Abortion doctor refused to quit

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-03 08:43

WICHITA, Kansas: To some he was an unflinching hero, to others a remorseless villain. As a late-term abortion doctor, George Tiller knew he had chosen a dangerous career, one that made him a lightning rod. His clinic was a fortress, his days marred by threats, but he refused to give up what he saw as his life's mission.

"He never wavered," says Susie Gilligan, who knew Tiller as part of her work in the Feminist Majority Foundation. "He never backed away. He had incredible strength. When you spoke to him, he was a soft-spoken man, a very gentle man. He said, 'This is what I have to do. Women need me. I know they need me'."

Abortion doctor refused to quit

Tiller, 67, whose Wichita, Kansas, clinic had been the target of anti-abortion protests for more than 2 decades, was fatally shot on Sunday while serving as an usher at his church. The suspect, identified by police as Scott Roeder, was taken into custody three hours later. He was booked without bail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

As one of a few doctors across the United States to perform third-trimester abortions, Tiller had survived an earlier shooting, his clinic was bombed, his home picketed. He hired an armored truck to take him to work for several weeks, he had federal marshals protecting him for 30 months. He built a new surgical center without windows and he was known to wear a bulletproof vest, sometimes even to church.

Through it all, he stood defiant.

When a pipe bomb heavily damaged his clinic in the mid 1980s, he hung a sign outside the rubble saying: "Hell, No. We Won't Go!" He offered a $10,000 award - which was never collected. When thousands of protesters gathered at the Women's Health Care Services clinic in 1991 for the 45-day "Summer of Mercy" demonstration staged by Operation Rescue, he was again unbowed.

"I am a willing participant in this conflict," he said at the time. "I choose to be here because I feel that it is the moral, it is the ethical thing to do."

He told The Wichita Eagle newspaper in 1991 that prayer and meditation helped him through hard times. "If I'm OK on the inside," he said, "what people say on the outside does not make much difference."

Tiller's outspokenness rankled his critics, who decried as a publicity stunt his offer several years ago to provide free abortions on the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. He said at the time at least 32 low-income women signed up for the free first-trimester abortions.

Abortion opponents also claimed Tiller's large financial involvement in Kansas politics thwarted prosecutions against him. They routinely blamed Tiller's "corrupt influences in the government" whenever legislation strengthening state abortion laws failed to pass the Legislature or were vetoed by the governor.

While anti-abortion activists have condemned Tiller's death, Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue - who also said the gunman was wrong - said on Monday the doctor was "a mass murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed".

Tiller, a former Navy flight surgeon, had hoped to become a dermatologist. But when his father, also a doctor, died in a plane crash, he took over the family practice. He soon learned the elder Tiller had performed abortions.

"In reading through some of his records, he realized his father had done abortions when they were illegal," says Bowman, his former spokeswoman. "At first, he was shocked. Then in going through those charts, he began to understand the importance of this procedure. It was important, he said, that women have a choice when dealing with technology that can diagnose severe fetal abnormalities before a baby is born.

"Prenatal testing without prenatal choices is medical fraud," he declared.