I am grieving today for a man I’ve never met. Until this day, I was only vaguely aware of him. Who is this man? Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who performed late-term abortions. He was one of only three doctors in the country to handle such abortions. Read the section called Jesus’s Jihadis. And today, he was shot and killed in his house of worship as he was doing his ushering duties. Read here, here, here, and here for a little more background. In the first link, read the section called George Tiller Assassinated. In the last link, there are links to the Freepers, the loony rightwingnutters who read freerepublic online. I am not linking to them. You can get there from the last link I gave you. There replies are repulsive, disgusting, and devoid of any humanity.
Dr. Tiller was shot in the nineties, and he continued to do his work. Late-term abortion? That’s the particularly grotesque kind, right? Uh, not exactly. Dr. Tiller treated women whose lives were in danger if they continued their pregnancies, who found out that they were further along than they thought they were, and women who were pregnant because of rape and couldn’t get help in time.
First, let me emphasize that his practice was legal. Second, his community has tried to get him indicted on performing illegal abortions before and has failed. Third, Bill O’Reilly focused on Dr. Tiller as did Operation Rescue in their war for forced pregnancies. Operation Rescue considered Wichita to be some kind of ground zero for their cause.
The right is already spin, spin, spinning. They are bleating that it would be such a shame if anybody on the left used this as a political weapon–which is exactly what the rightwing shills are doing. They are going on the offensive as they like to do, but will it work?
I am afraid, yes, it will. See, Dr. Tiller is already being called an abortion doctor, as if that’s the sole purpose of his practice. Many of the rightwingnutters don’t even bother to try to understand what exactly Dr. Tiller did. It didn’t matter. In that way, he was the symbol of everything they hated, loathed, and feared.
I am trying not to devolve into a rant against misogynist rightwingers who want to control women’s sexualities and bodies, but it’s very hard for me not to go there. I am tired of this shit. I really am. I will post more later, maybe. For now, I’m just going to grieve.
This shit needs to stop.
P.S. I just donated to Planned Parenthood. You can, too.