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Don't get angry, get better
Jun. 1st, 2009 06:03 amAs you no doubt have heard before, Dr. George Richard Tiller was murdered yesterday in his church, in what can only be described as a terrorist act. Coming on the heels of a recent article about increasing death threats and harassment of judges, this depresses me more than I can say. What a country we live in, where we shoot doctors and judges.
Regardless of your feelings on abortion 'as a method of birth control,' late term abortions are exceedingly rare; and while early abortions can occur for any number of reasons, late term abortions generally take place for one reason and one reason only: that there is some medical reason why the baby will not survive the birth, or has an extremely short and painful life expectancy. It is the hardest choice for an expectant mother to make, but when it is necessary, it is absolutely necessary, and Dr. Tiller was one of only three doctors in the US who would do what is necessary, and do so in a compassionate and caring manner.
I'm not going to get angry, because if I started to get angry, there would be no bottom to it, and it would accomplish nothing. So instead, I'd prefer to do something vaguely productive, even if it's not much. I haven't looked at the I'm sure numerous posts celebrating his murder; I haven't googled Dr. Tiller, but I think I can guess what the top result for him is right now. Dr. Tiller, mass murderer, baby Kevorkian. So I'd like to start to change that with a little good old fashioned Googlebombing. (Does googlebombing still work?) I'd like to push something else to the top of the google list, so that the world will remember him as he truly was, not as the scapegoat for blind hatred. So please, if you care about these issues, consider posting this or something like it in your blog.
Regardless of your feelings on abortion 'as a method of birth control,' late term abortions are exceedingly rare; and while early abortions can occur for any number of reasons, late term abortions generally take place for one reason and one reason only: that there is some medical reason why the baby will not survive the birth, or has an extremely short and painful life expectancy. It is the hardest choice for an expectant mother to make, but when it is necessary, it is absolutely necessary, and Dr. Tiller was one of only three doctors in the US who would do what is necessary, and do so in a compassionate and caring manner.
I'm not going to get angry, because if I started to get angry, there would be no bottom to it, and it would accomplish nothing. So instead, I'd prefer to do something vaguely productive, even if it's not much. I haven't looked at the I'm sure numerous posts celebrating his murder; I haven't googled Dr. Tiller, but I think I can guess what the top result for him is right now. Dr. Tiller, mass murderer, baby Kevorkian. So I'd like to start to change that with a little good old fashioned Googlebombing. (Does googlebombing still work?) I'd like to push something else to the top of the google list, so that the world will remember him as he truly was, not as the scapegoat for blind hatred. So please, if you care about these issues, consider posting this or something like it in your blog.
Dr. Tiller was not just "an abortion doctor," he was a doctor who performed years of compassionate care for the women he knew. Dr. Tiller had standards and protocols and if they were not met, he would on some occasions refuse to perform a late term abortion when it was not a medical necessity. Dr. Tiller kept on working after years upon years of death threats, after actually having been shot once, because he believed in protecting women's rights and women's safely, and because he wanted to make sure that these women didn't end up like these women.
