Don't get angry, get better

[kodalai]

As 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.

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.

Comments

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

When I read about this yesterday, I was in tears. I have more ability to understand of why people oppose abortions of accidental pregnancies where nothing's gone wrong yet (as you know I am pro-choice; I just can better understand the logic behind the argument) than I do of why people oppose late-term abortions. I don't believe healthy pregnancies are ever aborted late-term. I just don't believe it ever happens, despite propaganda claiming otherwise -- but when you know anything about the few doctors who actually do these procedures, you know they will simply refuse to end healthy pregnancies that late in the term. Yesterday I read a testimonial from a mother who had a late-term abortion of a very much wanted pregnancy because the fetus, she discovered, had no *lungs* and would have, as you say, a short and painful life expectancy (and she, the mother, was in and out and in and out of the hospital, at risk of her own life, because the pregnancy was in such bad shape). When she realized the procedure that would give her child a painless death and end the torment for both of them was illegal in her home state, she seriously considered suicide in order to spare the child the torture of being born and suffering until inevitable, painful death.

I am angry, but more heartbroken than angry. I just have to assume people don't understand what late-term abortions *are* or why they sometimes must be done. Nothing else makes sense to me.

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

I admit that before this news story broke I didn't really understand about them, either. Not that I was violently opposed to the idea -- I simply didn't know anything about them. But now I think it's very important that it is something everybody knows about.

[foxglove6.livejournal.com]

I like this way of fighting back. Thank you.