Dr. George Tiller, age 67, was murdered in the lobby of a church because the doctor had spent the better part of his career performing much-needed women's health care services, which included late term abortions. He was one of a very few physicians that provided these services, and had, over the course of his practice, been shot, threatened, protested, but felt a dedication to providing this form of medical assistance.
The doctor's murderer without a doubt, believes that the Wichita health clinic where Dr. Tiller performed abortions was a "death camp for fetuses" (or the "pre-born" or "the most innocent and helpless, tiny babies of all!") and was, therefore, a serial killer of the most heinous sort. To a person who has soaked up that kind of rhetoric, the act of killing a man probably seems heroic. Hardly like murder. Why, no. It's just removing a destructive parasite from the womb of society, isn't it?
And really, aren't there good reasons for killing someone? Like to protect the life and health of the fetuses? (To stop with this facetious parallelism--no, I don't think so.)
The problem with the abortion debate for me has always been that the sides seem at such vastly differing points of view, that I find it hard to see where the sides can be brought together. I like to debate from the middle--to see where the two sides of an argument can find agreement. Once people agree on some things, I think finding a way to consensus is easier. But I can't see eye-to-eye on the abortion question--and especially not with someone who sees the "personhood" of blastocysts as trumping the humanity of a doctor, an educated man of science just trying to provide the assistance he can, to the people he can.
What wasn't considered:
Who solicits abortion services? In other words, if a woman is having a super pregnancy with good health, no money troubles, and a wonderful significant other, she isn't going to go, "But wait, what? I can get an abortion? How crazy cheaper than delivery, diapers and all that mothering jazz is that? Sign me up!"
Of course not. Women approach doctors for that because of reasons; heart-felt, serious, sometimes devastating personal reasons. And some women who seek abortions don't even want to have an abortion. They would love to have their baby--they just can't. It's dying. The woman is ill. The child would have catastrophic disabilities. The mother has some injury. It's horrible to think that not every little human "accident" that happens along in a woman's body isn't healthy, safe, loved, and in an ideal position to be safely carried, born, and raised by loving people--
But it happens. And when a woman needs that assistance, shouldn't she go to an educated, practiced doctor, in a safe, clean facility that acknowledges her dignity?
I don't want to hear about "compassion" and "sanctity of human life", if the other side doesn't see the trials of the women involved, or show understanding of why they make such a choice.
And maybe they could understand that women denied that opportunity will take measures into their own hands--maybe find a doctor who isn't good, or safe. Maybe harming themselves in the process.
Who provides these services? Or rather, why be committed to a practice that isn't pleasant, that carries heartbreak with most cases, that comes with a shitload of grief from so-called "pro-life" protesters, and has actually endangered one's life and health before?
It's not insanity or psychopathy. It's a desire to save the lives and preserve the health of women who are forced to make decisions where sometimes, a baby--their baby, is sacrificed so that they can live their lives. It isn't pleasant, but it is compassionate towards these women--his patients. It's about giving them a safe place to get this service. It's about making sure they survive the experience, and can keep their reproductive health intact to have strong, healthy babies later, when the time is right. It's about saving the life and health of the mother and her babies to be.
Why does anyone get/perform a late-term abortion? And that's the saddest question of all. Who waits, knowing she is pregnant, until the last possible minute, when the extraction of her child is most liable to be injurious to herself? When she has experienced that life growing inside her? When she has had the time to contemplate bearing the child, even holding it?
I want you to know, that these women, and the doctors who help them, have thought longer and harder about the question of "what to do?" than that murderer did when Dr. Tiller was killed. These are the cases where the heartbeat stopped. Where there just isn't a brain beyond the brain stem. Where pre-eclampsia threatens to kill the mother, and not a second can be spared--not anymore.
And it's true--that baby looks like a baby. All it's little fingers and toes are formed, and it has a face where you can see Daddy's chin, and Momma's forehead. There's sonograms. They fucking know it's a human life. Everyone does--
And it still won't go to term. It's heartbreaking--not the depraved murder of a serial killer. In a place where this mother, and sometimes her husband or partner, go to face down a transgression that saves the life of a woman--not a death camp for fetuses. Just a place where a family says goodbye to a life that wasn't.
Go to a Hell I don't believe in, but which you probably do, doctor-killers. Go to a miserable Hell of your own making, woman-haters. Live in a world without compassion for fully-realized human beings, and let some adoration of the unborn be your false idol--you misguided religious bigots. Call tragedy a sin, and blame victims, and call the saints who minister to the unhappiest among us the biggest criminals--do it! But don't call a murderer of a good man anything but a murderer. And stop perverting language in such a way that enables the sick and zealous to justify their blood-thirsty anger.
There is no "culture of life" respected in an act of killing.
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