Dr. George Tiller shot dead Sunday; Bloggers react to news of late-term abortion provider's killing
by Lisa Stone
George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions, was shot to death at 10 a.m. Sunday outside his church in Wichita. Local police have arrested a suspect who will be charged with what President Barack Obama described at 6 p.m. as "murder." "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence," Mr. Obama stated.
Randall Terry: "Mass-murderer", Kim Gandy: "Domestic Terrorism"
News that Tiller, 67, was killed in the lobby of his Lutheran church has resulted in an outpouring of blog posts and Twitter comments from women who blog, across the political spectrum. Some women wrote upon hearing the news, others wrote in response to statements from Operation Rescue Founder Randall Terry, who called Tiller a "mass-murderer" and NOW President Kim Gandy who described Tiller's killing as "domestic terrorism."
Reaction from pro-choice and pro-life bloggers
"Oh my fucking god," blogged Cara of Feministe. "Dr. Tiller was one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country. He had previously been shot, his clinic burnt down, harassed by ideological anti-abortion attorney generals, and threatened with death countless times. We’ve written about his many trials and tribulations here numerous times. Still, Dr. Tiller continued to provide abortions to women who desperately needed them, to save their own lives or health, or due to tragic fetal deformities. He put the health of women above his own life. And now he is dead."
"This is terrible news," blogged Barbara of MommyLife. "Sure to be used to paint millions of peaceful pro-lifers as rabid hate-mongers. *sigh* Prolife organizations were swift in condemning the act." Barbara linked condemnations from pro-life organizations Susan B. Anthony List, Family Research Council, and the National Right to Life Council.
"This is terrorism," blogged Maha on The Mahablog. "I don’t have time to hunt them down and post quotes, but some rightie bloggers today lack the sense and grace to pretend to be sorry."
"Child Killer George Tiller Dead," blogged La Shawn Barber. "Today, Dr. Infanticide was shot and killed while walking into a church. Is “ironic” the right word to describe it? Who killed Tiller the child killer, cultivator of death?"
Twitter posts were so rapid that I collected nearly 1,000 in an hour at #Tiller, including one from a high school junior. "Rest in peace, George Tiller," Tweeted hayleytylerchin.
Nation's history of clinic clashes and violence - in rhetoric and deed
"Do I even need to say that murder is pro-crazy, not pro-life?" wrote Melinda Henneberger on Politics Daily. "And when hate speech meets insanity, this is the result. It's frightening to all who support abortion rights, a disaster for all who oppose them -- and not the common ground either side had in mind."
Blogger Sweetness & Light posted: "Needless to say, we never condone murder. No matter what the age of the victim. Moreover, if this crime was politically motivated, it couldn’t have done more to hurt the [pro-life] cause if the perpetrator had wanted to. And what timing. Now any criticism of [Supreme Court Nominee] Ms. Sotomayor, no matter how justified, will be met with words to the effect that “that is the kind of rhetoric got George Tiller killed.”
Blogging on Religion Dispatches, Frances Kissling agreed that rhetoric is fundamental to nation's ongoing and often violent conflict:
"To a considerable extent, groups like Operation Rescue have become marginal over the last ten years, but in some quarters, murder and abortion are still equated and in the case of Dr. Tiller, whose name provided an unfortunate rhyming quality, no insult was out of bounds. When Dr. Tiller went on trial in March, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council headlined his blog “Court Decides fate of Serial Tiller.” And, as control of abortion discourse moves to the moderate center with the President’s combined message in favor of women’s moral agency and reducing the need for abortion, the far right feels it has lost the moral high ground. In a column on Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame Ann Coulter quipped: “how about having the President throw out the ceremonial first fetus like on opening day in baseball.”
"With the anti-abortion and anti-family planning administration of George Bush history, and an Obama administration clearly taking an approach that undercuts any effort to talk about abortion itself, focusing instead on preventing unintended pregnancy, we may well see frustrated antiabortionists take to the streets. The National Abortion Federation has reported that violence at clinics is on the rise."
Tiller family statement
The Tiller family has released this statement.
The Associated Press has posted a timeline of recent cases of abortion-related violence.
What are you reading and thinking about this man's killing? As you can see, I worked to provide an even-handed snapshot of what women are saying throughout the blogosphere, both supporters and opponents of legal abortion. I welcome your links and thoughts below, in the spirit of BlogHer's community guidelines
Photo credit: Wikipedia
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Comments
The murder of Dr. Tiller
Leads me to believe the DHS was correct in doing a report to assess the threat of right wing extremism and the possibility for domestic terrorism.
Politics & News Contributing Editor
Queen of Spain
DHS=Department of Homeland Security
There's a fantastic wrap-up and series of links to domestic terrorists at the Wikipedia entry on the Oklahoma City bombing.
Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette
BlogHer is non-partisan but our bloggers aren't! Follow our coverage of Politics & News.
NOW calls for day of mourning, white arm
bands for Dr. Tiller
Re-reading all the links above. NOW's Kim Gandy closed her call to action by calling for a national day of mourning and day of commitment to legal abortion. "We urge individuals to wear white armbands all day tomorrow, Monday, June 1, in memory of Dr. Tiller and as a visible expression of determination to redouble our commitment to protecting the right to safe and legal birth control and abortion," Gandy said. Ann on Feministing recommends donations to Medical Students for Choice.
I will search for initiatives from the other side of the aisle, from Family Research Council and National Right to Life Council. I welcome any links folks. . .
Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette
BlogHer is non-partisan but our bloggers aren't! Follow our coverage of Politics & News.
Hypocrisy to the extreme
My heart sank upon reading this post. Here is a man that worked to provide something that is medically needed based on a womans' right to choose. A man with a family of his own, friends, colleagues and people who loved and respected him. Someone with compassion to provide for his patients what it is that they felt they needed, a safe alternative.
How completely hypocritical to call him a murderer and then murder him. At a place of worship! Talk about deranged? My anger runs deep on this issue but I will restrain myself as I want to only offer my sympathy to his family.
It is a difficult decision for any woman to make, but it is made easier with compassionate people to surround her when she does make a choice to terminate her pregnancy. One less compassionate person exists on this earth and one more lunatic lives on. Where is the justice in that?
I hang my head again.
touching diary entry
over at Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/31/737320/-The-George-Tiller-I-...
Politics & News Contributing Editor
Queen of Spain
Devastating
I almost threw up when I read the news about Dr. Tiller. He has been a hero of mine for a long time. Anyone who celebrates his death highlights the truth about the so-called "pro-life" position: they have no understanding of what life is, nor any respect or compassion for fellow human beings. No one on the "pro-life" side ever fears being murdered by us "baby killers," but every time I write about how I feel about abortion, I worry a little bit about the "pro-life" zealot who might decide that I have no right to life.
May Dr. Tiller rest in peace, and my his senseless death remind us how precious life is.
Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants
Whoever did this
does not represent pro-life, or any other individual who self-identifies as "pro life".
The murdered only represents hatred and possibly the consequences of untreated mental illness.
To make this murderer representatitve of millions of people who label themselves "pro-life" and who are likewise shocked and saddened by Dr. Tiller's murder is...suspicious. And unfair. And unworthy of anyone who is capable of otherwise looking past handy and politically useful strereotypes of indivuduals in order to promote some agenda.
To do so is hatred meeting hatred with more hatred, all masquerading as righteous anger. People who condemn those innocent of the crime, those who damn the crime themsevels, roll back upon themselves with their own words ...out of anger, out of laziness, out of their own hatred...and only continue the hatred that the murdered wrought.
Nothing will ever be solved by harboring hatred and damning other people because, well, because you just want someone to punish. Damning anyone and everyone because they identify as pro-life is no better than labeling and damning any identifiable group of people due to the actions of one person who self-identifies - or otherwise - as being part of that group. How is this not obvious?
Pro-life is not murder. Whoever did this excluded him/herself from the definition via his/her actions. And for anyone to say "those pro-lifers", is hypocrisy itself when the intention is the damnation of a group who in no way identifies with the actions of an individual. This is just a knee-jerk and unfair reaction, especially from anyone who believes in the choices and free will of individuals.
Rhetoric
I would agree with your comment except that almost every "mainstream" "pro-life" group spouts rhetoric that does not support your very reasonable position. Until organizations like Operation Rescue stop inflaming followers and inciting violence against doctors and patients, it is very hard for me to see this as a knee-jerk reaction. For god's sake, Operation Rescue (until today) had a "Tiller Watch" section stalking the man. Adele Stan at the Huff Post reports that Ann Coulter said, "abortion-clinic doctors and health care personnel who were murdered as either having been shot, "...or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle."
Obviously, people have the right to believe that abortion is murder as much as I have the right to believe that it is not. But the way anti-choice activists encourage their followers makes me scared. It is not knee-jerk and it is not unfair, for me to feel that way. There's too much evidence out there that proves otherwise. Stop the vile rhetoric that condemns me to hell for my beliefs, and I will stop feeling that way.
Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants
I'm not sure that I'm a part of any group
that spouts rhetoric.
Most people I know are not, not essentially. Not IRL.
The number of people I happen to know who spout any kind rhetoric IRL are few and, actually, from all philosophical corners. The people I know who also spout hate-filled rhetoric, have never ceased to suprise me with their hypocritcal opinions and actions on many matters, and again, come from all philosophies and ideologies. When anyone gets to the level of spouting rhetoric, there are no discernable "good guys". They all sound the same...black-and-white thinking, abusive of power, and using group stereotypes as a weapon that is always eventually wielded unfairly against individuals.
Who owns "pro life"? I can almost guarantee that the majority of the people I know IRL who identify as "pro life" would first of all define within different parameters, and second - maybe revealingly - I'd be surprised if any of them even knew what "Operation Rescue" was. And yet all of them would, I feel sure, ultimately condemn the act of the killer.
However, now they too will have - are already having - vile rhetoric thrown their way. Rhetoric that threatens them beyond acts, but that too damns them to uncertain hells. And so, it never ends. Even though everyone says they want it to end.
I know what it's like to feel afraid, to wonder in real anxiety what actions hateful, fearful, single-minded words might incite against me, whether I self-identify with a group or whether I'm identified or assigned group membership by someone else. Depending on which facet of my life you're looking at, which words you're pulling from which statement, at which moment, I can point to shockingly vast and varied groups out there and then point to rhetoric that at one time or another put me at the end of their figurative barrel, even to the point of being actually physically threatened and bullied.
If there is a specific group which openly defines itself specifically according to some tenets which absolutely promote violence against others, then perhaps there is some justification for others who want to condemn *the acts* of all self-identifying individuals who hold membership in that group. To condemn the person even in thought akin to capital punishment: it condemns without hope. Why change actions, if the "soul" itself if condemned? But I'd caution that any condemnation should be laser-beam exact and with full understanding of the full consequences that condemnation also levies according to the tone it takes.
I'm only saying that according to my real life experience with those who openly self-identify as "pro life", I've experienced wide-ranging beliefs, very little rhetoric of any sort, and real life compassion-in-action. I've since, in the past few hours, read enough Internet hatred and ugliness spewed against "pro life" to make me fear for some of the individuals I know IRL, shake my head in hopelessness, and force myself to remember that there is one thing greater than both the hatred and fear coming from both sides. And it's the hardest thing. But it's the only thing and it's the only meeting ground on this.
Is there room for "you go first"? Not to my thinking. I only see perpetuation and everyone giving up saying "I tried as much as I could; I am absolved to go on hating and/or fearing". That's just not good enough.
Halushki.com
Murder, pure and simple.
I am not an abortion supporter. I would consider myself pro-life except for the association with the term, which is used pejoratively in the media. I do not believe in abortion, but I also do not believe in harrassment, judgement, vandalism, violence and murder.
Abortion is not right for me, the idea makes me sad for all involved, but I cannot judge the people who make that choice. It is not my place in this world. I have to mind myself.
It mystifies me how anyone can be opposed to abortion yet support the murder of someone in cold blood. And I also wonder how anyone could believe that would win their argument?
This is a horrible tragedy all around, indefensible and unjustifiable.
Important statistics
in this article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cristina-page/the-murder-of-dr-tiller-a_b_...
Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer CE
Web Teacher
First 50 Words
Dumb-struck by the statistics in Cristina
Page's post
She writes that:
This is a harbinger of danger, indeed, and supports her claim that the nation risks a return to the devastating clinic attacks of the late 1990s during the Clinton Administration, as does the National Abortion Federation's data on incidents of extreme violence.
My heart is breaking for the Tiller family and for the nation. Has anyone else read Shannyn Moore's Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism?
Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette
BlogHer is non-partisan but our bloggers aren't! Follow our coverage of Politics & News.
Again, I'd caution.
Who are you speaking about?
I'd be very clear that all Christians are not fundamentalists, and that all fundamentalists - Christian or otherwise -are not terrorists.
"Chrisian Fundamentalist Terrorist" sounds dangerously close to the kind of long strung-together word that is used by some people to feign confusion - or maybe just to exercise and exorcise their own hatreds - in targeting any and all Muslims as being terrorists.
As a member of a specific Christian denomination that embraces evolution theory, I've had to defend myself time and time again to otherwise intelligent and learned people as not being someone who believed that the earth was only 6,000 years old. I've had to defend myself as not being a "bad parent who should not be teaching children such things." I've had people suggest in front of my children that perhaps they'd be better off with parents who didn't "abuse" them with religion. Etc., etc, ad infinitum.
This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that can get out of control very quickly and set people in their corners. And just when the President is calling for a meeting place. He's set the standard by opening lines of communication with many people and groups that other people in the U.S. would rather not open a dialogue with. And he's not doing it by saying "I hate you, but..." or using borderline expletive pronouncements and tricksy nomneclature.
I get what is being done here by calling a specific group "terrorist" and agree with it to a great extent. I'm just cautioning to be very, very clear in outlining exactly where these people fall inside the Venn diagram of Christians, fundamentalists, and terrorists. Otherwise, the finger is going to keep spinning and pointing, spinnins and pointing.
Halushki.com
the issue is when a majority of pro
life/Christian groups all
use similar if not the same language to protest or speak their mind about abortion...they WILL be lumped in as either fundi or extremist.
There is a Catholic school org here that uses the CHILDREN to line up and down the streets with signs proclaiming MURDER! HORROR! CHILD KILLERS!!! etc...
Would they support MURDERING a doctor..probably not...but they are using the same type of rhetoric that inflames those more on the edge of reason when it comes to this issue.
I think that the whole pro life stance has to take a look at what and how they speak about abortion and what they want from the ongoing argument...
Perhaps coming up with SOLUTIONS or at least showing understanding about why people fight for choice would make things better for all.
But calling all pro choice people murderers etc....NOT going to help is it.
Look for me at http://crunchycarpets.com or check out the ladies at www.wetcoastwomen.com
tragic and criminal act
This is domestic terrorism by certain members of the far evangelical right plain and simple. That doesn't mean all right to life people. It means just what it says..no more, no less. The most horrific thing is that he was killed. But how ugly is it that his killer, proclaiming Godliness, killed him in a church, in front of families, children....? The sick hypocrisy of it just makes my skin crawl.
The members of the church in which Dr Tiller was killed have issued a statement at their site and are also providing resources deal with the trauma of church members.
Reformation Lutheran Church
Lisa -- The Southern Poverty Law Center has an article about the killer's links to hate groups, and also states in this article that hate groups have increased by 54% since 2000.
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs right along at Time's Fool
what Tiller actually performed
Dr. Tiller routinely performed abortions on viable fetuses for mothers whose physical health was not in jeopardy. He was able to do this under the protection of the law. This does not make it right. Why are pro abortionists so reluctant to discuss the specifics of the very procedure they defend? Case in point - Destiny Lopez on KQED's Forum show this a.m.
It's probable that a majority of Americans know very little about the barbaric procedure used to end the lives of these infants.