Tiller was a hero and an amazing human being!!!!!

[inthebrain]

Kansas doctor, target of anti-abortion fanatics, gunned down in Wichita
By Patrick Martin
1 June 2009

Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider who has been the target of repeated attacks by right-wing elements linked to the Kansas Republican Party, was shot to death Sunday morning at his Wichita church.

The gunman, described as a white male, fled the scene in a powder blue Ford Taurus, but was reportedly taken into custody by police later in the day in New Century, Kansas, about 170 miles northeast of Wichita.

Johnson County sheriff's spokesman Tom Erickson later reported that Scott Roeder was the man whose car was stopped. Wichita police said charges were expected in the murder on Monday.

Dr. Tiller, who was 67 years old, was murdered inside Reformation Lutheran Church, where he was a member of the congregation. Tiller was serving as a church usher while his wife sang in the choir. He is the fourth abortion doctor murdered by right-wing religious fundamentalists since 1993.

One of a handful of doctors willing to provide third-trimester abortions in Kansas, Tiller has been subjected to a series of abusive prosecutions and lawsuits by right-wing politicians, most of them Republicans, and was frequently targeted for death threats from the fascistic wing of the anti-abortion groups. His Wichita clinic was bombed in 1985, and he was shot by an anti-abortion fanatic in 1993, who wounded him in both arms. His clinic was vandalized last month, with tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/doct-j01.shtml

[EFerrari]

1. Amy did a beautiful segment for him today:

Dr. George Tiller (1941-2009): Murdered Abortion Provider Remembered for Lifelong Dedication to Women’s Reproductive Health


Supporters of reproductive rights are mourning the killing of the abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. The sixty-seven-year-old Tiller was shot Sunday as he attended services at his Wichita, Kansas church. The gunman fled the scene, but a suspect was later caught in a Kansas City suburb. The suspect, fifty-one-year-old Scott Roeder, has a history of involvement in anti-abortion activism and was once arrested and jailed on explosives charges. He has ties to the right-wing separatist group known as the Freemen. We look at the life of Dr. Tiller with five women who worked alongside him to uphold reproductive rights: two women doctors who fly into Wichita every month to work alongside him performing abortions; two of the attorneys who defended him through years of legal harassment, one in Wichita and one in New York; and Ellie Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who knew him for twenty years.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/1/dr_george_tiller_1941_2009_murdered

Audio, video, transcript at link

[ShortnFiery]

2. If you want the whole story, watch/listen to the last half of Democracy Now, 1 June 09.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/1/dr_george_tiller_1941_2009_murdered

In 1991, Susie Gilligan—poor Susie—came to Wichita as—to help us put down the—or help us get through the anniversary celebration of the Roe—of the 1991 Summer of Mercy. OK, the Summer of Mercy. I got to experience a Federal Witness Program protection. Ashcroft, at the behest of National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood and the Fund, they broke his arm, and they supplied Federal Witness Protection Program protection for two weeks.

During this time, we developed a new Declaration of Reproductive Independence, which says, for every woman, each pregnancy is an invited guest into her body and a welcome addition to her family. Every woman, everywhere, invited guest into her body and a welcome addition to her family. We won. They went home. And all of my staff got to stand on the top rung of the winners’ stand. They received, for getting me—getting through this, a dozen roses, a memorial or a commemorative flag that flew over our office, and, in the best history of the Olympic Committee, $100 in small bills passed under the table.

Oh, we had a year of retribution, where they harassed our employees at home, stalked my wife, harassed business and vendors, and they tried to close us down. They published a list of all of our vendors on the internet. They put crosses that are exactly illegal in the eaves way.

But the good news is, we still live in the United States of America. The good news is that in Kansas, we are able to use the wide definition and the full implementation of the Roe v. Wade decision, which allows us to do post-viability terminations of pregnancy.