Asia-Pacific

Killer of US abortion doctor faces life

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-02 07:54

KANSAS CITY - The sentencing on Thursday of an anti-abortion activist who gunned down a Kansas doctor comes amid a bitter US debate over abortion that nearly derailed landmark healthcare reform legislation last month and is expected to remain a factor in US midterm elections.

Scott Roeder faces a minimum mandatory life sentence after his first-degree murder conviction for shooting one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers.

The 52-year-old Kansas City man's killing of Wichita doctor George Tiller last May has been a rallying point for both abortion opponents and abortion rights supporters. Both sides are eager to strengthen their positions politically after the heated healthcare debate.

"It is going to be a major issue in the elections," said National Right to Life Committee executive director David O'Steen. "And it is going to be a major issue in the legislatures."

New abortion-related laws are pending in several states including Kansas and Nebraska, where lawmakers on Tuesday passed bills aimed at limiting late-term abortions, generally considered procedures occurring after 20 weeks of gestation.

The moves come after the US Congress narrowly passed sweeping healthcare legislation late last month only after including last-minute concessions to abortion opponents. Those opponents have been vilified by anti-abortion advocates by threats and protests.

Prosecutors want the judge to require Roeder to serve at least 50 years before being eligible for parole. But supporters who say the doctor's death saved unborn babies want leniency.

"I believe the American people are finally waking up that when a woman has an abortion she is killing her unborn child," said anti-abortion activist Donald Spitz. "This is causing the pendulum to swing back to saving the lives of the unborn instead of snuffing them out."

In fact, observers say the man who gunned down one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions may have gotten what he wanted all along: It is markedly harder in Kansas to get an abortion.

Outside Kansas, abortion rights supporters say there's been a surge in late-term abortion practices.

"What he really did was murder a doctor in church, and the effect on abortion is negligible," said Dr LeRoy Carhart, a Nebraska doctor who worked part-time for Tiller.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Reuters