The Good Doctor
A brief personal note on the tragic assassination today of Dr. George Tiller, of Wichita, KS.
As what seems today like a lifetime ago, I once lived in Wichita and had the pleasure to meet Dr. Tiller on several occasions. He was then and will always be remembered as a fine and compassionate person.
Headline writers will abbreviate a long medical career spent in service to others to two words: abortion doctor. That does a great disservice to the man, his family, his friends, his patients, his church and his community. He was far more than that.
To say the news of his murder was heartbreaking or gutwrenching doesn't come close to expressing the devastating feeling.
Political grandstanding in the coming days will overshadow the real legacy of a very kind man with a very big heart.
There is a great post up on Daily Kos right now from someone else who knew him. What a tragedy. A link follows this account by loree920:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/31/737320/-The-George-Tiller-I-Knew
May 31, 2009 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great catch Astral! The author of that post lists (in the comments) a link to Planned Parenthood - in case anyone would like to donate in Dr. Tillers memory.
The link is here:
https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp2009
May 31, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, Astral and Jade. I am so sorry that this fine man, who helped so many, experienced this particular tragic, and ironic end. Although I did not know him, I join you in mourning him. Because he mattered, because he tried, because he saw the big picture in every individual patient's life. Maybe this is what being pro-life should really be about -- paying attention as he did, doing the right thing for each person, in each individual circumstance.
May 31, 2009 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
By calling ideological differences on who should control the reproductive tract of fertile females, the government or each woman and her doctor, a war, Catholics like Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City are calling for violence, for that is the essence of war. They are not pro-life, they are intent only on domination and control of others.
May 31, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I whole heartedly agree.
The abortion issue is a tool to manipulate the masses into supporting a political party by masquerading that party as Christian. I do not believe all Christians are in fact following Christ, but that's not my post. Leave my head alone!!! I wrote a post about Taunting Christians here:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/gregorzap/2009/05/taunting-christians.php
The jist of it is that there are bullies taunting the meek Christians into these heinous acts by challenging their faith. What would you NOT do to prove your faith? For the weak, they are goaded into these deeds. For the strong, they reply, prove to whom? You?
It's probably not a good idea to absolve the one to perpetrated the crime, but I want his accomplices too. If we cannot take them to a civil court, we can illustrate their misdeeds in the court of public opinion. Such as, you characterize them as Nazis and then are surprised someone killed them? You declared it a war and are surprised there are fatalities? It's beyond absurd, but those voices are all they hear. There need to be more voices raised.
June 1, 2009 3:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously the wingnuts are primarily to blame for the atmosphere of fanaticism and threats of terrorism surrounding the practice of abortion, to the extent of encouraging actual terrorism, as in this case.
But I'd sure like to see Obama come out with a more forceful statement of support for Tiller and a stronger, less hedged defense of the Democratic Party's heroic modern tradition of defending abortion rights. Basically, leading Democratic politicians over the past several years have taken to limp watered-down defenses of abortion rights, filled with weasel words and chickenshit political compromises. The message Democrats have been sending in recent years is that even though we continue to support abortion rights, we do so with regret, and regard abortion as ugly, dirty, unseemly, traumatic, agonizing, tragic, guilt-ridden, awful, yucky and bad, and cannot wait for that blessed utopian future in which there will be no more unwanted pregnancies and we can drop our unpleasant defense of what is ugly, dirty, unseemly, traumatic, agonizing, tragic, guilt-ridden, awful, yucky and bad.
Well, I'd sure like to see Democrats get back to a foursquare, proud and unapologetic defense of abortion rights. For one thing, I would like to see less talk about the euphemisms of "choice" and more uses of the term "abortion rights". Let's not be afraid to say "abortion", like its a dirty word. That already concedes too much. The key issue for me is that, whatever one thinks about the status of the fetus, the inside of a woman's body is her sovereign territory and no government or body of outsiders, not even that woman's family or husband, should have the power to coerce her decisions over what happens inside that space. She rules there, and we shouldn't be saying that the patriarchal view that somebody else has a say in the very interior of another person's body is making a difficult and profound point.
Children are women's free gift to humanity. Bearing and giving birth to a human child is a supererogatory act, beyond the call of duty, and a woman should be recognized as having the right to terminate her pregnancy at any time.
This guy Tiller is a hero in the defense of the autonomy of women. He turned his back on a fancy West Coast career change and stayed in Wichita to raise his sister's kid and take up his father's family practice, after hearing of a woman who died from an illegal abortion. He was a real-life George Bailey. And where many doctors have been terrorized and hounded from the practice, he stayed with it even after being shot once before in both arms. He should get the damn Medal of Freedom.
C'mon Obama. Enough with down-the-middle stuff about our difficult and profound differences. Stand up for freedom and the rights of women! Stand up for the principle that even you, whether as husband, father or president, have no right to compel your wife or daughters, or other people's wives and daughters, to continue with pregnancies they wish to end.
May 31, 2009 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Noble comment.
I second the points made, Dan K.
May 31, 2009 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree! It certainly would show some leadership and courage on the part of the President. Can you even imagine what apoplexy would grip the nation if a left wing organization ever did anything like what they right wing lunatics have done over the years? They kill people who they have religious disagreements with and bomb buildings with innnocent people in them. Is that not the definition of terrorism?
May 31, 2009 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant, Dan K.
Underneath these abortion-related terrorist acts is the undeclared war against women and it needs to be called out for what it is.
For decades we've endured constant intimidation, harassment, murderous violence and threats against doctors, clinics and staff who are providing LEGAL, PRIVATE and NECESSARY medical services to women.
It actually is terrorism, committed by religious fanatics, with the aim of preventing women from accessing legal medical services. It's the effing American Taliban but we're asked to find "common ground" with them.
I grieve for Dr. Tiller and the loss his death represents to us all. Many men have also been victimized in this war on women, but it's women's autonomy that is the ultimate target. Why is it that when men feel targeted, we go to war to defeat the threat, but when women are targeted we are told we must find a way to agree with our tormentors? It's because not enough women are calling the shots and we fall back on the de facto view that women's lives and their very bodies are secondary, exploitable and not worth as much as men's.
Women have been bullied enough. Abortion without apology, without delay, and without interference -- that's our right and it's worth upholding and defending. It's time to unleash the full power of Homeland Security against domestic terrorist cells and shut them down.
June 1, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Democrats have caved on way too many abortion rights issues over the past several years. They have ceded the moral high ground, and given too much credit to the guilt-and-shame crowd. Whether it was just a tactic to attract more pro-life Catholic voters or a craven response to bullying and terror tactics, the result is that aggressive pro-life forces have tasted blood in the water and success, and smelled weakness, and that has encouraged them to become even more aggressive.
June 1, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
This can be it's own post, really. It deserves much recommendation, IMHO, and as others have commented.
June 1, 2009 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gretchen, a frequent commenter on Ed Brayton's DISPATCHES FROM THE CULTURE WARS was visiting her parents in Wichita this weekend, and they were members of the church and in the congregation. Her report:
Later in the thread she reported the following:
My mother's position is that she doesn't think Dr. Tiller is a sinner, but if he is a sinner then church is precisely where he needs to be. Or at least, needed to be.
Everyone seems to be talking today about how bad this is for Wichita, and what a tragedy it is specifically that it happened in a church. Someone asked me if the people at Reformation would blame Dr. Tiller for being the occasion of violence within their church, even though he was not the cause. I replied that I thought not, and since then have received word that they are holding a vigil tonight in Dr. Tiller's honor, which confirms to me that they are only proud to have known him and to have been his church family.
I had always assumed that the early 90's were the worst of it, and things would just peter down, and peter down, and the protestors would lose interest, and for the most part that has happened.....but it only takes one nut to cause something like this. Most likely it was because Dr. Tiller has been in the news lately after being accused of violating "a state law that only allows late-term abortions if two independent physicians agree the procedure is necessary to save a woman's life or prevent 'substantial and irreversible' harm to 'a major bodily function.'"-- and aquitted.
and
June 1, 2009 12:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I had heard of Dr. Tiller, I didn't know much about him, other than he was despised by the anti-abortion crowd. But I was really outraged by hearing more than one newscaster refer to him as the controversial abortion doctor, in announcing his murder. They attached no negative character traits to the monster that murdered him!
June 1, 2009 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you on the coverage. In my local paper (I live in a very conservative area) instead of writing a story about the outrageous murder of a man in his church, they wrote a story about how the anti-choice groups were worried that pro-choice groups might try to exploit the murder for pro-choice advocacy. These anti-choice groups are saying they are condeming the murder when they are to blame for the murder. In all the years that the pro-choice/anti-choice debate has been going on, not one pro-choice person has committed murder of an anti-choice person in the name of the cause; not one pro-choice person has bombed the place of business of an anti-choice organization. They cannot condemn what they have caused; their hands are as spotted as Lady MacBeth's.
June 1, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
As I said in comment to another post, it is long past the time when these right-wing murder advocates deserve merciless suppression. Some conditions require lifesaving surgery, and they are a cancer on this society.
Find them, take them, and confine them. If they resist, take them by force. And never allow them to communicate or breathe free air again.
June 1, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are you saying we should detain them indefinitely under the charge of inflammatory rhetoric?
I have to say I disagree with you. What is lacking, IMO, is a more full-throated defense of reproductive rights... but the MSM is playing a most dangerous game by giving credibility to an ongoing domestic terrorist movement (funded by such bigwigs as Carl Karcher)...
I would only reverse the scenario and point to when environmental activists put spikes in trees. Lordy but lordy did the right wing make a lather that persists to this day.
Anyhow, it all leads to a growingly powerful conclusion: corporations have performed a cost-benefit analysis on human life and determined that a life-destroying spectacle is better for profits than a representative republic.
June 1, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is a mistake, often a fatal one, to extend "tolerance" to those who seek to destroy the body politic that tolerates them.
Incitement to violence will do as a charge. Aiding and abetting will make a nice add-on in many cases. Prosecution should take place under RICO statutes, and include pretrial asset seizure for anyone who bankrolls any of these terrorists.
The environmental lunatics who spiked trees and torch construction projects deserve long-term confinement themselves. As do those engaged in the destruction of research laboratories.
June 1, 2009 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
We'll have to agree to disagree. I respect your views, but in them I see a police state that favors our side (whatever that side may be from year to year). Many of the laws you have cited are products of an argument that has successfully made mountains out of criminal molehills. IMO, the inevitable conclusion is more laws imprisoning, embittering, and martyring a broader swath of an increasingly lunatic opposition that is persecuted for their beliefs... call it the Batman Effect.
June 1, 2009 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're making a slippery-slope argument here that I have to question, if only because there is a very real difference between committing, advocating, and aiding and abetting overt acts of violence against both individuals and government institutions (remember Tim McVeigh, among others) - thus directly harming this society in which we live - and the "criminal molehills" (whatever they are) you reference.
These are (perhaps somewhat loosely) organized underground efforts to kill people, attack social institutions, and thus do direct, serious harm to both individuals and society. No society that intends to remain viable can long tolerate such things.
June 1, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Find them, take them, and confine them. If they resist, take them by force. And never allow them to communicate or breathe free air again."
Here is the grease on the slope. If I slipped it is because I stepped in it.
We have dealt with underground movements for centuries. Think Jim Brown. Think Sacco and Vanzetti.
The problem with your logic is that the force necessary to capture and convict aiders and abetters of domestic terrorism in the manner alluded to in your quoted paragraph are congruent to what we are fighting against vis a vis Guantanemo.
How can we differentiate between first amendment rights and treason? How can we engage in preventative justice so as to prevent a quiet terrorist like McVeigh? Should we have banned the Turner Diaries to keep it from his impressionable mind?
Who guards the guards?
I know that in a perfect world, the reasonable and prudent application of laws can capture the guilty... but reality is more messy, and I don't believe in giving the police the license to commit a dragnet.
It is horrible and tragic that a good an heroic doctor as died... and is equally awful that the MSM is giving raw meat to the masses by making it all about late-term abortion. But could this murder have been prevented, and is the cost of prevention worth the loss of civil liberties?
Have we not asked ourselves this very question for over 8 long years?
June 1, 2009 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you meant John Brown. The former NFL star, for all his quirks and faults, never really threatened the existence of a civil society.
And from information gleaned from other anarchists after the fact, while Vanzetti was innocent, Sacco was in fact guilty.
And I do not for one moment think you are making valid comparisons here.
The first thing we need is careful monitoring. Very careful monitoring. Knowing (recognizing) the difference between condemning something or someone and incitement to violent action, or assisting in that violent action - to say nothing of those committing those said actions.
Which makes the answer to your not-quite-entirely-rhetorical question fairly simple. Urging or encouraging "direct action" falls under incitement to violence. Also known for these purposes as shouting "movie" in a crowded firehouse. Also known as "fighting words" - which are, by definition, not protected speech. Aiding and abetting someone involved in either incitement or direct action amounts to either conspiracy or becoming an accessory to a criminal act.
I'm sorry to disappoint you on this, but I have exactly zero reservoir of sympathy for those who would undermine a civil society by exploiting its tolerance. It's cause and effect, and I do not wish to see those effects. Dislike something all you want, fine - start to act against it in violent ways, there are heavy dues to pay.
We are, after all, discussing incitement to murder and terrorism here, not littering and jaywalking. The space for abstractions in such a discussion becomes rather small.
June 1, 2009 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
"And I do not for one moment think you are making valid comparisons here."
What makes them invalid? I only stated that domestic terror is not a recent phenomenon, but something we have dealt with (clumsily) for centuries.
"The first thing we need is careful monitoring. Very careful monitoring. Knowing (recognizing) the difference between condemning something or someone and incitement to violent action, or assisting in that violent action - to say nothing of those committing those said actions."
Therein lies the rub. I leave it to you as to how this careful monitoring can and should be conducted in a manner that can prevent domestic terrorism surgically, like a scalpel removing cancer.
"Which makes the answer to your not-quite-entirely-rhetorical question fairly simple. Urging or encouraging "direct action" falls under incitement to violence."
The problem is that this kind of rhetoric doesn't appear so often, and is regularly couched in religious terms or in vague generalities. Michael Savage can call an abortion doctor a murderer, an abetter to genocide, and demand Old Testament justice (which he has). He can contribute to Operation Rescue or the Knights of Columbus (which he does). Yet he is a syndicated radio host. Where is that incitement line? What would the consequences be of his detainment and prosecution?
"I'm sorry to disappoint you on this, but I have exactly zero reservoir of sympathy for those who would undermine a civil society by exploiting its tolerance."
I don't have sympathy for them either.
"We are, after all, discussing incitement to murder and terrorism here, not littering and jaywalking. The space for abstractions in such a discussion becomes rather small."
The space for abstractions is enormous. Freedom and justice are messy and until you can explain how you could carefully apply it in a manner that could rid us of domestic terrorism, I will continue to err on the side of civil liberties.
June 1, 2009 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Come on, can't we rip up the Constitution a little bit?
June 1, 2009 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, this one time, but not too much, and only the part we don't like.
(Wasn't that Bush v. Gore?)
June 1, 2009 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
This judgment we seek has to happen in the court of public opinion and the market. People should stop watching/listening to these rage peddlers who incite violence and murder. Okay, we can't put them in jail, but we can put them out of business. Let's just picket their plaes of work and demand a more civil conversation. Maybe we could just hld signs outside his their offices saying STFU, or "Encouraging a Problem, has no Solution", or Would the Stupic People who watch.listen to these people please leave for China. They alredy have an authoritarian government. okay that last one was too long, but you know what I mean. We need to publ;icize disgust with their antics.
June 1, 2009 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would go with that!
June 1, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jade, thank you for sharing your personal recollections of Dr. Teller. And thanks, too, to the others who contributed to the homage.
June 1, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. Tiller.
June 1, 2009 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink