Capitalizing on the closing

To invoke a blogly cliché: what Digby said.

How Tiller's Death and Office Closing can Help Propel Pro-Life Movement, Derail Sotomayor and Overturn Roe. Four Key Senators will be Targeted to Vote Against Sotomayor; Catholic Bishops will Play a Role to Defeat Sotomayor

Press conference 1 PM, Thursday, to announce details how Pro-life groups can derail Sotomayor, and root out hypocrisy in pro-life ranks.

Also: Emergency Pro-life leadership training to be held in DC, June 12-14, with Randall Terry, Dr. Alan Keyes, Norma McCorvey, and Fr. Norman Weslin. Pro-abortion activists threaten to disrupt meeting.

Oh, no.

Oh my god.

Dr. George R. Tiller’s clinic was one of the few in the country to provide abortions to women late in their pregnancies, and for decades, women had traveled there from all over the nation and from overseas. It was also the only remaining abortion clinic, even for first trimester abortions, in the Wichita region.

“The family of Dr. George Tiller announces that effective immediately, Women’s Health Care Services, Inc., will be permanently closed,” according to a statement issued on Tuesday morning by the family’s lawyers.

And, as if one needed more reasons to worry:

Even some abortion opponents, who had long devoted their efforts to closing down Dr. Tiller’s clinic, said they did not wish to see it happen under these circumstances. Last week, Troy Newman, the leader of Operation Rescue, had said that closing the clinic now would send a worrisome message. “Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “Every kook in the world will get some notion.”

H/t Balloon Juice

I Am Dr. Tiller

An incredible project full of defiance, determination, dedication, and love.

Blub.

Update: More blub inducement by Cara at GlobalComment.

Tiller links

George Tiller needs more than candlelight vigils

Why Clinic Violence is Obama's Problem

The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing

Voices of Choice: Dr. Tiller

From the last, in Tiller's own words:

It is my fundamental philosophy that patients are emotionally, mentally, morally, spiritually and physically competent to struggle with complex health issues and come to decisions that are appropriate for them.

This should not be a radical idea.

Free speech

I'm sure yesterday was a wonderful day filled with the scent of victory and napalm in the morning for Bill O'Reilly:



I don't believe for a second that O'Reilly cares about abortion as much as he pretends to; he's in it for the ratings and the attention. But he must currently be feeling some bizarre combination of disavowal ("I'm just a journalist, man") a la Limbaugh and total power trip.


I'm not saying that Tiller was killed because of O'Reilly. I do think this kind of intense, emotionally provocative, and hateful rhetoric does encourage crazy people to do crazy things, but it's certainly not just Billo who produces it and it's not just abortion that attracts it. By many standards, Billo here is a model of restraint. But that doesn't change the fact that words do have power and guys like Limbaugh, Beck, and Billo will never accept that when it might require them to back down and learn a little humility.

Empathy

"Prenatal testing without prenatal choices is medical fraud," Tiller once said.

Some beautiful posts

Go. Read them in their entirety. To excerpt them would be to mangle their integrity.

Hilzoy on Dr. George Tiller

One of Sullivan's readers on torture.

Peaceful, legal means

Hilzoy has an eye-opening post on what exactly Operation Rescue got up to through "appropriate channels." Why nobody has ever sued them for stalking and harassment is beyond me.

Newman and his small staff of zealous pro-lifers are buzzing with the news that the clinic's office manager has quit -- a result, they believe, of their name-and-shame campaign. The manager had been accosted by a neighbor in a grocery store who recognized her from an Operation Rescue flier that featured her photo. "You're that baby killer!" the neighbor screamed at her. Then Newman, through investigative methods he'd rather not reveal, discovered where the woman's husband works. "We think that's what clinched it," he says. "He probably realized we were going to picket his workplace. I imagine he's the major breadwinner in the family, and he didn't want to risk his job."

It gets worse. We're talking cruising people's houses at night, stealing and going through their trash, paying others to spy on them. Tiller drove an armored car.

Furthermore, the disregard for the lives--yes, lives--of the patients involved is staggering. From the Rolling Stone article Hilzoy quoted:

Newman and his staff have spent months compiling a list of more than 200 "abortion collaborators" -- companies that do business with Women's Health Care Services and its employees. They plan to approach every firm on the list -- from the guy who mows the clinic's lawn to the cafe that sells Tiller his morning latte -- and lobby them to stop doing business with the facility. At the top of the collaborator list is Wesley Medical Center. Wesley is vital to Tiller's clinic: It's where his patients are taken if there is a medical emergency. Newman has written to Wesley's board of physicians to request that they retract hospital privileges for Tiller's patients. If they refuse, Newman plans to expose them as Tiller's accomplices: "We're thinking of taking out an ad in the local newspaper, naming Wesley's physicians and accusing them of supporting a baby killer."

And then what will happen to those women--and fetuses--who are in the midst of medical emergencies? Not to mention the utter lack of respect for the Hippocratic Oath. Whether abortions of the type performed at Tiller's clinic are freely chosen is debatable, but no medical professional worth the title can turn away a patient in crisis from emergency care. What did they think they were playing at?

Meditation 17

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."
--John Donne, Meditation 17


George Tiller is dead.

I am heartbroken, angry and sick at heart, all at once.I feel as though I've been punched in the stomach.

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5107 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

"It's a terrible loss. I'm just really sad about the whole thing," said a former employee of the clinic who asked not to be identified. "He was a great guy. I understand people were against a lot of what he did, but for those who he helped, they'll never forget the kind of person he was."

He went through a lot to help those people:

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993. Tiller was wounded in both arms, and Shannon remains in prison for the shooting.

The clinic was bombed in June 1986, and was severely vandalized earlier this month. According to the Associated Press, his lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings' downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.

I read about him somewhere years ago and I remember being shocked that anyone would have done such things to such a man and deeply grateful for his service. His story stuck with me ever since. As soon as I read the headline I was hoping that name was ringing the wrong bell, but to my deep sadness, I was right.

(The epigram, I know, is cliche and overused, but it encapsulates the way I feel connected to him and to this.)

As Digby said,

If you think that women should have to endanger their lives in order to give birth to a fetus with no brain, then you probably think this man was a murderer. For the women who went to him, and for whom he put up with a horrifying amount of harrassment and violence before they finally managed to kill him, he was a Godsend.

May he rest in peace.

Post-feminist, bitchez

Melissa McEwan has a typically insightful post up about a political reframing that's taking place around women's reproductive health services.

Question: How long do you think it will take before history is rewritten so that the legislation which would "provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies" becomes the sole province of the Very Serious Centrist Men (possibly including our new president-elect) who found the "middle ground" on abortion that extremists on both sides couldn't find, despite the reality that feminists have been advocating for exactly these social services for longer than I've been alive?

Don't answer that. It's rhetorical.

I find it fascinating (where fascinating = completely bloody infuriating) that these ideas will probably only now get a hearing at long last because the frame has switched from "things women need, irrespective of their circumstances" to "things that will ensure women make more babies."

Post-feminist, bitchez.

Oh, when the saints/Come marching in...

From George W. Bush's speech (which I find a little sad--yeah, he's dangerous to their chances, but he was sort of exiled from the convention, and I don't know, that's sad) by satellite to the Republican Convention last night:

"I am optimistic because I have faith in freedom's power to lift up all of God's children and lead this world to a future of peace."

Honestly, this explains more about his foreign policy than anything else I've heard in the last eight years.

Of course we don't need to understand history and real people's needs wherever we're going! Of course we don't need to plan for after the invasion or for exit! Of course we don't need to worry what other nations think of us! Freedom will take us there, all by itself.

Honestly, the parallel that comes to mind is the Marxist doctrine that once one nation undergoes proletarian revolution and begins its utopian transformation, all others must inevitably follow. Is there any broad political theory involving inevitability that is not unrealistic, doctrinaire, and ultimately totalitarian in its cultishness?

Guh. It gives me the shivers that mainstream political figures talk like this.


I wonder what it's like to think this way. Does one ever get confused and downbeat because it didn't happen? Does one question the ideology? Or does one just conclude that Satan's still going strong and keep on truckin'?

(It depends, obviously, I'm just trying to comprehend.)

On that note, Sarah Palin called the Iraq war a task "that is from God" when speaking to her hometown church in Wasilla. I don't like this. I need the media to stop talking about the baby drama (which is what the McCain camp wants them to do) so we can discuss the fact that she's an utter far right wingnut (which is what the McCain camp doesn't want them to do).

Also, as Michelle Cottle points out, if Sarah Palin is so anti-abortion, it should follow that she's in favor of providing support for girls and women who choose to keep their babies, no? However, while Governor of Alaska, she cut funding for a state program providing shelter and support for single teen mothers--by more than 20%.

I'm sorry, but a politician who opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and who opposes comprehensive sex education should be at the forefront of championing support systems that make it easier for young mothers to keep their babies.

I would have assumed Palin herself felt this way. After all, she is a proud member of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion nonprofit whose stated aim is to give women a real choice -- that is, to make certain that women faced with unplanned pregnancies have access to the information and support systems that will enable/encourage them not to have an abortion. Surely a program aimed at assisting the most desperate of young mothers -- those whose boyfriends aren't amenable to a shotgun wedding or who don't have a strong family support system -- would be something a pro-life feminist such as Palin would work to expand not destroy.

Pro-life conservatives have for years faced accusations by abortion-rights activists that they only give a damn about a woman and her baby until the moment that baby is born. After that: Best of luck! Don't come looking to us for any help! Palin's rough handling of Passage House does nothing to combat that unfortunate image.

I have nothing to add.

You may remember that I posted a while ago about a proposed rule for the Dept of Health and Human Services that would redefine many common forms of contraception as abortion.

Well, despite Sens. Clinton and Murray doing their damnedest to stop this, it appears that HHS has gone ahead and proposed it.

Click here to read about Secretary Leavitt's repeated deliberate efforts to ignore the opposition to the rule; and to be reminded that abortion rights are important all the time, not just when somebody's trying to bully women into voting for him. (I agree with her--where the fuck is the party nominee on this, if the party cares so much about women?)


Also, why does Secretary Leavitt hate Americans?

ETA: Emphasis mine.
"Americans Should be Concerned that Bush Administration’s Proposed Rule Will Jeopardize Women’s Access to Reproductive Health Care

Statement of Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership for Women & Families

“The regulations proposed today are nothing more than a blatant attempt to undermine women’s access to reproductive health care. This is a desperate attempt by an Administration in its waning days to impose one set of religious and moral views on the nation’s women, depriving them of their right to make their own informed health care decisions.

This dangerous regulation would give any person – physicians, administrative staff, volunteers – working at institutions receiving federal funds the right to refuse to provide services, information and counseling to any patient. The providers who refuse services would have no obligation to refer patients or give them other options for care.

This draconian regulation means that women can be refused care and information by the very people they trust to provide it. It undermines the doctor-patient relationship because women will now have to question whether their health care providers are giving them complete and unbiased information, and the best care possible. It even opens the door to denying patients contraception.

At a time when women’s health clinics are woefully under-funded, and women in this country experience millions of unintended pregnancies each year, the Bush Administration should be searching for ways to give more women access to the family planning information and services that can help them avoid unintended pregnancy.

Anti-choice politics and rightwing ideology must not determine health policy in this country. We urge the Bush Administration to rethink these regulations and instead put more funds into Title X clinics. There is no need for this regulation, no problem to solve. It should be withdrawn.”

Here's a petition on Hillary Clinton's website you can sign: http://www.hillpac.com/action/hhspetition/

And as to where's Obama--well, he's getting an anti-choice pastor to deliver the closing prayer at the convention. Thanks, Barry! Signed, Future Vagina Voter.

ETA: Go here for more on the exact ramifications of the rule for health care providers, and for some thoughts on the classist nature of the rule in practice. ("Go to another health care provider" is real easy when you have a car, money for gas, a job that allows you the time, and the resources to find another provider.)

UPDATE on the abortion/contraception looming clusterfuck

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/07/clinton-and-murray-hell-no.html

Senator Clinton and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) are raising a ruckus.

See, this is why it's not completely stupid for women to want a woman in the Oval Office. Of course there's no guarantee that no woman would ever propose something like the ridiculous initiative coming out of the DHHS (Dept of Health and Human Services), and there's no reason to believe that every man would--but it's a hell of a lot less likely that a woman would come up with this idea, let alone think it worth implementing.

Senator Obama, meanwhile, remains silent. Thanks, Barry.

Here is an interesting post re: Obama on reproductive rights, as well as one about his tendency to be massively unhelpful on this front (rather than trying to figure out why, which is what the first one does).

And
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/07/clinton-and-murray-hell-no.html

Senator Clinton and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) are raising a ruckus.

See, this is why it's not completely stupid for women to want a woman in the Oval Office. Of course there's no guarantee that no woman would ever propose something like the ridiculous initiative coming out of the DHHS (Dept of Health and Human Services), and there's no reason to believe that every man would--but it's a hell of a lot less likely that a woman would come up with this idea, let alone think it worth implementing.

Senator Obama, meanwhile, remains silent. Thanks, Barry.

Here is an interesting post re: Obama on reproductive rights, as well as one about his tendency to be massively unhelpful on this front (rather than trying to figure out why, which is what the first one does).

And is an absolutely essential post (it's long, but worth it) on why women might not want to vote Democrat this year. (NOTE: She's not advocating that women not vote Democrat. She's explaining the "bitter Clinton supporter" and generally alienated lefty woman point of view.)

If you are an Obama supporter and you want him to get elected and, you know, be a good progressive president thereafter, you would do well to understand these issues.

oh shit oh shit oh shit

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16218.html

The government (the Bush administration) is trying to define many common forms of contraception--like, oh, the pill--as abortion. And cut off federal funding to hospitals and clinics that compel their practitioners to offer them to women.

If this kind of legislation ever passes in this country it would be one of the few things that would have me seriously considering hauling my ass off to Europe. I don't like fearing my government, and I don't like the idea of living in a country where such fundamental aspects of my agency and personhood are so restricted and vilified.


Seriously, why the fuck do they hate women so much? And why is women having sex--as a personal choice and for, oh, fun, pleasure, emotional connection, WHATEVER, rather than as a means to tying oneself to babies--so fucking scary to them?

I mean, for the love of god:

According to the HHS draft, “abortion” takes on a very broad meaning: “The Department proposes to define abortion as ‘any of the various procedures — including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.’”

That necessarily means that common birth-control methods — including the birth control pill and IUDs — would be designated as “abortion.”

IT'S AN ABORTION EVEN IF YOU WEREN'T FUCKING PREGNANT YET. ("Before implantation.") Basically, if you have sex and don't get pregnant for any reason other than sheer bloody luck, it was an abortion and ain't no federal money going there. (Don't know where they stand on condoms, but since that's something that men have more control over as opposed to women they probably aren't too bothered.)

And you know what follows. If it all counts as abortion then all the anti-choice activists can jump on it and find ways to restrict more and more aspects of "abortion" until birth control is effectively illegal or inaccessible--see South Dakota, where most women would have to drive three hours to get an abortion if they can have one at all.

Guys, donate to Planned Parenthood sometime soon. I know I am.