Four
years ago today, a man walked into his church, his family in front of
him, his friends and fellow parishioners beside him. As his wife walked
into the blessed sanctuary of their church family's home, this man
struck up a conversation with a friend in the lobby as he prepared to
usher the service & hand out church bulletins. Perhaps these two men
were discussing how their week had been. Perhaps they discussed this
man's trip in the previous weeks to Disneyland with his family. Perhaps
they simply found themselves talking sports and scores and who would be
heading to the World Series later in the year. But these two men, one
who had watched his loving and devoted wife walk to their usual pew in
the safety of the church they had grown to know and love before he began
his duties as church usher that morning and the other a long time
friend of their family seeking out a brief hello before their church
service started, began to talk about something, and did so for a few
minutes. With his wife sitting quietly in the pew, waiting to be
accompanied by her husband, he was enjoying the camaraderie of his
church home and he was preparing to worship the God he loved so very
much.
In
hindsight, perhaps someone should have noticed the stranger lurking
outside, the stranger who had been there at that church weeks before
when this man, talking to his old friend of several years whose wife
awaited him in the sanctuary of their church, had been vacationing with
his family elsewhere. Perhaps in hindsight, someone should have noticed
that this stranger, pacing the outdoors, wasnt a familiar face, wasnt a
parishioner they'd ever seen before. Perhaps in hindsight, someone
should have noticed that he was oddly dressed, hands in his pockets,
sweating slightly but clearly preparing to enter the lobby of this
church. Perhaps in hindsight, someone should have known that Dr George
Tiller, talking quietly with his old friend and preparing to go worship
God with his wife by his side, was about to be shot in the head at point
blank range by a man who had plotted his murder for weeks and months
and finally found the opportunity to do so that Sunday morning, four years ago, in the lobby of a house of God.
There's
a certain morbidity when one addresses the anniversary of a death, and
in this case, the assassination of a doctor performing safe and legally
protected procedures for women. There's a certain macabre sensibility to
the idea that we memorialize anyone based on HOW they died, instead of
how they LIVED. And yet, when we talk of Dr George Tiller, we tend to
focus on the murder & murderer more than the substance of the life
before it. And so today, four years after his assassin shot him in the
head in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, KS as he
handed out church bulletins, I propose we remember the man before the
murder, instead of the man after.
Dr
Tiller graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine and
went on to serve in the United States Navy as a flight surgeon. After
the tragic death of both his parents, brother in law, and sister in an
airplane crash, Dr Tiller have up his plans to begin a dermatology
practice to take over his father's private medical practice and began
raising his 1 year old nephew, orphaned by his parents death. It was at
this time that Dr Tiller discovered that his father's practice had
secretly offered abortion care to its patients. Dr Tiller made the brave
choice to continue this practice and went on to become a focal point in
the anti choice movement, enduring daily vigils & threats to his
life and his family's lives by anti choice groups at his clinic. In
1986, his clinic was firebombed. In 1993, he was shot five times while
leaving his clinic in his car. The shooter in this case later said the
gunshots were aimed at Dr Tiller's hands so that he would no longer be
able to provide abortion care to the women who sought him out for, often
times, life saving abortion procedures. Before his death in 2009, Dr
Tiller was the focus of 28 episodes of a Fox News program that placed
special emphasis on his practice, resulting in even more protests and
threats to his clinic and life, as well as to perpetuate the nasty name
calling that began with a Congressman on the floor of Congress and was
continued until his assassination in 2009 by several conservative talk
show hosts, one in particular. And just two months prior to his death,
Dr Tiller was acquitted of ALL charges (19 in all) in a case that many
compared to the trials at Nuremberg and which prompted NYU Professor
Jacob Appel to be quoted as saying that Dr Tiller was "a genuine hero
who ranks alongside Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. in the
pantheon of defenders of human liberty."
But
Dr Tiller's life was not and is not defined by the vitriol that
preceded his death. To the women helped by Dr Tiller and his clinic
staff, he was a kind, compassionate man with a soft & gentle
demeanor who worked tirelessly to free women who chose abortion of the
stigma that, sadly, still exists today. He was known for using the
phrase, "Trust women.", an assertion that women are perfectly capable of
choosing what's best for themselves, their families, and their bodies.
Perhaps most importantly, he didn't just advocate for trusting women,
but he also actively trusted women, never judging and always carefully
considering the best line of care for each patient individually.
I
was in an emergency room in St Louis, Missouri on May 31, 2009,
experiencing excruciating abdominal pain. At the time, I was employed as
a recovery room nurse in abortion care services at Planned Parenthood
of the St Louis Region (PPSLR). My best friend, also a nurse at PPSLR,
entered my room that morning with tears in his eyes, and when I asked
what was wrong, he said only, "They killed him. They finally killed Dr
Tiller. They finally did it." It was an impossibly sad moment and
morning and it was one filled with fear. We entered our clinic, a clinic
that Dr Tiller had visited, a clinic that was under the care of another
well known doctor who had frequently been the target of threats and
attacks, past vicious protesters every single day. We were sometimes
followed home by protesters, we were sometimes witness to signs that
carried our personal information and were meant to shame us out of
providing safe and legal abortion care to women. And while historically,
violent protesters in the anti choice movement choose to target
doctors, our safety was always hanging in the balance. And yet every day
we walked through that line of protesters in order to continue
providing the care women so desperately needed. We, like Dr Tiller,
would not be stopped.
If
I had started this by telling you the story of a man shot at point
blank range in the foyer of his church, handing out bulletins and
talking quietly to an old friend while his wife waited quietly in their
usual pew for him in the sanctuary, but instead of using Dr Tiller's
name I'd used someone else's, it's doubtful anyone would feel anything
but shock and complete disgust for such a heinous crime. Which calls to
mind this contradiction we continue to live with, even 4 years later.
There exists in our society an idea that some murder, some death at the
hands of those who claim to be doing God's will, is acceptable. There
exists in our society a concept that shaming women, stealing their right
to hold dominion over their own bodies, is an acceptable manner in
which to legislate. There exists in our society an exception - almost a
forgiveness - for the vicious murder and assassination of someone who
does something others don't like. And if we have learned anything about
Dr Tiller's life AND death, it is that there's nothing less "pro life"
than that.
Anaïs
Nin once said, "I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my
strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my
courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who
has the courage to treat me like a woman." For me, and for so many women
who were his colleagues, patients, family, and friend, Dr Tiller was
and remains that man. His passion for empowering women to make their own
choices, to demand being trusted by all those who surround them, is a
legacy that transcends deeply the type of death he endured and which we
talk about every May 31st. It is a legacy that cannot be assassinated by
a bullet but instead, can only die out if we let the light shine less
brightly. So today, as we remember not the murder of a great man but
alternately, the life of a remarkable and magnificent advocate &
caregiver, let us lift our voices and insist his legacy be who we ARE
and not who we COULD be, if not for the oppression we seem to find such
trouble escaping.
Rest in peace, Dr Tiller. Always.
Joey
