It’s incredibly easy to give yourself over to cynicism in the wake of the Tiller murder. The net effect will be that politicians continue to turn their backs on women as anti-choice advocates push the ball incrementally further toward the goal of limiting a woman’s right to choose, and doctors who provide these services will continue to do so with the knowledge that they’ll be the targets of demagogues, religious fanatics and violent extremists.
The media won’t cover the story because of the "ick" factor, and we’ll be treated to the spectacle of the American Taliban preening in its righteousness and its inability to be appeased. Pro-choice advocates will be painted as unreasonable extremists incapable of compromise in a "pox on both your houses" burst of sensible (mostly male) centrism, and major pro-choice groups will sweep up the cash yet somehow fail once again to come up with a political strategy that manages to get choice off the ropes.
And yet, some still hope:
About 100 people got together tonight for a candlelight vigil in memory of Dr. George Tiller, organized via Twitter a few hours before it started.
After hearing of Tiller’s murder, Tanya Tarr, who works in the labor movement, put out a call for D.C. residents to join her in Dupont Circle, less than a mile from the White House. She posted her first message at around 5 p.m., four hours before the vigil started. (Various liberal bloggers, including the Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas and Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher, passed the word on to their Twitter followers as well.)
"It is outrageous that a ‘pro-life’ movement would kill someone in their church," Tarr told me as people walked into the park to light candles in Tiller’s memory. Because of the short notice, Tarr passed out leftover Hanukah candles, with foil cupcake wrappers to catch melting wax.
The crowd stood quietly lighting candles and talking; there were no counter-protesters.
I was so grateful when Tanya’s Facebook announcement hit my email last night that Tiller’s killing at the hands of domestic terrorists wasn’t going to get sucked down the memory hole.
Wichita and Lawrence also held vigils last night. Tonight Boston, Seattle, Portland and Kansas City will do the same. Tomorrow, Ottawa. Feministing recommends that donations go to the following:
- Medical Students for Choice — to train the next generation of abortion providers
- National Network of Abortion Funds — to help low-income women access abortion
You can also write letters to the editors of your local papers.
Thanks to everyone for making the effort, and refusing to go quietly.
Related posts:
- GRITtv Live: After the Tiller Murder, How Will Media, Activists Respond?
- In Memory of Dr. Tiller: My Four Days in Wichita
- Dr. Tiller, FACE, and the Failure of the Bush DOJ to Enforce the Law
- Name The Public Option, Not the Bill, After Kennedy
- Breaking News: Wichita Doctor George Tiller Murdered at Church
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Thank you, Jane.
Thank you for this note. Can we get a lesson about hate speech…here’s to hope. Violating the sanctity of a church with such horror is beyond words…a vicious killer who reminds me of McVeigh, yet he arrived with words of murder in his heart and mind. All language about the doctor has noted his gentle soul. Pro life is a sham. They are great supporters of the death penalty. A time to mourn.
Domestic terrorism, that’s what Dr. Tiller’s murder is. Thank you, Jane, for naming places in which to make constructive use of our grief and rage.
Thanks for this post
We must find a way to stop the senseless murder of doctors who perform a service to women. Operation Rescue and its fellow wingnuts are guilty along with O’Reilly and Rush,etc. I read that Holder has ordered certain abortion providers with guards. The fundies will not doubt imply that their right to kill has been abridged. They are killers.
Another way to say this is ”Doctors who provide these services will continue to be the targets of domestic right-wing terrorists.”
And of course it only STARTS with doctors. I’ve received threats mailed to my home following letters in the local paper: how long until the domestic right wing terrorists decide that if we won’t be silenced by threats, we must be silenced some other way?
It’s going to mean a huge cultural about-face I don’t quite know how to pull off, but it needs to happen.
It is well past time to stop domestic terrorists. Will Obama have the courage to take this issue on? Of course not.
As Digby says, when the GOP is out of power they make themselves ungovornable. These killings were much less prevalent during Bush. Democrats get in power, they go apeshit, their “sensible” counterparts say this is the predictable result of having been marginalized, and then everybody decides that appeasing them is some kind of political imperative.
Long ago I learned not to have a listed address in the phone book because I got the letters and post cards with the fetus pictures on them.
This will certainly not stop those of us who support a woman’s right to be a moral decision maker.
My greatest hope and prayer is that more courageous docs will step up. It asks EVERYTHING of them. Being a waking target of assassins is not something one chooses lightly.
I looked it up. ALL of the other clinic murders happened during Clinton’s admin. That says to me that there will be more to come unless this administration takes it as seriously as they take other kinds of terrorism. Any chance of that?
What we need is the media to CALL these people terrorists. Not “pro-life” or even “anti-abortion” groups. “Domestic Terrorist, Group Affiliation Unknown Kills US Physicain”, is what I want the headline to read.
I just Googled Operation Rescue and you can’t even get on their site. I imagine that people are telling them a lot of things they don’t want to hear today. Terry left OR in 1991 but still speaks as if he were he leader and every listing for OR mentions Terry. He should be arrested for inciting a hate crime.
Dr Warren Hern, of Boulder – probably the last remaining U.S. provider has
issued a statement
personally only learned of this hideously predictable and heartbreaking story this morning, so forgive me if prev posted
Loree920 over at dKos wrote a powerful tribute to Dr. Tiller, her own doctor. Recommend the read [linked in my diary “Her Good Doctor”]. In the comment thread there is the address of Dr. Tiller’s clinic in case anyone would like to send a note or memorial contribution. And there’s his church as well, their pain must be immeasurable.
Dr. George Tiller, women’s health doctor, who put his patients before himself or ideology. RIP.
Can the perpetrators be prosecuted under “hate crimes”? What other suggestions can you or anyone else think of to stop the madness?
What does the American Medical Society have to say? Anything?
the madness won’t stop as long as priests and right wing pastors keep preaching about it and keep staging their “walks for life.” They give the movement permission to attract fanatics. They also pour the guilt on women who have made their own decisions. I just don’t see it stopping until those churches are sapped of the power they hold over their flocks.
American Collge of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has issued a statement
that’s one of the best statements I’ve seen. Thanks.
the AMA usually tries to stay away from anything controversial. We’ll see if they do this time.
At the very least, Bill O’Reilly’s advertisers should be boycotted. Here’s a link from an earlier Think Progress campaign:
http://thinkprogress.org/stop-oreilly-harassment/
the clinic has been closed for a week. I surely hope it is able to reopen.
From RevDeb @ 10:
Wanna hear something scary? I have been unlisted since 1983. Additionally, my father Bob Sr. was listed at the time. Despite this, I received threatening letters a couple of years ago, letters properly addressed to me at my home, despite being unlisted, despite there being someone else with my name listed.
Didn’t let that stop me of course…
(Watching the Franken/Coleman live A/V Supreme Court feed)
Do you think the same approach that you spoke about yesterday in your inspiring service about marriage equality, the one on one conversations that helped get marriage equality approved in MA would be a start in changing the dynamic here?
Being gay is viewed as abomination in the eyes of these extremists and the tide has been turning in the past few years in recognition of the rights for gays and lesbians.
as a former escort, I wish I could hit the rec button more than once for your thoughtful and poignant diary
I think going after O’Reilly would be a great way to fight back. He is vulnerable on this issue and people might get the message that we mean business. I hope someone who has a strong stomach will listen to Rush today and let us know what he says – I won’t listen.
I wish. This is an issue that if everyone who had had an abortion were willing to talk about it openly would go away. But alas for so many reasons, people just won’t go there. And unlike the gay issue, the younger generation isn’t clued in about this one. They have no idea what it was like before. . . .
Thanks cbl, and I second you on RevDeb’s most excellent diary
thanks. It was a transformative 4 days for me. I could write lots more but I had to stop somewhere.
Another thing you can do is make a donation in Dr. Tiller’s name to Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. Their donation page is here:
https://www.ppkm.org/donations/index.asp
O’Reilly’s “campaign” makes me sick. It seems as though his target, Dr. Tiller, was killed in that church.
There is much more of privacy issue here which I can totally understand.
OT: Franken/Coleman Supreme Court hearing is adjourned.
Let’s start using the term anti-abortion terrorists. Also pro-murder pro-lifers.
-G
In the early days a lot of women did this, in MS magazine, I think. The names were remarkable.
This is not to pose an equivalence, but I did hear Laura Ing interviewing a woman from Planned Parenthood. She was barely civil, refused to “hear” the points the woman was making, interrupted, etc. Have they ever of listening to another point of view.
I prefer american taliban. Not all of the anti-abortionists are terrorists but they are all taliban.
Sara Robinson and Neiwert have been writing (and sadly foretelling) of the extremists response to the turning tide
Another sad day. Another family crushed. I hold them in my heart. It is hard to believe that we are still fighting this choice battle> I began marching and fighting in the seventies. I coordinated art for the major marches in Washington D.C. and often spoke at rallies. In the eighties, I escorted at the North East Women’s center in Philadelphia, PA, where we were routinely threatened with bodily harm by the men who, more often than not, were the largest component of the Anti-Choice contingent, along with grandmothers who often brought along their very young grand childern so that they could be indoctrinated in the language of hate.
They used to throw chopped chicken parts at the young women who were forced to run the gauntlet from the parking lot to the doors of the clinic while the most foul epithets were shouted at them.
They are terrorists, make no mistake. In the seventies and eighties they used to take photographs of the protesters in local communities and then post them on the bulletin boards at their churches so that neighbors would know which neighbor to shun, or abuse, or harass. I was one of them. I had a photo in many churches in PA.
I believe that as feminists, we began to give ground on this battle when we allowed the culture of feminism to be taken over by the Camille Paglia’s,-exhorting young women to explore the sexual power of women’s liberation. Those young women deserted the dour, strident, feminism of their mothers in droves; cloaked in the false security that their right to an abortion was assured and would not be overturned. On the other hand, those young children who were exposed to near riots at abortion facilities at the knee of their grandparents, have grown into front liners, home schoolers, and hard core anti-choice activists.
Feminism has lost a generation and now needs to rebuild. Who will take up the mantle?
Look at it from the fetus’s point of view: what thinking fetus would choose to be birthed into a world dominated by American predatory capitalism? Even in the U.S., a child grows up to be exploited–a wage slave–unless he’s lucky enough to be born rich.
The Republicans (and Christians) hate abortion–it inflates the price of labor (fewer workers pursuing jobs) and culls the flock to be fleeced by the Christ-tards.
The anti-abortion issue is used as a distraction by the corporatists and banksters as they proceed with their attempt to dominate amerika.
Remember this. It is mostly men who are the biggest talkers/actors in the antiabortion ranks. Is it religion? Or is it as I believe, men wanting to continue to have total power over women and their bodies and fearing that they are losing that power. Face it, over the last 50 years women have forced men(white male power structure) to give them a place at the table(power) white men-esp authoritarian conservative types-firmly believe that women have no rights other than what they give them and use their version of xristianity to back them up-women were owned by men then, why should things be different now. IOW, the men are in charge, so women should STFU and sit down.
I have lived in many other countries and firmly believe that in the US many men believe that women emasculate them.-lots of these same white males envy the muslims in the mideast and how they treat their women and would love to do the same thing here.
I have seen that many men in the pundocracy hate women. There are so few who don’t that they stand out.
I really hope that women continue the fight to replace men in the power structure.Women have been leaders in countries from Pakistan to Israel to India to England. In a country as large as the US we should be able to find someone whom the WM-white males-can not slander to death. I believe that what the authoritarian conservative evangelical men did to Clinton and are doing to the current nominee to the SCOTUS is a disgrace and should be fought with every weapon available.
Not only is the murder of the Dr a disgrace that can be laid at the feet of the right but their hypocritical remarks of solace and sympathy should make them burn in their hell.
I find myself ashamed of my country and the image that we present to the world, our society is indeed insane.
I think you are painting way to broad a brush. I work with some very dedicated Christian clergy who are demonstrably pro-choice. And I also have repub. friends who raise lots of money for PP and other providers.
yes Ms Magazine posted in 11/06 – but back when Reagan gagged doctors:
seeing Julia Child and Barbara Tuchman’s names were personally inspiring
While my late wife was in law school and for a while after she was the asst. state dir. for PP. Yes there were several rethug donors but nearly all oppos. were also rethugs.
For RevDeb
that’s usually the case. But we can’t label ALL christians and ALL rethugs alike. That’s all I’m saying.
Beats me. We used to have this discussion on another board I moderated; where the younger wimmin would accuse the older ones of “dropping the ball”. But it was them who took our gains for granted and “dropped the ball”.
I see a similar thing happening with the gay rights movement with those attorneys wanting to take it to the right wing Supreme court.
When Roe was decided by the SC it didn’t have the weight of law, really. I’m wondering if these “crusading attorneys” are trying to pull an end run around legislation here too.
That’s why we old war horses can’t drop out of the traces yet, even tho this one is pretty tired of it all by now.
It always seems like one step forward two back.
wow,never thought of that….sociopaths
Had lunch today with a Texas Republican who told me Tiller ‘had performed late term abortions all day every day’.
Asked him to back that up with statistics or any other kind of documentation. Of course, he couldn’t.
But that’s the belief out there. And this is not an otherwise stupid individual.
I prefer calling them the Doctor Killers; not trying to conflate them with Bin laden. And while I understand the strategy of Naral and kindred groups of sticking the the high road (emphasizing only the liberty argument) that some of us ought to be more actively rebutting the dreadful propaganda inherent in the fetus=human being/ unborn child memes. These are merely incitements to hatred without cultural, legal or even scriptural sanction. The concept of fetus sanctity never existed before Roe. I diaried on Kos about this recently, as Arion.