George Tiller (1941-2009), Abortion Doctor
Thursday, June 11, 2009
I would like to add my voice to those remembering Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor who was killed in church on May 31. He was an amazing human being. As a Planned Parenthood educator and counselor in rural Kansas for 20 years, I referred hundreds of women to Dr. Tiller and was always impressed with the quality of his medical services and how kind and supportive his staff was. This was so important when our patients (usually 17 or 18, sometimes 15 or 40) were desperate and scared about being pregnant, some of them even ignorant of how they got pregnant because there was usually no sex education in schools in the Bible Belt; and sometimes they were tragically pregnant as the result of rape or incest. Dr. Tiller treated all his patients with such compassion. He once told about a nine-year-old girl who was brought to him pregnant as a result of incest. Anti-choice people say a young adolescent is not mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion. The logic there escapes me. Does that mean a nine-year-old child is mature enough to carry a pregnancy to term? Where is the compassion in that conclusion?
George Tiller (1941-2009), Abortion Doctor
I remember a patient who waited too long to decide to terminate a pregnancy and Dr. Tiller couldn't do the procedure. She did not meet the criteria for a post-viability abortion. Late abortions are only done if the mother's life is endangered by continuing the pregnancy or if the fetus is severely deformed. This teen could not get a late abortion, and was scared to go home. Dr. Tiller and his wife, Jeanne, took her into their home for a few months and supported her in continuing the pregnancy and placing the baby for adoption.
When Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly talks about Dr. Tiller as a baby killer and money grubber, it is infuriating to me. He was just the opposite. He has saved lives, and treated his patients with such compassion. Beside the devastation to his wonderful family, devoted staff, and grateful patients, our country has lost one of the few doctors (three are left) who were willing to risk their own lives to help women in need of late abortions. By killing the doctors, the anti-choice fanatics have been successful in making abortions harder and harder to obtain. In the U.S., 87 percent of counties now have no abortion provider.
It is important to understand that we who support the right of women to choose abortion are not pro-abortion. We are pro-choice. Example: A woman in our little Kansas town was happily five months pregnant with her second child. She had a happy marriage and a two-year-old child. She was diagnosed with a rapidly growing skin cancer. The doctor predicted that the cancer would kill her if she did not start immediate treatment, and they could not treat her if she was pregnant. It was a tough choice for her and her husband, but they were against abortion and decided to continue the pregnancy. She gave birth to a healthy baby and died a week later. People who are pro-choice accept that she had every right to make the choice she did, as sad as it was.
Although I lived three hours away from Wichita, where Dr. Tiller worked, I had occasional meetings in town and always stopped in to thank him for his service and generosity to my patients. I always felt sad when he gave me a hug and I could feel his bullet-proof vest under his shirt. That drove home the realization that his work to help women put him at great risk of losing his life every day.
In closing, here is an interesting bit of information about the Tiller family. As a young man, Dr. Tiller took over his father's general practice of medicine, because his father was suddenly killed when his small plane crashed. I recently found out that when he took over his father's practice, Dr. Tiller learned for the first time that his father had been doing abortions for 30 years before Roe v. Wade. He, too, had risked his life and license to help women. We need to give these doctors our support and protection for the heroic work they do.
The problem of the lack of abortion providers in many areas of the country is being addressed by an organization called Medical Students for Choice. They are working to ensure that medical schools train doctors to provide women with comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including abortion. I decided a way to honor Dr. Tiller would be to support this group. Dr. Tiller also strongly supported Planned Parenthood