We are days away from marking the one-year anniversary of the Sunday morning Scott Roeder walked into Dr. George Tiller's church in Kansas and shot him at close range.
After his murder, many women and men came to our blog to express their appreciation for what Dr. Tiller had done for their sisters, wives, relatives, and friends. Many of these women had found themselves in desperate and heart-breaking circumstances and turned to Dr. Tiller in their time of need.
Karen from Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania gives us one example of what Dr. Tiller meant to women:
Dr. Tiller, you saved my niece Jeanette's life, you helped our family through one of the darkest, most desperate and unthinkable moments we ever experienced. When we thought there was no where to turn, there you were. I called you the 'Wizard,' because of the incredible journey we had taken to find you, in Kansas. You are, and will always be my Hero.
It makes me angry when I think about how Roeder sat through his trial without showing any remorse for his actions. He reached new lows of callousness and disrespect for the Tiller family and for families like Karen's. It's equally infuriating that the same people who spent years harassing Dr. Tiller and his patients outside his health center showed no remorse. They rejected the notion that their pattern of inflammatory rhetoric could lead to violence by the more extreme elements of their own anti-choice movement.
We didn't have to wait long for the intimidation to resume. Less than four months after Dr. Tiller's murder, the members of the notorious Operation Rescue picked up their signs and bullhorns and moved 328 miles north to Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Tiller's murder didn't change their tactics; they just changed their mailing address -- and their target.
They took aim at Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who is one of the few abortion providers to whom women in heart-breaking circumstances can turn. Many of these women have wanted and cherished pregnancies but something goes wrong, such as a fetal anomaly or a condition that threatens their life or health. These circumstances are of no interest to Operation Rescue. Their goal is to close his clinic, too.
I am proud to report that pro-choice Americans in the heartland sent a strong message to Operation Rescue. On the day of Operation Rescue's protest, pro-choice activists outnumbered their protesters two to one.
Unfortunately, our numbers weren't as strong when it came to the Nebraska Legislature, where anti-choice lawmakers hold an overwhelming advantage. What Operation Rescue couldn't achieve through violence and harassment, anti-choice politicians in Nebraska made possible through legislation. Just this spring, the state enacted a divisive and invasive anti-choice law aimed directly at threatening Dr. Carhart and the women he serves.
In a further sign of disrespect for women, the National Right to Life Committee's Mary Spaulding Balch told Politico how her group capitalized on tragedy for political gain:
When George Tiller was killed, LeRoy Carhart had national attention...That alerted Speaker Mike Flood to the problem in Nebraska and he worked to address that.
An anti-choice operative's callous words that reduce women in tragic situations to pawns in a political game are outrageous -- and we cannot let them go unchecked.
As we mark the one-year anniversary of Dr. Tiller's murder, those of us in America's pro-choice majority must be vigilant about telling our friends and family that what happened in Kansas was not an isolated incident. It is a part of an ongoing campaign of threats -- in legislative chambers and outside abortion providers' offices and homes -- to make it more difficult and dangerous for women to access abortion care.
Frankly, we cannot control anti-choice lawmakers or Operation Rescue, but we can call out their outrageous statements and aggressive tactics.
We can take inspiration from the pro-choice activists who stared down anti-choice demonstrators in Omaha. Not all of us can go to Nebraska, but we can join others in sending messages of support to Dr. Carhart. We can share our reasons for being pro-choice and standing up for women with friends and family. We can pledge to only vote for pro-choice candidates at all levels of government, so that groups like the National Right to Life Committee can't coerce their followers into attacking women through the legislative process.
We can -- and will, I have no doubt -- pay tribute to Dr. Tiller, his family, and the women he served by speaking openly and honestly about our pro-choice values.
As we speak out, let's always remember to use the two powerful words that guided Dr. Tiller's work: Trust Women.
Follow Nancy Keenan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NARAL
Nebraska's law is unconstitutional under both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. For many of the ways this law fails, read this Omaha, NE news article at http://www.omaha.com/article/20100425/NEWS0802/704259989
Remember, pro-choice means I support your right to have a child just as much as I support your right not to.
In reality, if they really wanted to stop abortions, they would push for better birth control, better education, and funding for those endeavors, At a time when we can test for pregnancy very early on (seven days past ovulation), we should be providing immediate termination of unintended and unwanted pregnancy. At this early stage we are talking a group of cells versus a fetus. As it is now we make women wait once they decide abortion is the right choice for them - sometimes into their 2nd trimester - before it is performed. Why? Because of the cost and all the red tape. This is, in essence, a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of the anti-abortion crowd. Make women wait until the fetus has developed before abortion.
Some say that even that glob of cells is "potential life", but if you are to punish very early on abortions as "murder" then we must also charge those who miscarry with "involuntary manslaughter" and jail a girl the moment she has her first period for removing the potential for life from her womb. Doesn't make sense, does it?
A few months later, my friend's mother conceived again -- this time with... my friend.
It's kinda hard for me to look at her and tell her she doesn't deserve to be alive for the past 33 years and that her terminally and painfully ill brother should have been forced into the world for a few miserable and agonizing years, at best.
Good advice.
Did you know that the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologist disagree with the fetal pain theory?
The moral argument in this article is that killing an adult person is wrong, but killing a unborn person is not wrong. That makes no sense at all.
there are 3500 inmates currently on death row
I think I understand the point you are making, but it's not actually to the point.
If killing 3,500 persons on death row is wrong, then... what?
I don't see how highlighting that point addresses my critique of the moral reasoning within the article.
If killing a person in a prison, in a church, etc. is wrong, how does that make killing a person in the womb permissible?
Your point illustrates my point - that form of moral reasoning (particularly the form expressed in the article) makes no sense at all.
Secondly, many doctors nowadays, thanks to the controversy surrounding abortion, are not trained properly in how to perform an abortion, especially one as complex as those occurring later in pregnancy. Many hospitals, knowing the stigma that will be attached to them if word got out that they performed a 'late term abortion' as many anti-choice terrorists like to call them, won't perform the abortion. And then there are the hospitals that are religious based, so they would rather the woman die than to perform the abortion, as well.
In addition, many woman are forced to wait too long to terminate a pregnancy because they simply do not have access to abortion (which is a legal, medical procedure) in their area. There are some areas of the country that have no providers and it is necessary for women to travel across state lines to obtain services. And what medical service have you ever had that wasn't 'for profit'? In terms of the rest of the medical services provided in our country, abortion prices have remained relatively stagnant.
I would recommend that you do your homework regarding this topic before posting such ignorance next time.
It's obvious you know nothing of the problems that can occur in a pregnancy. I hope you never have to decide weather it's your life or your unborn child. Do you leave your other child without a mother for a principle? How about if it's your wife, mother, sister, or daughter's life. Do you really want the government deciding whose life to save? Conservatives all want smaller government until it involves a woman's uterus, then they want to be in control. I'm a liberal who wants smaller government, I want the government out of my uterus.
I should have been aborted. My mother's health was simply not up to a pregnancy. My parents emotional resources were not up to another baby. My birth began a spiral into hell that left ten lives shattered and still echoes in the lives of my generation's children. I do not feel guilt, exactly, because I had no say in this matter, but the disaster that followed my birth is a heavy burden to bear. The misery and abuse that followed are a ball and chain I must drag with me through life.
Those who are anti-choice say they love everyone and cherish every life. If that is how they treat their friends, I prefer my enemies.
Women must have the final say in their own bodies and destinies.
Meanwhile millions of children starve to death annually, and the abuse of children is on the rise. Perhaps if antiabortionists would step forward and volunteer to raise severely impaired children or even the normal ones who are brought into this world without hop of ever having a hope in hades of a decent home or education or love, their outrage would seem less sactimonious and more wholehearted. Abortion was legal until doctors appealed it because so many women died. Abortion became legal again as so many women were dying of back alley abortions. In the RC church abortion was legal until the sixth month. Thank you Dr. Tiller and those who have had the courage to be medically ethical and not controlled by Christian terrorists.