Abortion remains a sticking point in health care reform legislation. The House version of the bill would allow people to use federal subsidies to buy private insurance that covers abortion, but only if the federal funds don’t go toward paying for an abortion. In other words, the insurance companies would have to use money from other sources, such as private employer insurance premiums, to pay for the coverage. But some House Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, want a complete ban, and may have enough votes to derail the bill.
A proposed November online auction to benefit the legal defense of Scott Roeder, accused of killing abortion doctor George Tiller, surely doesn’t square with eBay’s policy against allowing listings that promote or glorify violence or “instruct others to engage in illegal activity.” The distasteful items to be sold — including an Army of God manual, a recipe book by convicted Tiller shooter Shelley Shannon and drawings from Roeder — seem inseparable from the use of violence and illegal activity aimed at ending abortion. Unfortunately, even if eBay nixes the appalling auction, it probably could find another home on the wild Web. Roeder deserves a high-quality defense, but he does not deserve to be celebrated in cyberspace or otherwise.
George Tiller’s Wichita abortion practice ended with his murder. Pro-choice Gov. Kathleen Sebelius went to Washington, D.C., leaving a pro-choice successor with no plans to run for the job. Kansas’ likely next governor is Sam Brownback, perhaps the most anti-abortion member of the U.S. Senate. So it was curious to see the reaction of Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, to last week’s resignation of Jack Confer as executive director of the Kansas Board of Healing Arts: “Jack Confer was our last hope against the complete and total corruption of this state by abortion forces,” Culp told the Topeka Capital-Journal, “and with his resignation, no matter what the reason, that hope is dashed.” Whatever drove Confer’s decision, the board seemingly has yet to find its footing after its 2008 overhaul by the Legislature. Kansans need a health care regulatory authority that is professional, apolitical and stable.
Most pro-life groups, including Operation Rescue, condemned the murder of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller and didn’t try to rationalize it in any way. Yet “conservative crusader” Star Parker, speaking Monday as part of the Civic Engagement Lecture Series at Wichita State University, compared accused killer Scott Roeder to Nat Turner, who led an uprising against slavery in 1831. She said that Roeder illustrated the hopelessness among those who oppose abortion. On the contrary, Tiller’s murder illustrates the danger of inciting unstable people with reckless rhetoric.
No surprise that a mailer for the U.S. Senate campaign of Rep. Todd
Tiahrt, R-Goddard, described his commitment to “fight for the rights of
the unborn.” But the names on the mailing list reportedly included Scott
Roeder, awaiting trial on charges of killing Wichita abortion doctor
George Tiller. “Oh, great,” a campaign spokesman told the Kansas City
Star. “We’ll make the vendor aware of it.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was asked by the Washington Post whether there should be some federal funding of abortions. “The president has made it pretty clear that Congress and the new health insurance plan will not provide federal funds for abortions,” Sebelius said. She also was asked what she thought about the archbishop of Kansas City, Kan., having told her when she was Kansas governor that she shouldn’t take communion because she was a pro-choice politician. “Well, it was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced in my life,” Sebelius said. “I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and I feel that my actions as a parishioner are different than my actions as a public official and that the people who elected me in Kansas had a right to expect me to uphold their rights and their beliefs even if they did not have the same religious beliefs that I had. And that’s what I did: I took an oath of office and I have taken an oath of office in this job and will uphold the law.”
Troy Newman, president of Wichita-based Operation Rescue, sent out an emergency fundraising plea to the anti-abortion group’s supporters. He wrote: “Not only did George Tiller’s death throw everybody in the pro-life movement for a loop (and especially us), but the economic crisis our nation is suffering from has brought our financial support to nearly a halt.” Funding willing, Newman says, “in the next 30 days, we’re planning to launch the most ambitious and most significant project in our entire history. It’s something that’s going to devastate the abortion cartel. It could even help end abortion in America once and for all.”
A lengthy weekend article in the New York Times by David Barstow thoughtfully tells the story of the life, practice and violent death of George Tiller, and captures the passions and defiance on both sides of the abortion issue in Wichita. The cast of the article and online multimedia package is familiar to Wichitans, though not every detail will be. Barstow observes that “not a single Kansas politician of statewide prominence showed up” for Tiller’s June funeral and that some anti-abortion activists view Tiller with grudging respect. Mark Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, called Tiller “very smart” and a “great businessman” and “worthy adversary.”
Arguing on the House floor Thursday against allowing public-funded abortions within the District of Columbia, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, took the regrettable step of wondering aloud whether such a “financial incentive” might have prompted the single mother of President Obama to abort him. “There is a financial incentive that will be put in place, paid for by tax dollars, that will encourage women who are single parents, living below the poverty level, to have the opportunity for a free abortion,” Tiahrt said. “If you take that scenario and apply it to many of the great minds we have today, who would we have been deprived of? Our president grew up in similar circumstances. If that financial incentive was in place, is it possible that his mother may have taken advantage of it?” Tiahrt didn’t stop there, unfortunately, also raising the specter of an aborted Justice Clarence Thomas, inviting “another round of questions over how the GOP is actually relating to minority communities,” noted a Huffington Post blogger.
A Gallup poll released last month found that 51 percent of Americans called themselves pro-life rather than pro-choice — the first time the poll has had a pro-life majority. But that doesn’t mean that a majority want Roe v. Wade overturned. Of those surveyed in a new CBS News/New York Times poll, 62 percent thought that the Roe decision was a good thing and 64 percent didn’t want it overturned.
Kansans may not be thinking much about the increasingly likely governorship of Sen. Sam Brownback starting in 2011, but other media observers are on it. The blog Feministing fretted: “Brownback equates reproductive rights with slavery, says rape and incest survivors shouldn’t have access to abortion, has opposed contraception access for low-income women, supported the global gag rule, and has backed a whole host of abortion restrictions. So, yeah, he’d be bad news for the women of Kansas.” And a Brownback item on the liberal American Prospect’s Tapped blog was headlined: “New Front in Abortion Wars: the Kansas Governor’s Mansion.”
Three Wichita-based anti-abortion groups say they have received death threats in response to the murder of George Tiller, The Eagle reported today. Some of the threats have been aimed at anti-abortion activities planned in Wichita this weekend, Operation Rescue president Troy Newman said. Many abortion-rights supporters are understandably upset about Tiller’s murder and about the tactics and rhetoric used by some pro-life groups. But threats of violence are never acceptable.
In the beginning, the Roe v. Wade decision “was more about protecting doctors than empowering women,” Kansas City Star columnist Barbara Shelly wrote. She noted how Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who wrote the 1973 opinion, was concerned that physicians not face criminal charges for acting in the best interests of their patients. “The decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgment,” Blackmun wrote in his opinion. But, Shelly wrote, the decision “has not protected physicians from determined protest groups, overzealous prosecutors and cold-blooded killers.”
“Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment,” columnist Paul Krugman asserts. “Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the RNC haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that ‘some’ called Dr. Tiller ‘Tiller the Baby Killer,’ that he had ‘blood on his hands,’ and that he was a ‘guy operating a death mill.’ But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House. And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.”
In a Wall Street Journal column headlined “Red State Story,” Thomas Frank ponders the shock of pro-life leaders at suggestions that their movement could be associated with the murder of George Tiller. The reason for their surprise? “The culture wars are not meant to be taken seriously,” he writes. “Yes, right-wing invective dabbles in nightmare visions of treason and conspiracy and rampant paganism and a homegrown holocaust right here on Main Street, USA. Yes, it ritually denounces liberals as members of a class fundamentally alien to the American way of life. But these are the ingredients of entertainment, not politics.
“Culture war makes you feel noble and heroic. It sells books, it drives up the ratings of ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ it brings in millions in direct-mail contributions — but everybody knows you can’t make Hollywood change its ways by walking the streets of Wichita carrying a sign deploring the ‘culture of death.’”
The Hill newspaper noted that of the six members of the Kansas congressional delegation, only Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., posted a statement about the murder of George Tiller of his Web site. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., introduced the resolution condemning Tiller’s murder that passed the House Tuesday. It extended condolences to Tiller’s family and “commits to the American principle that tolerance must always be superior to intolerance, and that violence is never an appropriate response to a difference in beliefs.” All four Kansans in the House were part of the unanimous vote for the resolution, which also noted that 38 people in the United States have been killed in places of worship over the past decade.
There’s no other person than commentator Bill O’Reilly who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller’s name first appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O’Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as “Tiller the baby killer.” Though he never advocated anything violent or illegal, the Fox bully portrayed the doctor as a murderer on the loose, allowed to do whatever he wanted by corrupt and decadent authorities. O’Reilly didn’t tell anyone to do anything violent, but he did put Tiller in the public eye, and help make him the focus of a movement with a history of violence. Flinging around words like “blood on their hands,” “pardon,” “country club” and “judgment day” was sensationally irresponsible. — Gabriel Winant, Salon
We need to be really, really careful about blaming people for murder. The reprehensible slaying of George Tiller, because he performed abortions, shocks the conscience. The man who pulled the trigger — a suspect is in custody — is responsible. But within hours, the liberal blogosphere was aflame with posts declaring that Bill O’Reilly bears some responsibility for the killing. I’m not going to join the attack. It is perfectly fair to hold the Fox News host accountable for his words and to question whether he has gone too far in personally assailing Tiller time and time again. But is it his fault if some abortion-hating fanatic decides to kill another human being? If you believe in a woman’s right to choose, you have a duty, it seems to me, to speak out against those who would have the government take that right away. But if you believe abortion is murder, you also have the right to speak out against the practice. That is part of a noisy democracy that places a premium on free speech. — Howard Kurtz, Washington Post
George Tiller “was too often defined by his adversaries,” columnist Barbara Shelly wrote. “On Web sites, TV and radio talk shows, and in legislative hearings, they portrayed him as the reckless ‘abortionist,’ willing to euthanize babies close to birth just so the mother could fit into a prom dress or attend a rock concert.” Shelly contends that was a cruel deception. “The overwhelming majority of the 250 to 300 women a year who sought late-term abortions from Tiller had planned their pregnancies,” she said. “They came to him heartbroken and afraid, carrying fetuses with malfunctioning kidneys, missing organs and syndromes certain to cause death in the womb or soon after birth. . . . Contrary to the false portrayal of him by anti-abortion activists and politicians, Tiller didn’t automatically consent to perform an abortion for any patient who requested one. He understood the constraints of Kansas law, and he knew he was being watched.”
Today the survivors of George Tiller announced their decision to close his Women’s Health Care Services permanently and not be involved in any similar clinic. That was their decision to make. The impact is profound on Wichita, however. It means that area women will be forced to travel three hours or more to seek abortions. The nearest clinics are in Overland Park. Any woman in a position to seek a late-term abortion will have to travel farther. Unless or until Wichita gains another abortion provider, the decision also will end the community’s run as the epicenter of the abortion fight.
Suspect Scott Roeder sure has a lot to say for himself, as if allegedly shooting George Tiller to death weren’t enough of a statement. Roeder, once associated with an anti-government group that objected to obeying laws and paying taxes, has contacted Associated Press multiple times from the Sedgwick County Jail to warn of additional threats, fret about his family and complain about “deplorable conditions” in jail. As one Eagle reader said in an e-mail: “It’s a bit ironic that Roeder, who denied the state’s authority and its taxing power, has a sense of entitlement that demands services from government despite his unwillingness to contribute to the commonweal.” Still, Sedgwick County Sheriff Robert Hinshaw and other authorities obviously need to ensure that Roeder’s treatment is by the book.
In today’s Opinion pages, we have some excerpts of newspaper editorials from around the nation about the murder of George Tiller. To read the full editorials: USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, New York Times, Boston Globe. Here are links to more editorials: Kansas City Star, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Washington Times, Tulsa World, Cleveland Plain Dealer.
On Monday, talk show host Bill O’Reilly defended the vitriolic rhetoric he used frequently regarding Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller. “No backpedaling here,” he said. “Everything we said about Tiller was true.” But on Tuesday, O’Reilly claimed that his many references to “Tiller the baby killer” were merely reporting what pro-life groups were calling Tiller. Not true. On at least five broadcasts in the past three months, O’Reilly referred to Tiller as “the baby killer,” and he wasn’t reporting what others were saying. On one of those programs, he also claimed that former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is so pro-abortion that she “wants the babies done for.”
Gov. Mark Parkinson joined calls for less vitriolic rhetoric in the abortion debate. “People that are pro-life are not terrorists, and people who are pro-choice are not baby killers,” Parkinson said. “They are people that have a different view on a very controversial issue.” He said that the inflammatory rhetoric “is not helpful.”
Bill O’Reilly is taking some heat for the rhetoric he has used over the years about George Tiller. O’Reilly talked about Tiller on at least 29 episodes of “The O’Reilly Factor” from 2005 to 2009, according to Salon magazine. O’Reilly referred to him as “Tiller the baby killer” and said he had “blood on his hands.” O’Reilly also said that there should be “a special place in hell for this guy” and likened Tiller’s abortion clinic to Nazi Germany. O’Reilly defended his remarks Monday and said that “every single thing we said about Tiller was true, and my analysis was based on those facts.”
Though we still don’t know much about Scott P. Roeder, who allegedly murdered Wichita abortion provider George Tiller, Kansas City Star columnist Mike Hendricks thinks some blame for the killing may rest with the “vitriolic rhetoric aimed at Tiller these past couple of decades by anti-abortion activists.” He said that certain groups “fomented hate toward a man who, rightly or wrongly, believed he was serving a noble purpose by being one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions.” And that blind hatred, Hendricks said, may have prompted “some maniac to take a gun into a church and shoot a man to death.”
