[R-G] The Legacy of George Tiller

[Sid Shniad]

http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2009/06/carole-joffe-the-legacy-of-george-tiller.html 

The Beacon Broadside June 4, 2009 

The Legacy of George Tiller 

By Carole Joffe 

[Today's blog post is from Carole Joffe, author of Dispatches from the 
Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of 
Us (Beacon Press, forthcoming January 2010) and Doctors of Conscience: the 
Struggle to provide Abortion before and after Roe v Wade (Beacon Press, 
1996) and professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis.] 

"It comes down to who is the patient. Is the woman the patient, or is the 
fetus the patient? One or other is the patient. I've never heard a fetus 
talk to me. I've heard thousands and thousands of women share their pain, 
their desperation, and their hopelessness." These words were spoken to me 
some twenty years ago by Dr. George Tiller, as I was researching a book on 
abortion providers' experiences before and after Roe v Wade. Tiller, who was 
brutally assassinated in his church on May 31, was one of the most 
compassionate-- and feminist-- individuals I have ever encountered. "Trust 
women" was his well-known motto, prominently displayed at his clinic in 
Wichita, Kansas. 

He was asked repeatedly by friends how he could continue his work in the 
face of the unending violence and legal harassment that he endured in the 
years leading up to his murder: his home and office were frequently 
blockaded (I recall hearing that he and his wife had to be helicoptered out 
of their house to attend a child's wedding, as antiabortion fanatics were 
surrounding his home); he was shot in both arms in 1993; and he was 
subjected to numerous lawsuits brought by a grandstanding anti-abortion 
Attorney General in Kansas and by Operation Rescue operatives, all of which 
he ultimately won, but which took a huge toll, financially and emotionally. 
His answer was always the same: "Where else can these women go?" 

Tiller's answer was not a rhetorical one. He was one of the very few 
physicians in the United States who provided abortion care well into the 
third trimester of pregnancy. It is this fact that made him so reviled in 
antiabortion circles, and unquestionably the most controversial abortion 
provider in the country. Operation Rescue relocated their offices to Wichita 
a few years ago, with the specific intent of closing him down. Each day, the 
women who came to him from all over the U.S., and from abroad as well, had 
to go through a gauntlet of protestors holding grotesque posters and 
screaming about "Tiller the baby killer." 

It is hardly surprising that antiabortion zealots would find Dr. Tiller such 
a convenient target, focusing on his late term procedures. What has been 
more surprising, and disappointing, to me has been the inadequate coverage 
of Tiller's work in most of the mainstream media in the days since his 
murder. I myself have spoken to a fair number of reporters, have read 
numerous stories from papers across the country, and consumed a great deal 
of television and radio reporting on this event. I have been struck that 
although all reporters mention that he offered late term abortions, as a way 
of explaining his notoriety in antiabortion circles, remarkably few of these 
print or radio and television journalists explained why Tiller did this, and 
who actually were the recipients of these procedures. The fact that so many 
of those reporting on Tiller were so oblivious of the circumstances of his 
patients is in itself a powerful indication of the marginality of both 
abortion providers and patients in American culture. 

In simplest terms, many of those who came to George Tiller's clinic for late 
second or third trimester abortions were women (and their partners) who were 
carrying much wanted pregnancies that had gone horribly wrong. These were 
women in many cases who had already set up cribs and had baby showers. Some 
of these women had fetuses with heartbreaking anomalies, that were 
discovered only later in pregnancy, such as anencephaly, a lethal birth 
defect in which most of the brain and parts of the skull are missing. Other 
women had themselves become very ill in the course of a pregnancy, such as 
the onset of cancer, which demanded a course of chemotherapy. Tiller, 
himself a practicing Christian, had set aside a space in his clinic-- a 
Quiet Room-- for grieving parents, who could if they wished, be counseled by 
a chaplain on staff, and participate in a baptism or other blessings for the 
lost pregnancy. 

In a perceptive piece written immediately after Tiller's death, the 
journalist Michelle Goldberg points out the irony that many of the 
procedures that he performed, for wanted pregnancies that had gone terribly 
wrong, "are as far away from the much-reviled concept of 'abortion on 
demand' that one could get... Almost anyone of childbearing age could end up 
needing Tiller's services." 

To be sure, not all of the abortions that Tiller performed were for 
difficult medical situations. Some were for wrenching social situations. 
Tiller was commonly referred to as "Saint George" within the abortion 
providing community, not only because he persisted in his practice for so 
long in the face of constant threats, but because he took on cases no one 
else would. To relate just one of numerous instances I have heard, a clinic 
director in the deep South was faced with a situation of a young girl, 
brought to the clinic by her mother: "a very pregnant eleven years, blond, 
blue eyes, and small... too far in the pregnancy for us to help." The girl 
had been raped by a relative. The solution chosen was a familiar one in the 
abortion providing world. The clinic staff donated money to the indigent 
family for travel expenses, sent them off to Wichita, and Tiller performed 
her abortion for free. 

Why did Dr. Tiller receive a constant stream of referrals from his 
colleagues across the country? Why are there only one or two other doctors 
remaining in the U.S. who have a practice similar to his? The answer lies in 
a combination of highly restrictive state laws and hospital regulations 
governing later abortions, inadequate training opportunities for these more 
complex procedures, and, of course, the kind of unbearable scrutiny that 
likely awaits anyone willing to undergo this work. 

In the wake of this horrific murder, many have rightly called for a more 
widespread condemnation of the violence that has plagued the abortion 
providing community for years. As Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned 
Parenthood aptly put it, "George Tiller needs more than candlelight vigils," 
and his death demands "massive outrage" from all sectors of society, 
particularly political leaders. 

But I also believe that another response to this killing must be to demand 
that the mainstream medical community acknowledge the reality that there 
will always be some women who need abortions later on in pregnancy. Local 
medical institutions must make provision for these cases-- especially since 
these women can no longer be sent off to Kansas, out of sight and mind of 
"respectable" doctors and hospitals. In the abstract, late term abortions 
are understandably distasteful to many. When considered in the context of 
real women's lives, however, these procedures are essential. This is what 
George Tiller understood. This will hopefully be his legacy.