Sunday, May 31, 2009

Kansas Killer Practices Retroactive Abortion on Tiller



George Tiller the baby killer was shot dead, murdered while attending morning services at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas where he served as an usher.

Few figures ignited more passion and anger in pro-life supporters since Dr. Tiller openly practiced late term abortions on what many consider very tenuous grounds for clients able to pay the $5000 fee. His advocacy and practice made him a lightening rod in the abortion debate.

The reaction to his murder will be intense and highly politicized. Consider the difference in emphasis between the coverage both sourced as A/P stories between how The Wall Street Journal and USA Today report the murder;

Wall Street Journal
Prominent late-term abortion provider George Tiller was shot and killed Sunday in a Wichita church where he was serving as an usher, his attorney said. The gunman fled but a city official said a suspect is in custody.

USA Today
Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller, a prominent advocate for abortion rights wounded by a protester more than a decade ago, was shot and killed Sunday at a church in Wichita where he was serving as an usher and his wife was in the choir, his attorney said.

What makes Tiller a particularly compelling figure in the abortion debate is that he operated one of three medical practices in the country that provide abortions after the 21st week, five months into pregnancy. An additional political element to Tiller’s practice is his political involvement having donated thousands to former Kansas Governor, Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, now confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services for the Obama Administration mindful that as a State Senator in Illinois, Barack Obama stood in contrast to that body favor provisions allowing viable babies to be murdered, destroyed in the act of an intended abortion, though found as viable at the time the termination was instigated.

Dr. Tiller’s activities drew intense legal scrutiny. Late term abortion candidates require second opinions to validate conditions that would provide legal justification that an abortion is medically required. Prosecutors contended Tiller referred patients a doctor employed by Tiller, not an independent source as required by Kansas law. Though acquitted by a jury of such charges, Tiller’s adversaries contend that any woman who can pay the $5000 for his services can obtain a late term abortion.

While the abortion debate remains intense and highly polarizing, a growing consensus of Americans steadfastly opposes late term abortions particularly partial birth abortions where labor is induced while the baby is mutilated to complete the termination. Furthermore, as ultrasound technology becomes more advanced providing much sharper imagery of the fetus functioning in its prenatal environment, mothers are able to see a real baby too tiny and not adequately defined yet to join the real world. These issues have contributed to a growing trend toward polls showing more and more Americans identify themselves as pro-life.

Be clear on this, if a person believes life begins at conception, there is no compromise position. Any termination of pregnancy is murder. In cases of rape and incest, the child did not choose his or her parents. A child cannot be killed for the sake of situations beyond its control. Only in the case of demonstrable threats to a mother’s life where her survival is weighed against the life of an offspring are there grounds for debate. Therefore, any allowance for pro-life positions are a matter of defending murder.

George Tiller’s murder will create a political firestorm. Within the next couple of news cycles, there will be righteously-toned editorials and commentary condemning this assassination and as the media mindset so often presents, rather than holding the criminal himself responsible for his crimes, blame will surely fall on their most outspoken political adversaries who are the most vocal in their opposition to abortion and who have specifically identified Tiller as a major player practicing the most objectionable forms of abortion.

Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Newt Gingrich, among others, will be targeted for their rhetoric directed against Tiller’s activities. In the committed left-wing perspective of the mainstream media, such figures will be prosecuted and convicted in the media circus as accessories to this murder. One should not be surprised if somehow their influence will be worked in to help build the killer’s defense as being some kind of obsessive person, he then found moral license to murder Tiller based on the views of talk-show hosts he faithfully supported.

The left will come close to making a martyr of Tiller using his death as a rallying point for abortion rights, gun control, and the fairness doctrine as there should have been, in liberal ideology, immediate voices countering the anti-abortion positions aired by some of the country’s most popular talk show hosts.

Viewing his life’s work since going into the abortion business in 1973, George Tiller is a particularly villainous figure for pro-life believers. That he sought to eliminate all impediments to unrestricted abortions make him a hero to the so-called pro choice viewpoint.

That Dr. Tiller expedited the ease of securing a legal late term abortion against babies perhaps only days away from being ready for life in the outside world for the sake of mothers, who apparently could come up with psychological causes as justification for their medical reason to abort, is quite simply a moral atrocity. While we would prefer less inflammatory rhetoric, at what point do such justifications become the grounds for genocide against the unborn?

Doctor Tiller’s murder does nothing to advance resolution of this debate which must result into a higher respect for life and encouragement of more responsible behavior regarding everything that leads to the possibility of considering destroying babies.

The exact moment in the process from when sperm enters egg and develops toward a living baby becomes uniquely a human life, a soul, is a subject theologians and philosophers can possibly debate for eternity. Regardless of whether some argue there is a little window of time allowing for second thoughts about bringing a child into being, our own eyes can tell us what our hearts should feel, fetuses are being destroyed well beyond the point at which a collection of cells have multiplied and specialized into becoming a human life.

Society must evaluate the entire series of issues that lead up to the possible decision of ending a pregnancy. This includes teaching responsible sexual behavior and clearly indentifying some forms of behavior as wrong. Since the birth control pill provided for much more active sexual behavior while at the same time traditional values concerning sexual behavior and life have been reduced to relativity, society is suffering the consequences of such rampant permissiveness. Abortion is but one issue. Millions of children born without any paternal involvement other than serving as the sperm donor in the sexual act contributes to poverty, failing schools, and urban violence. The link between single parent children and a myriad of social problems is undeniable. Such behavior is glamorized by Hollywood sluts and their partners-du-jour. They might have the financial ability to provide for their children though their mental bankruptcy is subject to our criticism.

No debate is more polarizing that the issues regarding abortion but irresponsible sexual behavior is the underlying issue no one wants to talk about. Doctor Tiller is dead, but the debate surely will only get uglier, more emotional, more divided, and other tragedies beyond the babies being killed are a certainty.

Be clear on one thing, it is easy for white middle class men to categorically oppose all forms of abortion as they will never become pregnant. For their daughters, it’s a different matter entirely.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I consider myself to be pro-life. As such, I believe in the sanctity of all human life from conception through natural death. Let me repeat that with emphasis add:

I believe in the sanctity of ALL human life from conception through natural death.

As such, I grieve for the family of the murdered George Tiller. My thoughts and prayers are with them in their time of grief.