Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/24680
DR. TILLER Over the decades, given a highly organized move- ment of escalating vehemence and, ultimately, violence against abortion providers—it proved a dangerous un- dertaking. Only a doctor steadfast about a woman’s right to choose would dare take it on. [“A Man Who Trusted Women”] was beautifully said. Without getting sucked into the “culture war” rheto- ric, it really gave due respect to George and nailed the seriousness and danger of the fringe extreme right. —Carol Downer Cofounder, Feminist Women’s Health Center, Los Angeles Friend and colleague of Dr. George Tiller I was happy to be a pledge signer [“We Thank and Support Abortion Providers,” Summer 2009] and com- mit to sharing my abortion story. I shared my story on September 27 with a local paper, the Mansfield News Journal [in] Mansfield, Ohio, and let them know about recent attacks on clinic escorts in Akron, Ohio. My op-ed, “Why Abortion Is Needed, and Why Ohio Clinic Violence Must Stop,” let readers know about my life as a clinic escort and the recent violent attack on one of our pro-choice, openly gay escorts who was hospitalized with six broken ribs and a concussion. People need to be aware of the escalation in clin- ic violence and that it must stop. Thank you Ms. for honoring Dr. Tiller, and others who [work] at abortion clinics. —Nancy Dollard Uniontown, OH One possible way of ending the mur- der of abortion providers is to great- ly increase the number of abortion providers. All hospitals should be required to provide abortion services. Doctors should be made to feel proud to be performing this critically needed service. One thing the nuts have accomplished over the years has been to make the public feel that there is something wrong with hav- ing an abortion. Contrast that with www.msmagazine.com “SOME PEOPLE WANT TO WALK ACROSS THE bridge, others want to follow,” says Susan Hill, speak- ing of pioneering abortion providers like herself and George Tiller. “Some people are on the front lines.” Hill, who had been a hospital social worker, helped A MAN WHO TRUSTED WOMEN D DR. GEORGE TILLER LEAVES A LEGACY OF COURAGE, TENACITY AND AN ABIDING DEDICATION TO WOMEN’S RIGHTS BY MICHELE KORT 34 | SUMMER 2009 Dr. George Tiller open an abortion clinic just two weeks after Roe v.Wade was decided, and has subsequently operated as many as 11 at a time in various underserved communities. Like Tiller, she came to know not just the gratitude of her patients, but the horror of anti-abortion terrorism. At first, however, there were just nuns protesting at her clinic, sent by their church. “Peaceful,” says Hill. As early as 1976, though, peaceful protests turned violent. “The rhetoric escalated, the protests outside clinics escalated, we started to get threatened,” says Hill. Anti-abortion extremists turned to arson, bomb- ings, severe vandalism. “We used to say, ‘Gee, where are the nuns?’” says Hill. Tiller, too, hadn’t expected terrorism—like having his R. GEORGE TILLER PLANNED TO BE A DERMATOLOGIST. He could have led a comfortable, secure life with his wife, Jeanne, their four children and, ultimately, their 10 grandchil- dren. Instead, Tiller decided to enlist in what shouldn’t be— but is—one of the most perilous jobs in the United States: women’s reproductive health care. In addition to a family practice, Tiller decided to treat women who chose to have abortions. It was a specialty that did not become legal nationally un- til 1973 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v.Wade. Nonethe- less, some brave physicians performed abortions on the sly before then, risking their licenses and livelihoods because they recognized how strong women’s needs were for their services. George Tiller’s father, Jack, was one of them. A family practice physician himself, Jack died in a 1970 plane crash that also took the lives of his wife, daughter and son-in-law—a tragedy that led George to leave dermatology, return to his hometown of Wichita, Kan., and take over for his father. That was when the younger Tiller learned, to his great surprise, that his father had been performing abortions, inspired to do so in the mid-1940s after a woman he had refused to help lost her life from a botched abortion. Would the new Dr. Tiller, some patients asked, be willing to help? He eventually said yes, taking on a lifelong mission that by then had become legal. Tiller called it “making the world a better place…one woman at a time.” www.feminist.org clinic bombed in 1986. Some 1,100 were arrested for blockading Tiller’s clinic during the “Summer of Mercy” demonstrations organized by Operation Rescue in 1991, and even on the most ordinary day five to 10 protestors showed up. Besides being bombed, the clinic was also repeatedly vandalized—the last time this past May. “While I was developing this practice between 1973 and 1985 I thought I was just Joe Blow family physician, raising my kids, stamping out disease and taking family vacations,” he told the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Young Women’s Leadership Conference in March 2008. “[But] it has been impressed on me that there are a lot of people in the United States who don’t like what we do.” He used a similar dark humor in telling conferees, “The phrase ‘a shot in the arm’…has had an entirely dif- ferent meaning to me.” Anti-abortion extremist Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon shot Tiller in both arms in 1993 dur- ing an assassination attempt as he tried to leave his clinic. The attack didn’t stop him: He just hired a Brink’s ar- mored car for a time to take him to and from work, and gradually built his clinic into a fortress. “Hell no, we www.msmagazine.com won’t go” became his motto. Tiller had become particularly known by anti-abortion forces— and demonized with such epi- thets as “Tiller the Killer”— because he was a dedicated advo- cate and political activist for women’s right to choose. In 2002, the anti-abortion group Opera- tion Rescue and its leader, Troy Newman, moved to Wichita from Southern California with the express purpose of clos- ing down Tiller’s clinic. In subsequent years, Newman em- ployed aggressive and highly unsettling harassment of Tiller, his family and clinic workers. Tiller also became well-known for providing what the anti-abortion movement turned into a hot-button rallying point: late abortions, performed at the end of the second or third trimester. Most providers don’t perform these, both because they’re highly specialized and for fear of running afoul of ever-more-stringent state and federal laws regulat- ing what techniques can be employed. Blinded by inflammatory rhetoric, the country lost sight of what late abortions really are: rare procedures needed by women carrying fetuses that have died or carry severe abnor- malities, or for women facing irreparable physical or mental harm should they continue their pregnancies. Here’s how Tiller explained one significant reason for late abortions: “Chromosomal abnormalities make up about 24 percent of our [late abortion] patients, and sometimes the heart, the lung, the intestines, all of this is outside of the body [of the fetus]. Most places in the United States say that even if you have this kind of a problem you may not have a termination of pregnancy. …What this says is that…women are not smart enough, they are not tough enough and they do not love enough to make these family decisions about their chil- dren and their families.” IN HER 28TH WEEK OF A VERY WANTED PREGNANCY IN 2000, Miriam Kleiman, a government employee in Washington, D.C., and her husband, Jason, learned that their male fetus had a severe brain malformation. He would probably die shortly after birth. The couple immediately went for second, third and fourth opinions. The news stayed the same. “This is not a fair life for a baby,” they decided. “Even with every medical intervention, the baby’s going to die. It’s not if, SUMMER 2009 | 35 A BETTER PLACE …ONE WOMAN AT A TIME.” TILLER BELIEVED IN “MAKING THE WORLD what a Swedish man told me about his country’s attitude: “Of course it’s the woman’s decision. Nobody else has a say in it.” Period. End of discus- sion. We need to bring that attitude back into this country. We need true stories from people who have had abortions, told in a positive light. No more “I really didn’t want one but I had to have it and now I’ll feel terri- ble for the rest of my life.” Sure some people will feel “terrible.” After all, they’ve been sold the bill of goods that they should feel terrible for the last 30-plus years. But anything that has been sold can also be un-sold. It’s time to start un-selling now. —Rhoda Honigman Oilville, VA Editors’ note: If you want to tell the story of your abortion, join our Ms. “We Had Abortions” campaign for honesty and free- dom at www.msmagazine.com/radar/ 2006-07-24-we-had-abortions.asp. IF YOU BLOG IT, THEY WILL COME I’m a “mommy blogger” [“Cyberhood Is Powerful,” Summer 2009] in that I am a mom and I have a blog, but it is used only to keep all of our out-of- town family in the loop about what is going on with us and what Baby Buster is up to each day. I would love to get political, but nobody outside my family and close friends (and apparently, a few of my sister-in-law’s friends) reads it, and my whole fami- ly is conservative. So I think it would lead to some shouting. But maybe I should think of it as Blog of Dreams…if I write it, they will come and read it. —Robin McGinn Heber City, UT I think Kara Jesella’s article “Cyberhood Is Powerful” could have used a better fact check. Jesella states that “seven out of 10 women have no health insurance.” Quick web research suggests that less than 20 percent of women are uninsured. This is still too many, but is not any- where near 70 percent of women! If we are going to organize for better health care, let’s get our facts straight first. —Laura Sell Durham, NC Editors’ note: Thanks for the good catch, Laura. We misstated this; the correct sta- tistic is that 70 percent of U.S. women are uninsured, underinsured or in debt because of medical bills, according to a 2009 study by the Commonwealth Fund. And here are other alarming women’s health insurance stats to chew on: A National Women’s Law Center study found that just 21 percent of available health insurance plans offer maternal- care coverage, and only 12 percent offer comprehensive coverage. FALL 2009 | 7 MIKE HUTMACHER/MCT/LANDOV ART CREDIT HERE