From the Times (via Atrios):
The Wichita abortion clinic run by a doctor who was shot and killed will remain closed permanently, his family said on Tuesday.
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. “Notice is being given today to all concerned that the Tiller family is ceasing operation of the clinic and any involvement by family members in any other similar clinic.”
Dave
Wow…I am sure when young girls resume getting sepsis and dying from back-alley coathanger abortions in Kansas, the anti-choice assholes there can high-five each other for a job well done.
Some parts of the country are fucking medieval in their outlook.
MikeJ
The terrorists have won.
ruemara
I’ve been pissed off all morning that domestic terrorism has been effective. How many other doctor’s will have to be hurt before we start treating these right to life kooks (& I mean the extremists, kneejerkers) as the dangerous terrorists that they are?
ThresherK
Another victory for the coathanger coalition.
But let’s wait to condemn until we hear what Jack Shafer thinks.
(I’m ashamed that I’m not well-known enough that I have to put /snark here.)
The Moar You Know
The terrorists win.
Can’t blame his family for not wanting to carry on, though. The fundies are obviously well-funded and have the means and desire to murder a man and get away with it. Why be next on their list of targets?
blogenfreude
Brought to you by Bill O’Reilly, James Dobson, and Randall Terry. Produced by Ronald Reagan and the entire Bush family! Directed by Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly.
TenguPhule
And $10 says those in the anti-abortion camp who want abortions will still drive elsewhere to get them.
Meanwhile, the people who can’t afford the travel will suffer.
pto892
I can’t help but think that right now some of the higher ups affiliated with the so-called right to life movement are sitting back and thinking about how effective this was. Let’s face it, it worked. And there’s no end of nuts willing to serve as sacrificial pawns…how long will it be before they proclaim Roeder as being some sort of martyr? They’re already bending over backwards to somehow make Tiller’s murder as being his own damn fault. The right to life movement seems to be run by sociopaths incapable of self reflection.
Punchy
If killing the lead doc shuts down the entire clinic….well…expect a lot more of this.
Nutters just had the blueprint handed to them.
Amanda
@Dave: Sadly, it’s not just going to be women in Kansas. It’s going to be women throughout the nation and even internationally.
I’ve long wondered if we are in fact going to have to re-experience hospital emergency wards full of maimed and dying women from botched self- or back-alley abortions before we as a society realize this backsliding has consequences. Appears we are sadly going to repeat this history. Ugh.
I certinaly don’t fault Dr. Tiller’s family — I can only imagine what they’ve gone through. But we as a society — and we as pro-choice Americans who’ve taken this right for granted — need to step up to the degree that Dr. Tiller and his family/colleagues did to protect and preserve this right. It’s gonna be a long slog.
And I am worried that Sotomayor may not be a boon to the pro-choice cause. I hope I’m wrong on that, but her relative moderation/conservatism makes me nervous. Am hoping to feel better after her confirmation hearings. Fingers crossed…
Screamin' Demon
And starring Scott Roeder as The
BeaverKiller.Little Dreamer
wingnut: “Ah, that worked so well, let’s go out and do it again”.
::smacks forehead::
Catsy
It’s to the point where the DOJ needs to go after anti-abortion terrorists with all the force and weight they use against the Mafia or Islamic terrorists.
Would be lovely if we could amass enough evidence to bring RICO against them and shut down OR completely as a criminal organization, but I’ll settle for dinging them on terrorism and material support of terrorism charges.
Little Dreamer
@pto892:
Not exactly… they look at their behavior and say “Jesus would have done this too!”.
TenguPhule
Yes.
SATSQ.
Until Operation “Rescue” is treated as the terrorist cult that it is and Randell Terry is hunted down by CIA spydrones armed with Hellfire missiles, the Christian Taliban will continue to worm its way into the halls of power.
Bokonon
Well … looks like today’s far right has decided that they will adopt insurgent tactics. Sometimes using protest, and sometimes using armed violence. And now it has worked in Wichita.
So … what’s next? Who gets shot or bombed next?
[Scary question, isn’t it? Remember how the clinic violence escalated during the early 1990’s, right before things got REALLY ugly? And does anybody REALLY think that this guy is a lone wolf, and that he really did this all on his own? ]
TenguPhule
Worse, the only “good” abortions are their own ones.
schrodinger's cat
According to Douthat in today’s NYT, not all abortions are created equal, and I guess we have to let Douthat in his infinite Burkean wisdom, decide which ones are more equal than the others. Why does the New York Times continue offer this sanctimonious busy body a platform, I wonder.
pto892
@Little Dreamer:
Yes, the wingnut version of Jesus who for some reason thinks exactly as they do. As I recall from the Bible the only time Jesus got physically angry was when he confronted the moneychangers. Nowadays we just give them trillions from the public budget with no questions asked, but that’s badly off topic.
tc125231
TenguPhule
They hate making money.
Also, they think people want people writing who are stupider then they are?
David Hunt
Sad. I can’t blame the family for not wanting to deal with the insanity and danger involved in keeping the place going, but I still can’t see how this is anything but a victory for the anti-choice crowd.
tc125231
@schrodinger’s cat:
Dreggas
I can’t say that I blame them for shutting down given everything that has happened (and who knows maybe they aren’t all dr’s and couldn’t find anyone to replace them). That being said I agree with everyone else, the terrorists won in this situation and they’ll most likely do the same thing again.
Little Dreamer
@tc125231:
Well, it’s not my fault they’re psychotic.
No matter how many times you try to tell them what you just said, they’ll never believe it.
We have what amounts to almost a quarter of the population who could be considered certifiably insane if religion wasn’t so widely recognized as a protected right.
Elie
Sooner or later, one of these docs is going to get tired of the physical threats and dish out some of the same remedy during one of these ambush attempts. While I recognize that this would not be desirable from a number of standpoints, I have to say, if I am a physician trying to provide this service, “enough is enough”.
No one has a right to open ended terrorizing and assault to get one’s way — to terrorize someone into death or submission. A person under assault in this scenario has no recourse — not protection. Apparently our government won’t provide it adequately and the doctors under assault have believed that they would make a bad situation worse by arming themselves. I can see that, but I would not just assume that this will continue in the face of continued attacks.
TenguPhule
I think you underestimate the crazy.
JL
CNN is giving air time to the killer of Dr. Tiller. Until there is a discussion on difficult choices, nothing will change. The media is culpable in the murder, imo.
Spiffy McBang
Randall Terry: “Good riddance.” (Reference to the clinic in this case, not the doctor.)
Current Operation Witness president: “It’s too bad it happened like this, because we were close to getting his medical license taken away.”
I honestly can’t decide which one of them is more crazy- Terry, who obviously sounds like the bigger douche, or the other guy, who seems to be suggesting the murder is a sad thing only because they thought they might shut him down another way.
Michael
But they’re sincere followers of Jesus, so we have to be deferential to their position when they lie in the service of their agenda.
Of course, they’re much better than those evil Muslims, who are taught to lie in the service of their agenda.
Now, go play that Lee Greenwood song and put another yellow ribbon magnet on your car to show how free you are.
TenguPhule
Sigh, time for an all too appropriate Discworld Quote.
DEATH: THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE’S JUST ME.
Blue Raven
I’d love to make a good, pithy remark about this news. Problem is, there’s this slow burn taking over in my head. Rage. Plain rage. They won. They got what they wanted, to hell with the consequences. Barbarians, all of them. Filthy, uncouth, illiterate, reactionary, dirt-eating sons of pond scum.
Zandar
Ross Douthat’s entire argument today is “Well, if you would just let the pro-life mob outlaw abortions, then doctors wouldn’t get murdered.”
Scott Roeder succeeded where decades of protests and lawsuits failed.
Truly the terrorists have won.
Xero
Now that terrorism has been shown to be effective on this wedge issue, how long before NOM and other “opposite” marriage advocates borrow from the OR playbook?
kay
@Spiffy McBang:
They were going after the medical license after failing to convict him in every other forum?
They hauled him in three times, and he was acquitted or not charged every time. They even convened a citizen grand jury, who declined to indict. Incredibly. Their hand picked grand jury failed to indict Dr. Tiller.
Interesting. These are the same people who are insisting they get a federally protected right to refuse to provide birth control to women who show up with a prescription, right?
Although pharmacists and physicians are licensed by the state? Same group, right? They wanted to pull his license for performing a lawful procedure, but they want a brand new federally protected right to refuse to provide birth control, with a special dispensation that protects their own state license?
Rights for me, but not for thee.
asiangrrlMN
Fuck. Just…fuck. One tubal tying, coming up!
P.S. I jest because otherwise, I’d fucking explode.
blogenfreude
@Little Dreamer: aka the GOP’s base, the same clowns that voted for Bush twice and think he did a great job.
Ash Can
@Catsy:
Blockquoted because it bears repeating over and over, and adjusted for emphasis. Isn’t it about goddamned time our government stepped up and started protecting its own law-abiding citizens and started treating these hotbeds of violence as the terrorist cells they are?
geg6
Well, it’s now open season on women’s clinics. The anti-choice people have won this battle and will be nothing but encouraged for more of the same by this. I don’t blame the family at all; I can’t imagine what they’ve been through. But the goal has been achieved, regardless of the reasons. Planned Parenthood might as well just paint a giant bullseye on all their buildings and employees.
And if anyone thinks this will stop at late-term providers…well, I have a bridge to Brooklyn for sale.
jrg
We don’t negotiate with terrorists, so we’ll just call Operation Rescue the “Super Awesome God Club”, instead. Problem Solved.
Of course, they’ll kill someone again in the next couple of months, but as long as we call them the “Super Awesome God Club”, we can cave to their every whim without having to feel like we are empowering domestic terrorists.
Krista
I have nothing else to add to that. I’m sad, and I’m tired, and I just feel so incredibly sorry for my U.S. counterparts, knowing that there will be more women who die of maternal complications, or who are forced into the tragedy of carrying a baby who is already dead, or who will die shortly after birth, but only after suffering untold pain.
In that Babble article that I linked on another thread, a woman told of her aunt whose fetus died in utero, and she had no choice and wound up carrying that dead baby in her womb for two agonizing months, suffering a severe, debilitating depression as a result. This was before Roe vs. Wade. But it might as well be last week, because abortion’s legality is just a joke now, considering the fact that it’s being made more and more inaccessible due to these terrorists.
And I don’t like to put ill-wishes upon people. It makes me very uneasy. But some vengeful part of me cannot help but wish every ill upon those who made this happen or were complicit in this happening.
kay
If I own a drugstore, I cannot fire a pharmacist who refuses to fill a prescription for birth control for one of my customers.
I can’t do it. I have to find some other pharmacist to fill that prescription, and I have to continue to pay the pharmacist who refuses to do his or her job.
Think about that the next time you hear the whining from fundamentalist Christians about how they might be sued if they won’t do a flower arrangement for a same-sex marriage.
They keep the job, but they want a federally protected right to refuse to do the job. What other group gets this kind of deference? Name one.
Elie
–as I said upstring — the time is coming. There is complete inbalance and that imbalance must be corrected.
There is a great deal of tension and that tension will be released eventually. You cannot have a complete constituency for a needed service manhandled by terrorists and extremists with no redress. Its a powder keg and I know something different has to happen and has to happen real soon.
Violet
I’m so sad and angry about this whole thing. I suppose it will take women dying of back alley abortions to change anything. If then. The right wing nutjobs will just say they deserved to die because they “murdered a baby.”
So many of my fellow Americans are so narrow-minded and just plain stupid, it staggers me sometimes.
The terrorists have won.
TenguPhule
I endorse mandatory sterilization of the Pro-forced birth movement.
The gene pool needs a real good scrubbing.
scarshapedstar
It’s unclear whether Troy was winking and/or crossing his fingers behind his back.
For those who haven’t heard, Scott Roeder was unemployed and had $10 to his name, yet made several cross-country trips in the weeks prior to the assassination. His only apparent means of support would seem to be Cheryl Sullenger, convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic herself, later hired by Troy Newman at Operation Rescue. Sullenger admits to speaking with him on several occasions in order to help him shadow Dr. Tiller on his way to court, but says she had no idea he was planning to kill him. Right. At the time of the shooting, Roeder had Sullenger’s phone number posted on his dashboard.
Anyone wonder where Roeder was getting his gas money?
TenguPhule
You should damn well be able to dock their time then.
kay
@TenguPhule:
Do you remember the (probable) urban legend about the Minnesota Muslim cab driver who would not pick up fares carrying booze?
I read it on Drudge, so consider the source. The conservative argument was that the Muslim cabbie was licensed by the city, so could not impose “Sharia law”, so had to pick up boozy fare. His license was under US law, thus he had to treat fares equally, regardless of religious objections, or lose his license.
They were hysterical over it.
Wanna tell me the difference between the cab driver and the pharmacist?
I don’t see it. Maybe it’s subtle?
Krista
From the NY Times article:
Maybe you should have thought of that before getting those kooks fired up with YOUR inflammatory rhetoric, Troy.
But I suppose that nobody could have foreseen that repeatedly painting Dr. Tiller as a blood-crazed baby murderer would lead to someone hating him enough to kill him, huh?
sarah
@JL:
And Al Jazeera plays Bin Laden’s tapes. Terrorist news networks!
TenguPhule
Yeah, if Operation “rescue” is firebombed enough, maybe they’ll stop being complete dicks. /snark
Napoleon
One of the doctors at the clinic has made it clear he wants to keep operating it. I think this announcement is just hard ball negotiating. His offer to buy must have been considered to low by them and this is their response.
gopher2b
@Elie:
Simple economics. Abortions will just become more expensive.
Spiffy McBang
@Kay:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/152165.php
“Troy Newman, director of Operation Rescue, which had been working to pressure Kansas’ medical licensing board to revoke Tiller’s license, called Tiller’s death “a setback for the cause,” adding that he “will likely be seen as a hero from the pro-choice perspective.”
As an aside, how exactly do I do quotes? I put the blockquote cite thing in, but it didn’t show up in the preview. Not sure what, if anything, I’m doing wrong.
lou
You can see why the family chose to shut it down after reading this story. They were so proud of threatening the office manager’s husband’s livelihood. (this story came out the same day Tiller was murdered.)
If the OR people were a would-be boyfriend, they would be charged with stalking. Why can’t they be?
Elie
Yes, gopher and they already are in ways beyond just money…
Women must undergo running through a gauntlet of taunters and other crazies.
The physicians who are needed to provide these services have their lives disrupted and endangered in the most severe way — through fear of death and physical harm brought about by perfect strangers who see some idealized mission in their terrorism…
Our society pays by having the example of physical violence and coercion as a successful model to establish public policy rather than the rule of law, tolerance and empathy for the many complex clinical situations that ocurr to women.
No — its already pretty expensive.
However, our side, the side for women’s reproductive rights — cannot be asked to pay this unbalanced and undue burden much longer. It.must.stop.and.soon.
Anne Laurie
Fortunately, since you don’t need years of training to safely perform a gay marriage, it’s harder for the bigots to find a newsworthy “target”. Fred Phelps had to resort to showing up at military funerals to get the attention he craves, and even the smallest local stations are catching on & refusing to televise his hate-filled insanity.
The flip side being that gay-bashing is too often dismissed as “random acts” committed by drunk teenagers or ignert pore people, not as the inevitable result of “good Christian leaders” perennially inciting their
cult membersflocks to hate SINNERS who flaunt their SINFULNESS in front of the DECENT people (and give Ted Haggard et al a funny feeling in their girded loins).There are a lot of self-styled Christians out there who basically regret that Americans have given up on the concept of “honor killings”. They don’t (just) want random nutcases like Roeder committing high-profile murders & pointing the finger at Operation Rescue’s “instructions” — they want a million low-profile “random” murders of doctors, uppity women, girly-men, and other rebels against the “god-given” authority of the American Taliban.
tavella
And of course, the New York Times’ take on this? Did they perhaps cover the women who would struggle even harder to find someone so they don’t have to continue carrying a dead or terribly damaged fetus? Oh, no. The *important* thing was how the local anti-abortion terrorists were all so lost now that they didn’t have someone to terrorize. How they were *suffering*.
Fuck them and the NYT both.
kay
@Spiffy McBang:
They were going to pressure the state licensing board to pull his ticket.
Because they failed when they trumped up misdemeanor charges, Tiller was acquitted, and then the citizen grand jury “star chamber” they convened failed to indict.
They then failed when they used Tiller to try to defeat the Kansas governor, and failed again when they tried to bar the Kansas governor from serving in Obama’s cabinet.
I count three forums and two elections. They lost. Amd lost and lost and lost, in the, ahem, marketplace of ideas.
They’re not crazy about Our Hallowed System of Laws, and, well, elections. Not fond of elections. either.
Calouste
@scarshapedstar:
——- reply starts here
Yes, in the same way as I wonder where that guy that was crossing the country in an 8 year old car and threathened to kill Obama got a check for $85,000 from. As usual, follow the money.
asiangrrlMN
@kay: This was actually true. He was basically told to pick up the fares or lose his jobs. The difference is, he’s Muslim, duh!
@TenguPhule:
Heh. Thanks for making me half-smile.
Like many others, I am sad, tired, angry, and fucking just done with this.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@tavella:
It does have to be kind of disorienting for them, but I’m sure they’ll be busy soon, redirecting all of their efforts into promoting birth control and supporting post-born children who need help. And obviously they’ll have to redecorate their “Abortion Is An ObamaNation” truck, since now that Tiller’s clinic is closed there won’t be any malformed fetuses or unintended pregnancies, and thus no need for further abortions. Right? Right?
Allan
I want to donate money, though I don’t have much to spare.
I specifically want to know that the bulk of any money I give goes directly to assisting women obtain exactly the kind of late-term abortions that Dr. Tiller provided.
Anyone have any suggestions about where best to donate so that I can be confident my $$$ went to help a woman in this desperate situation gain the services she needs?
Spiffy McBang
@Kay
Er… you realize I’m not suggesting he would have succeeded, right? I’m just pointing out his attempt and his belief, however flawed (and I fully agree that it was utterly flawed), that he was going to pull it off.
BruceFromOhio
Open season on pro-choice anything. Look for counselors, operators of women’s shelters, NARAL volunteers, legislators to be gunned down next. After it all, it obviously works. Sinners, beware!
Anne Laurie
From the article Tavella linked to:
Your heart just bleeds for poor Mr. Gietzen, no? (No.)
So, how long before junior-high science teachers in Kansas have to wear bullet-proof vests?
(Yeah, I know: the local school boards will just individually ban the teaching of “godless” theories. Yay, American Taliban!)
BruceFromOhio
@TenguPhule:
To inflict suffering was the objective all along.
MikeJ
Now that they’ve succeeded at this, what other parts of Sharia do the right wing extremists want to establish in the US?
I expect them to start burning down schools that allow girls.
asiangrrlMN
@Allan: Here is the site that sponsored the George Tiller Memorial Fund.
Xenos
And of course, slavery. John Brown decided to wage war on the South when pro-slavery advocates in Bloody Kansas started killing his adult children.
His truth goes marching on, I hope.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@MikeJ:
That’s a little over the top. I think they’ll only burn down the schools that don’t require girls to wear burqhas.
Don
JESUS would understand the difference.
Allan
@asiangrrlMN: Thanks!
binzinerator
@Violet:
Even stupider than you think. Or I thought.
Here’s some polls that reflect just how narrow-minded and plain stupid. It looks like most people don’t believe they will be victims of terrorism and that most people believe the bushie’s enhanced interrogation techniques are in fact torture — and yet about half approve of it and do not want to prosecute the people responsible for it.
Sure looks that way on a number of things.
AhabTRuler
And has for quite some time.
asiangrrlMN
@AhabTRuler: Yeah, that.
@Allan: No problem. Glad to help someone help the cause.
Roger Moore
@kay:
The pharmacist’s coreligionists are the ones writing the laws, so his behavior is legally protected, while the cab driver’s coreligionists aren’t in a position to write laws to help him. SATSQ
Blue Raven
We here in oh-so-enlightened San Mateo County, CA have our own “truth truck”. He’s merely a local nutbar as opposed to being in charge of an organization, however. The Roman Catholic church that happens to be near the clinic he stages his one-man picket in front of has barred him from their parking lot because the larger-than-movie-sized posters of aborted fetuses were far too much for them to handle being even close to looking associated with their organization. He’s sued them over this, but I doubt he’ll get far since it’s private property. (I find this ironic since my first exposure to images of aborted fetuses was due to the direct action of the RC church I grew up in, but I digress.)
His letter to the editor after the Tiller assassination was a study in distancing himself from Roeder/Roeder from the anti-reality movement while both mourning Tiller’s death and being tickled pink that fewer preborn humans would die at his hands. I’ve wanted this guy to vanish since I found out his truck gets parked within direct view of an elementary school. I may get my wish if someone gets angry enough.
Comrade Darkness
The American Taliban
wishes to inform you that
YOUR PRESENCE
is mandatory
at the weekly stoning
where
FORNICATORS, ambulance lawyers,
and biology SCIENTISTS
will be removed
as a THREAT to our fine, peaceful
SOCIETY.
SUNDAYs
Town square (or your local mall)
immediately after church.
~ when the bells ring ~
The Grand Panjandrum
And the Christianists continue to keep it classy.
TenguPhule
Every day we have proof that there is no Kind Just God.
Just a real evil SOB.
TenguPhule
According to the Bush theory of pre-emption, all anti-choice headquarters must now be invaded, their records seized and their members rounded up into FREEDOM camps for reorientation into a kinder, gentler indoctrination.
Notorious P.A.T.
I sure hope no one spewing on the anti-choicers here was complaining about Anne Laurie’s treatment of those same people in her other threads.
ronathan richardson
If anyone wonders why people commit acts of terrorism, it’s because it works, and it works well. Al Qaeda turned our government into a bunch of psychotic war criminals. Palestinian terrorists (and believe me I support their cause) have helped convince the world that Israel is a racist and ruthless state. And anti-abortion fanatics have swept abortion clinics out of parts of the South.
TenguPhule
Ruthless yes, but not racist.
The Arabs really are out to get them.
YellowJournalism
But that’s exactly what has happened. We have become victims of terrorism now that the family has decided to close the clinic. The terrorists took away one of the few accessible choices to safe late-term abortions, aka safe medical care.
Fuck them.
iluvsummr
Even scarier, it will encourage nutjobs like this guy who gave an interview to the UK Guardian.
From the Guardian:
[begin blockquote]
Neal Horsley wants to kill abortion doctors. He publishes what is widely regarded as a hit list of medics and openly advocates the execution of women who have terminations.
[end blockquote]
Even better, he’s planning a run for governor of Georgia and says this:
[begin blockquote]
“If they elected me governor I would, without hesitation, raise up a militia in Georgia. I would line them up along with me at the abortion clinic there in Atlanta and if the federal government came in and tried to escort people in to kill their babies, we would have a fight to the death”
[end blockquote]
ETA: blockquote fail on orginal post
Little Dreamer
@Anne Laurie:
Hmmm, guns seems to be mysteriously missing from that list.
Doug Wieboldt
I could almost wish that someone would start stalking some of these domestic terrorists. NOT with the intention of violence. Just turn out of an alley, and point your finger and say, BOOM!, your dead. Actually, your not WORTH killing. I just want you to know that you could be dead right here, right now. Unlike you and your ASSociates, I’m not a murderer.
Nancy Irving
Possibly the family tried to recruit another doctor, but failed.