Here’s an update on Dr. George Tiller, who is on trial for violating Kansas abortion law. A reporter for television station KAKE, Cayle Thompson, is live blogging the trial. From the blog —
Monnat asks why so few doctors perform abortions now. Tiller says it’s because of the threat to the doctor’s families, themselves and their lives. He recounts how his clinic was bombed in 1986. “It takes people who are dedicated to the care of women and their health care rights after such a bombing,” Tiller says. The bombing caused around $100,000 in damages.
In 1991, Tiller’s clinic was the sight of the Summer of Mercy, where hundreds of protestors gathered to picket. Tiller says on days when women would come to his clinic, protestors would block the entrance and have to be forcibly removed by police for patients to get through. Tiller says police made approximately 2,000 arrests during the protests. …
… In 1993, Doctor Tiller was shot by an abortion protestor. It happened as he left work. Tiller said he saw somebody approach his car. He thought it was an abortion opponent preparing to hand him literature. But when he saw her clearly, he realized she was carrying a gun.
“She shot at me five times,” Tiller told jurors. “She hit me in each arm. It was attempted murder.” …
… In 1994, one year after Tiller was shot, FBI investigators learned he was the #1 target for assasination by radical abortion opponents. He was given protection by federal US Marshalls from 1994 to 1997.
This is terrorism. Why isn’t the government treating it as such? Well, I know why. Let’s go on.
Tiller tells the jury how some abortion protestors have broken into his church during services and disrupted worship. He tells them his staff has been picketed outside their own homes, with photos of aborted fetuses plastered around the neighborhood. …
… He also tells jurors how protestors would picket the hotel where his out-of-town patients stayed. Some would even follow patients to their rooms, and slip anti-abortion literature under the doors.
State and federal governments have coddled these people. Anti-abortion extremists are dangerous, and it is way past time they were treated as such.
Update: I see that in the afternoon testimony, the prosecutors asked Dr. Tiller how much money he makes. This is one of the obsessions of the Fetus People; that the abortion “industry” exists because it’s a big money maker.
Dr. Tiller, whose practice includes more difficult late-term abortions, says the average abortion in his clinic costs $6,000. But if he were just in it for the money, he’d do a lot better delivering live babies.
For patients not covered by health insurance, the typical cost of a vaginal delivery without complications ranges from about $9,000 to $17,000 or more, depending on geographic location and whether there is a discount for uninsured patients. The typical cost for a C-section without complications or a vaginal delivery with complications ranges from about $14,000 to $25,000 or more.
By the mid- to late-1990s, the anti-abortion movement had suffered a number of setbacks, including the assassination of doctors, an apparent attack-for-hire on a Massachusetts women’s clinic in which staff were killed, and various bombings by neofascists like Eric Rudolph.
The movement responded by inventing the red herring of “partial-birth abortion,” an allegedly egregious practice that the anti-abortionists had somehow managed to overlook for 25 years. I may be mistaken, but isn’t that red herring the reason Dr. Tiller is in a courtroom today?
It always frustrated me that no one questioned the sudden discovery of a practice that had been in place for a quarter of a century, until said “discovery” could provide cover for a movement increasingly steeped in violence and hypocrisy.
iirc, in the 1990s RICO anti-conspiracy statutes were used successfully against anti-abortionists in at least one federal court. The defense against their domestic terrorism should involve dragging them into court– criminal, civil, and the court of public opinion.
Why doesn’t the government treat domestic terrorism as terrorism?
Michael — because in the U.S., the terrorists are the same people who turn out votes for the GOP.
Off topic: Maha, have you seen this NYer piece?
(And Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style is back in print!)
gordon — Thanks for the link!
I’m going back to using Mahakal here like I do everywhere else, because it’s just too confusing with two Michaels posting, especially when we seem to be saying the same thing.
Mahakal/Michael (and maha) – the same thing happened to me last week. I made a short comment, and someone copied both my commenter name and the text of my comment, and then added “Forgot to mention good post! Can’t wait to seeing the next one!” (or words virtually identical). I don’t recall the cloned comment’s “gravatar,” but that purple feller with the one-tooth grin does look familiar.
Accident? Spammer? Troll? Miss Lucy playing with the computer mouse?
Correction – the gravatar on the previous cloned comment was a green triangle with glasses (but it did have one tooth). It appears under “We Are Really, Really Angry), 3/18/09 at 1:38 pm.
As I recall, the Comment Box disappeared not long after. Wooooooo….
I do believe the purple feller was a spammer. He’s gone.
George Tiller’s attorney, Dan Monnat, is a good friend of mine. He grew up, Catholic, in Wichita, and his mother still belongs to the Catholic Women’s League. Apparently, at one of their meetings, a friend approached her and said, “when is that son of yours going to stop defending that ABORTIONIST!”
Dan’s mother responded, “I didn’t see you complaining when he was defending those molester priests.”
“How DARE these stupid young women even contemplate throwing away MY child!! I cannot conceive, and I want a child so badly that I cannot think rationally. I see all those babies as MY potential baby, and many of my brainwashed friends see them as mine, too.
I am so deluded that I cannot consider what a profound infringement it is on a woman to expect her to carry MY baby to term and then give him/her to me. Screw her life! She is a slut anyway to have an unplanned pregnancy! She should sacrifice her firstborn and suffer lifelong pain so that I can be a mother!”
Yep, they exist. In the thousands.
If only we could put each and every one of them in the positions that these women are in, faced with making such a decision. Then we could say Sorry, you helped change the law. Here’s a hanger. Good luck.”