Kirkepiscatoid

Once in a while, something happens in the news that just kicks me in the pit of my stomach.

Coming home from lunch at my cousins to read today that Dr. George Tiller was murdered while serving at an usher at his church was one of those things.

Dr. Tiller was known to me as the medical director of Women's Health Services in Wichita, KS. To the right wing press, he was known as "The abortionist."

Now, I'm going to be blunt here. What a person wants to believe about "when life begins" is their business. How people feel about contraception, or abortion, or fetal stem cell research, or frozen embryos is their business. It's a free country. But two things come to mind here....

1. I don't care how strongly one feels about abortion in either direction, but the fact remains it is legal in the United States...and you can count me in as one who is grateful it is legal. In my training, on my OB/GYN rotations, I was taught by a few older OB/GYN's from the "pre-Roe" era, who remember the days of septic homemade and badly botched abortions. Desperate women do desperate things, no matter if it is legal or not. I do not want to return to a time when desperate women take matters underground.

2. To shoot this man to death in the sanctuary of the church adds a new level of sick behavior to it.

But wait, as the infomercials say, there's more...

As I read the article, it was the quote by Troy Newman of Operation Rescue that left me cold.
His response to the shooting was, "...I’m a tireless advocate and spokesman for the pre-born children who are dying in clinics everyday. Mr. Tiller was an abortionist. But this wasn’t personal. We are pro life, and this act was antithetical to what we believe.”

This wasn't PERSONAL? Say WHAT? So being "an abortionist" makes you worthy of basically being executed in God's hosue? I just simply have no words for a reply like that.

I've got news for Mr. Newman. We're ALL abortionists.

When we fail to see as a nation that we need health care for all who cannot afford prenatal care, and they miscarry, we are all abortionists.

When we argue about the various biologic factors of hormone-based contraception, of IUD's and barrier methods of contraception, yammering on about "when life begins" and carrying on like we're figuring out how many angels dance on the head of a pin, instead of working harder to PREVENT unwanted pregnancies, we are all abortionists.

Believe me, I would rather prevent a thousand unwanted pregnancies, than abort just one. That doesn't change, however, the fact that the decision to end a preganancy by means of abortion is a decision left to a woman, her doctor, and her God.

I am sure there are those out there who feel some sense of justification for this in the context of their very narrow definition of the beginnings of life, that in their minds this does not come close to "tit for tat" in their worldview. But to do this to this man, in the house of the Lord bespeaks an evil that is beyond anything I can even fathom. I'm just out of words on this one.