Causecast

by KAREN MURPHY, Contributing Writer

President Obama summed up our reaction to the news that Dr. George Tiller had been shot and killed during worship service at his Wichita KS church: “I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence”

So what have we learned from the death of George Tiller?

1. Killing doesn’t solve anything. I can’t help the sarcasm that creeps in when I ask the obvious question: what does "pro-life" mean, anyway? Dr. Tiller had already been the target of a previous shooting in 1993 when he was shot in both arms by Shelley Shannon, who testified at her trial that there was nothing immoral about trying to kill Tiller. Hello? Nothing immoral? Violence has been a part of the anti-abortion movement since the beginning, with incidents ranging from the outright violence of killing abortion providers and bombing clinics to the covert violence of harassing women attempting to enter clinics to receive reproductive services. The violence hasn’t done anything except to fuel more violence, and this "ends justify the means" thinking is just plain scary and anything but supportive of the sanctity of life.

2. Bill O’Reilly is a social danger. Although the former legal director to the ACLU has agreed with O’Reilly’s denial that his discussion of Tiller on 28 episodes of "The O’Reilly Factor" and his references to Tiller as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and warning of an upcoming "judgment day" was incitement to violence, we have to disagree. If this wasn’t incitement, or at least fanning of flames already present, then what was it?

3. We need to rethink late-term abortions. You can play all the grisly anti-abortion propaganda YouTube videos you want, but you can’t convince me that we should force a 10-year old victim of rape or incest to bear the child that was the tangible result of that horror. Or that women carrying dead fetuses should wait until labor can be induced so they can labor to produce a dead dream. Or that women who receive the appalling news that their much-wanted child won’t survive birth have to go through with a sham pregnancy. These women need support, not condemnation.

4. We may never agree, as a nation, about abortion. Clearly, the ideologies of the pro-choice and the anti-abortion movements are just too far apart right now, everything I said in #3 above notwithstanding. What seems clear to me seems very wrong to a good many other people, and I don’t expect to convince anyone otherwise. We may just have to agree to disagree.

5. Instead let’s focus on what’s important: reducing unwanted pregnancies (HINT: abstinence-only doesn’t work) in a way that’s effective and empowering: honest sex education for young people, safe and available contraception, and the provision of health care and other economic supports for poor women who want to have a child.

What you can do:

Believe in reproductive choice? Support NARAL.

Support sex education that works.

Write your elected officials and tell them what you think about health care support for poor women.

Photo by qwrrty, flickr