you must go to the Fox News web site and get a password and tell it to them. You must flood the FOX inbox with the truth about O'Reilly , hate-monger. Saying it here only at HUFFPOST it will not reach enough of the ears of people who need to know how the vast majority of true Americans feel. And send complaints to the the Executives at the Fox Network also separate from this kind of letter. You stand a better chance of making a difference that way.
You don't think FNC has email filters setup for such things?
Indeed, if we are going to basically entrap lame-brained terrorist wanna-bes for political theater [the recent arrests in NYC & the Sears tower nonsense], then certainly the FBI should expend a little effort in inflitrating these violent rightwing anti-aborton groups; with the bar set as low as it is now for ferreting out international terrorists on US soil it should be no problem to round up a few thousand of these bible-thumpin' bubbas to indefinite detainment.
Actually, I think standards should be higher [and proof far more conclusive and non-solicited], but hey, if we're going to do it half-assed for political cover, we might as well extend the effort to domestic terrorism as well.
But of course only the FBI & Homeland Security cases against "radical Islamist" terrorists will get that trumped-up treatment, as there is too high a percentage of white Americans who would object to OUR NATIONAL RELIGION being associated with any accusations of terrorism.
It will be an interesting thing indeed to watch if the rightwing nutters keep escalating their hyperboyle and actually resort to this sort of domestic terrorism--that's when we'd see just how insincere and selective our government's entire approach to stamping out terrorism really is.
Ms. Mapes - thanks for writing this piece!
I'm raising two children with health issues and it's difficult dealing with people who are willing to fight for the unborn - but, not for those "born". Children with health issues are generally more expensive to care for. There is usually greater stress and heartache involved in raising these kids. "Right to lifers" gloss over the realities of families like mine. I could often use tangible help to meet my children's needs. When I bring this up, I'm often left alone with "crickets". Lots of people want to "talk", but few want to "help".
We need to stop judging others and look at our own hearts. Instead of telling women not to abort their babies, I wish the "pro-lifers" would invest their time and energy into caring for the children. If we believe in the Bible, then aborted babies will go to heaven. Why don't we spend our time and energy on ensuring that those who "live", don't face "hell on earth"?
Unfortunately, those who are always talking about the lives of the unborn - seem to be the first to forget about "the babies" on the day those same children are born.
I agree wholeheartedly. As an earlier poster put it so elequently, as soon as the baby is born it's "we don't want no socialism". I do know a very few pro-life people who do not feel that way, but the hypocrites that do are legion.
There may or may not be life after death. What is certain is that at most we have 120 years on earth and most of us 40 plus years fewer than that. What is also certain is that abortion terminates a human life.
Let's do what we can to ensure that everyone lives a life free of suffering and sorrow, and that every girl and boy who is conceived gets to spend their time in the sun.
This article reduced me to tears. As a 40 year old first-time mother, I recently elected to undergo an amniocentesis at 16 weeks into my pregnancy, knowing that the test results could be devastating. Beforehand, my husband and I had decided that we would terminate the pregnancy if the results indeed demonstrated severe medical abnormalities. As Ms. Mapes so eloquently explained, no one relishes the idea of enduring an abortion, especially a second or third trimester abortion. But enduring 40 weeks of pregnancy only to have the baby delivered stillborn--or perhaps even worse--to watch your child die slowly and painfully after delivery is more tragic than I could ever imagine.
My husband and I are beyond lucky because our child's test results were normal. My heart aches for those mothers and fathers who receive horrible news and must face the most difficult decision of their lives; one that will undoubtedly haunt them--no matter what their decision--always. Having already suffered through two miscarriages, I wanted this pregnancy more than anything, and the elation I feel everyday is uncomparable to any joy I've felt before. While I cannot completely protect my child from illnesses or accidents in the future, at least I had the option to humanely care for my child if the amnio results had been different. I'm grateful for everything I have, and I'm grateful that I have choices.
just wait until you hold him/her in your arms and get to watch them grow up, there is nothing more fulfilling, nothing
I am pro-choice
wasnt mary also responsible for breaking the story on Bushs army records??
But if you mention that your comment will get erased.
And your point is????? And yes, she was on the Dan Rather team that broke the Wednesday 60 minutes story. I believe they were right and I live in Dallas, not too far from Mr Bush.
Who did Jesus kill?
Please, followers of these fake christian groups,
go reread the Gospels.
An excellent article, Mary..you've spoken from first-hand observation, and given those who didn't already know about Operation Rescue's peculiar form of 'piety' an eye-opening glimpse of what they're really about (and it's not very Christ-like). And I find it ironic that the long-posted "Tiller Watch" at the OR site has disappeared..much like the site itself, apparently. Curious, indeed...
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