The Assassination of Dr. Tiller

(Originally posted to facebook 10/26/10)



In place of Rachel Maddow's show last night, my heroine had on a documentary (which she narrated) about last year's assassination of Kansas late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. It's an excellent but brief film (45-50 minutes or so) and really deserves watching. I especially appreciated that three of his former patients spoke out and described their situations in which they'd had to seek their operations. It helps to illustrate that these are terrible, extreme cases, that these women are already devastated by what they've got to do. A woman continues her pregnancy that far into the process because she has decided to have the child, to have the foetus become a child, to have her (emphasis on that possessive) body create. It's when her life becomes endangered, or the discovery that the child is not going to survive, or survive very poorly, that such tragic action must be taken so late. For a doctor, this has to be both heartbreaking and yet a vital procedure, and those that continue to provide these services under such constant harassment, to the point of receiving endless death threats (and for some, even being shot by these "Christian" terrorists) are heroes.

I'd like to see more testimony from women who are willing to recount their experiences, though it's tougher than I can ever imagine to have to re-live such stories. Of the three women that speak in this documentary, one shows her face and gives her name (the other two went anonymous and had their backs turned when speaking). This shows her bravery and determination, I think, but the others were no less brave (or meaningful), and one spoke to the issue of her anonymity, making an interesting point: she didn't mind not showing her face, because she wanted people to know that she could be any woman. Any woman might one day have to endure what she did. I think that with the more cases we hear, the more we will understand that these situations are never - rather, they're the opposite of - simple or easy, emotionally, medically, or morally.

Afterthought: I wonder, if you took the number of women that have had abortions due to their own lives being endangered by their pregnancies, and then counted how many children they had after those surgeries (which kept them alive and hopefully as healthy as they could be), which number would be higher? I'd bet on the latter, but I'd also bet that these "Christians" (I add my fingered quotations because they're either not real Christians or are just really bad at it) wouldn't care.

People are so terrified of learning, lest something poke a hole in their beliefs. It's like they've built these primitive, windowless hovels in which they huddle, proud in their resilience. You could instead live in a modern home, with many rooms full of fascinating things. The problem with developing complexities is that there's more that can go wrong or break. A storm rages, windows break, your house gets all wet. But you dry your metaphoric tears, look at the damage, figure out why it happened, learn, and make things better. The primitive hovel-huddlers still get flooded once in a while anyway, but so often seem to just wait for the water to drain and pray it doesn't happen again. When I look out my metaphoric windows, it's not like I love everything I see; I see plenty of terrible things. Awareness is daunting, ignorance is bliss, and blah blah blah. I might not be a happy person, but my happiest moments have been worth the hell. And I'd rather be sad than ignorant; it's the ignorant that make me sad in the first place. If we could better educate people to the reality we live in, they'd help to make it a better reality.

Note: Are you registered to vote? If not, register ASAP, and vote on November 2nd! Unless you'd vote for a Republican or Tea Party type, in which case, ignore this note. And if you live in Massachusetts (like me) vote No x3 on the ballot initiatives!