WICHITA, Kan. — The Wichita clinic of slain abortion provider George Tiller, one of only a handful of clinics in the country that provides third-term abortions, will be permanently closed, his family said Tuesday.
Operations at Women’s Health Care Services Inc. had been suspended since Tiller’s death last month, and the clinic’s future was uncertain. In a statement released by his attorneys, Tiller’s family said it will close permanently, and relatives would honor Tiller with charitable activities instead.
"We are proud of the service and courage shown by our husband and father and know that women’s health care needs have been met because of his dedication and service,” the family said.
Tiller was shot to death May 31 while serving as an usher at the Lutheran church in Wichita that he regularly attended. Abortion opponent Scott Roeder, 51, is being held on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in Tiller’s death.
Dr. Warren Hern, one of the few remaining doctors in the country who performs late-term abortions, said the closure of the clinic was an "outrage.”
"How tragic, how tragic,” Hern said when contacted by phone at his Boulder, Colo., clinic. "This is what they want, they’ve been wanting this for 35 years.”
Asked whether he felt efforts should be made to keep the clinic open, he said: "This was Dr. Tiller’s clinic. How much can you resist this kind of violence? What doctor, what reasonable doctor would work there? Where does it stop?”
Randall Terry, who founded the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said "Good riddance” when he heard Tiller’s clinic would be shuttered. He said history would remember Tiller’s clinic as it remembers Nazi concentration camps.
by the associated press
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Showing posts with label Doctor George Tiller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doctor George Tiller. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Deadly battleground in Kansas
WICHITA, Kan. — In a nation divided by abortion, Kansas has become perhaps the fiercest battleground — with mass protests, prosecutions, lawsuits and now a killing keeping the issue in the public eye.
Dr. George Tiller, shot to death at his church last Sunday, had been the target of a relentless protest campaign for most of the 36 years he performed abortions at his Wichita clinic. He was a focal point of the abortion conflict, but it transcended him, often becoming the state’s dominant political topic.
Some Kansans are sick of the rancorous debate; for others, it permeates their lives and affects their personal relations.
"Most of my adult life has been in the middle of this fight,” said Peggy Bowman, who lives near Tiller’s church and oversees a fund that helps women pay for abortions.
In part, it’s a power struggle — conservative Republicans, many of them evangelical Christian, battling over abortion and other hot-button social issues with moderates of their own party and with the Democrats.
"When you get down to the heart of the split among Kansas Republicans, it always comes back to abortion,” said University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis. "It may pop out in gun laws, homeschooling, evolution — but it starts and stops with abortion.”
Unlike many states, Kansas often seesaws. For example, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed numerous bills to restrict abortions during the past six years, only to see many vetoed by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, now President Barack Obama’s health and human services secretary.
Tiller played a part in intensifying the debate. He became one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions and, unlike many of his peers, embraced a high profile even after he was shot in both arms by an anti-abortion activist in 1993.
"The state used to be a very liberal place,” said Tom Frank, Kansas-born author of the 2004 political best-seller "What’s the Matter With Kansas?”
"Tiller was kind of a relic of that Kansas. … He had that sense of Kansas stubbornness,” Frank said. "The anti-abortion movement personalized the fight, made it about him. … It’s one Kansas colliding with another.”
by the associated press
Dr. George Tiller, shot to death at his church last Sunday, had been the target of a relentless protest campaign for most of the 36 years he performed abortions at his Wichita clinic. He was a focal point of the abortion conflict, but it transcended him, often becoming the state’s dominant political topic.
Some Kansans are sick of the rancorous debate; for others, it permeates their lives and affects their personal relations.
"Most of my adult life has been in the middle of this fight,” said Peggy Bowman, who lives near Tiller’s church and oversees a fund that helps women pay for abortions.
In part, it’s a power struggle — conservative Republicans, many of them evangelical Christian, battling over abortion and other hot-button social issues with moderates of their own party and with the Democrats.
"When you get down to the heart of the split among Kansas Republicans, it always comes back to abortion,” said University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis. "It may pop out in gun laws, homeschooling, evolution — but it starts and stops with abortion.”
Unlike many states, Kansas often seesaws. For example, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed numerous bills to restrict abortions during the past six years, only to see many vetoed by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, now President Barack Obama’s health and human services secretary.
Tiller played a part in intensifying the debate. He became one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions and, unlike many of his peers, embraced a high profile even after he was shot in both arms by an anti-abortion activist in 1993.
"The state used to be a very liberal place,” said Tom Frank, Kansas-born author of the 2004 political best-seller "What’s the Matter With Kansas?”
"Tiller was kind of a relic of that Kansas. … He had that sense of Kansas stubbornness,” Frank said. "The anti-abortion movement personalized the fight, made it about him. … It’s one Kansas colliding with another.”
by the associated press
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Religious Right Didn't Kill Doctor George Tiller
On Sunday, abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered at his church in Wichita, Kan. He was one of a handful of doctors in the U.S. who performed late-term abortions and for decades had been a target of virulent criticism from antiabortion activists. His clinic had been bombed and vandalized, and in 1993 he was shot in both arms in a failed assassination attempt. Tiller's alleged killer, Scott Roeder, is a long-time radical antiabortion activist with reported ties to a militant antigovernment organization called the Freemen.
Within hours after the murder, every antiabortion group in the country denounced the attack. Robert P. George, a leading Catholic intellectual opponent of abortion, wrote that "George Tiller's life was precious" and characterized his murder as "a gravely wicked thing." He called on his fellow abortion opponents to "teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion."
Even Operation Rescue, the extreme antiabortion group that organized a six-week blockade of Tiller's office in 1991, issued a statement condemning the murder. "We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning," Troy Newman, the organization's president, said.
These unqualified reproaches are nothing new. The organized antiabortion movement has always opposed violence against abortion providers. That has never stopped opportunistic prochoice activists, however, from conflating their passionate rhetoric with the behavior of individual criminals. True to form, on Sunday, Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star accused anyone who had criticized Tiller as a murderer (Tiller aborted healthy, nine-month old fetuses) of being an "accomplice" to his death.
Over the past decade this argumentative tactic has taken on an even more insidious twist. In addition to fighting violent, Muslim jihadists abroad, some liberals argue that America must deal with its own, homegrown terrorists. These are not just people who commit violence but millions of socially conservative evangelicals and Catholics -- "Christianists" -- who comprise the base of the Republican Party and threaten the stability of the country.
In 2007, former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges published a book called "American Fascists" that compared conservative evangelicals to European brownshirts of the 1920s and 1930s. That same year, CNN's Christiane Amanpour hosted a three-part series, "God's Warriors," that equated Christian (and Jewish) fundamentalists with Muslim extremists.
The comparison between the religious right and Islamic extremists is invariably partisan so as to smear the GOP as being held hostage to forces as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah. "Even as the Bush administration denounces and battles Islamic religious zealotry abroad, fundamental Christian zealotry is taking hold here at home," wrote Stephen Pizzo on the liberal Alternet Web site in 2004. On his popular HBO program, comedian Bill Maher frequently compares murderous Islamists to censorious Christians.
But if the reactions to the death of Tiller mean anything, the "Christian Taliban," as conservative religious figures are often called, isn't living up to its namesake. If "Christianists" were anything like actual religious fascists they would applaud Tiller's murder as a "heroic martyrdom operation" and suborn further mayhem.
Radical Islamists revel in death. Just witness the videos that suicide bombers record before they carry out their murderous task or listen to the homicidal exhortations of extremist imams. Murder -- particularly of the unarmed and innocent -- is a righteous deed for these people. The manifestos of Islamic militant groups are replete with paeans to killing infidels. When a suicide bomb goes off in Israel, Palestinian terrorist factions compete to claim responsibility for the carnage.
There is no appreciable number of people in this country, religious Christians or otherwise, who support the murder of abortion doctors. The same cannot be said of Muslims who support suicide bombings in the name of their religion.
Yet speak of the disproportionately violent strain in Islam to a "progressive" person and you'll be met with sneering recitations of millennia-old Christian crusades or Jewish settlements in the West Bank. As for conservative Christians' contemporary political endeavors, lobbying to ban the teaching of evolution in schools or forbidding same-sex marriage simply does not threaten society in quite the same way as the genital mutilation of young girls or the bombing of the London transit system.
I happen to support a legal regime that would, in Bill Clinton's famous words, keep abortion safe, legal and rare. I hold no brief for the religious right, and its views on homosexuality in particular offend (and affect) me personally. But it's precisely because of my identity that I consider comparisons between so-called Christianists (who seek to limit my rights via the ballot box) and Islamic fundamentalists (who seek to limit my rights via decapitation) to be fatuous.
In the coming days, we will hear more about how mainstream conservative organizations and media personalities created an "environment" in which the murder of an abortion doctor became an inevitability. Just as talk radio was blamed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an attempt will be made to extend the guilt for this crime from the individual who pulled the trigger to the conservative movement writ large. But the Christian right's responsible reaction to the death of George Tiller should put to rest the lie that Judeo-Christian extremists are anywhere near as numerous or dangerous as those of the Muslim variety.
by the associated press
Within hours after the murder, every antiabortion group in the country denounced the attack. Robert P. George, a leading Catholic intellectual opponent of abortion, wrote that "George Tiller's life was precious" and characterized his murder as "a gravely wicked thing." He called on his fellow abortion opponents to "teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion."
Even Operation Rescue, the extreme antiabortion group that organized a six-week blockade of Tiller's office in 1991, issued a statement condemning the murder. "We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning," Troy Newman, the organization's president, said.
These unqualified reproaches are nothing new. The organized antiabortion movement has always opposed violence against abortion providers. That has never stopped opportunistic prochoice activists, however, from conflating their passionate rhetoric with the behavior of individual criminals. True to form, on Sunday, Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star accused anyone who had criticized Tiller as a murderer (Tiller aborted healthy, nine-month old fetuses) of being an "accomplice" to his death.
Over the past decade this argumentative tactic has taken on an even more insidious twist. In addition to fighting violent, Muslim jihadists abroad, some liberals argue that America must deal with its own, homegrown terrorists. These are not just people who commit violence but millions of socially conservative evangelicals and Catholics -- "Christianists" -- who comprise the base of the Republican Party and threaten the stability of the country.
In 2007, former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges published a book called "American Fascists" that compared conservative evangelicals to European brownshirts of the 1920s and 1930s. That same year, CNN's Christiane Amanpour hosted a three-part series, "God's Warriors," that equated Christian (and Jewish) fundamentalists with Muslim extremists.
The comparison between the religious right and Islamic extremists is invariably partisan so as to smear the GOP as being held hostage to forces as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah. "Even as the Bush administration denounces and battles Islamic religious zealotry abroad, fundamental Christian zealotry is taking hold here at home," wrote Stephen Pizzo on the liberal Alternet Web site in 2004. On his popular HBO program, comedian Bill Maher frequently compares murderous Islamists to censorious Christians.
But if the reactions to the death of Tiller mean anything, the "Christian Taliban," as conservative religious figures are often called, isn't living up to its namesake. If "Christianists" were anything like actual religious fascists they would applaud Tiller's murder as a "heroic martyrdom operation" and suborn further mayhem.
Radical Islamists revel in death. Just witness the videos that suicide bombers record before they carry out their murderous task or listen to the homicidal exhortations of extremist imams. Murder -- particularly of the unarmed and innocent -- is a righteous deed for these people. The manifestos of Islamic militant groups are replete with paeans to killing infidels. When a suicide bomb goes off in Israel, Palestinian terrorist factions compete to claim responsibility for the carnage.
There is no appreciable number of people in this country, religious Christians or otherwise, who support the murder of abortion doctors. The same cannot be said of Muslims who support suicide bombings in the name of their religion.
Yet speak of the disproportionately violent strain in Islam to a "progressive" person and you'll be met with sneering recitations of millennia-old Christian crusades or Jewish settlements in the West Bank. As for conservative Christians' contemporary political endeavors, lobbying to ban the teaching of evolution in schools or forbidding same-sex marriage simply does not threaten society in quite the same way as the genital mutilation of young girls or the bombing of the London transit system.
I happen to support a legal regime that would, in Bill Clinton's famous words, keep abortion safe, legal and rare. I hold no brief for the religious right, and its views on homosexuality in particular offend (and affect) me personally. But it's precisely because of my identity that I consider comparisons between so-called Christianists (who seek to limit my rights via the ballot box) and Islamic fundamentalists (who seek to limit my rights via decapitation) to be fatuous.
In the coming days, we will hear more about how mainstream conservative organizations and media personalities created an "environment" in which the murder of an abortion doctor became an inevitability. Just as talk radio was blamed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an attempt will be made to extend the guilt for this crime from the individual who pulled the trigger to the conservative movement writ large. But the Christian right's responsible reaction to the death of George Tiller should put to rest the lie that Judeo-Christian extremists are anywhere near as numerous or dangerous as those of the Muslim variety.
by the associated press
What was Slaying suspect’s motive
WICHITA, Kan. — A man suspected of fatally shooting abortion doctor George Tiller was in jail Monday while investigators sought to learn more about his background, including his possible connections to anti-abortion groups.
Tiller, 67, was shot Sunday in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, police said. The gunman fired one shot at Tiller and threatened two other people who tried to stop him.
The suspect, identified by one law enforcement agency as Scott Roeder, was arrested about 170 miles away in a Kansas City suburb about three hours after the shooting.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston indicated the state has 48 hours to charge anyone who is in custody and said she planned to take the full two days to decide. She said any charges would be filed in state court.
Also, a law enforcement official said investigators have searched two homes as part of the inquiry into Tiller’s killing. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, said the homes are in Merriam, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo. The official did not know what turned up during the searches.
Roeder’s former wife, Lindsey Roeder, said he had lived at a house in Merriam but moved out months ago and was currently living in the Westport area of Kansas City. His brother, David Roeder, told The Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper the family is "shocked, horrified and filled with sadness at the death of Dr. Tiller” and the possible involvement of their relative.
He said his sibling suffered from mental illness at times in his life.
No bail allowed
Scott Roeder, 51, was returned to Wichita and was being held without bail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
The U.S. Marshals Service said that as a result of Tiller’s shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder had ordered it to "increase security for a number of individuals and facilities.” It gave no details.
Tiller’s clinic is under federal protection. He last had protection from marshals in 2001. Tiller and other doctors received such protection at different times in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, a man with the same name as the suspect has a criminal record and a background of anti-abortion postings on sympathetic Web sites.
But police said all early indications showed the shooter acted alone.
by the associated press
Tiller, 67, was shot Sunday in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, police said. The gunman fired one shot at Tiller and threatened two other people who tried to stop him.
The suspect, identified by one law enforcement agency as Scott Roeder, was arrested about 170 miles away in a Kansas City suburb about three hours after the shooting.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston indicated the state has 48 hours to charge anyone who is in custody and said she planned to take the full two days to decide. She said any charges would be filed in state court.
Also, a law enforcement official said investigators have searched two homes as part of the inquiry into Tiller’s killing. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, said the homes are in Merriam, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo. The official did not know what turned up during the searches.
Roeder’s former wife, Lindsey Roeder, said he had lived at a house in Merriam but moved out months ago and was currently living in the Westport area of Kansas City. His brother, David Roeder, told The Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper the family is "shocked, horrified and filled with sadness at the death of Dr. Tiller” and the possible involvement of their relative.
He said his sibling suffered from mental illness at times in his life.
No bail allowed
Scott Roeder, 51, was returned to Wichita and was being held without bail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
The U.S. Marshals Service said that as a result of Tiller’s shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder had ordered it to "increase security for a number of individuals and facilities.” It gave no details.
Tiller’s clinic is under federal protection. He last had protection from marshals in 2001. Tiller and other doctors received such protection at different times in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, a man with the same name as the suspect has a criminal record and a background of anti-abortion postings on sympathetic Web sites.
But police said all early indications showed the shooter acted alone.
by the associated press
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