Because, really, if you can't kill a guy in church in the name of god ...oh
never mind.
--Deb
Doctor Who Performed Abortions Is Shot to Death
Jaime Oppenheimer/The Wichita Eagle, via Associated Press
By MONICA DAVEY and JOE STUMPE
Published: May 31, 2009
WICHITA, Kan. — Authorities said they had a suspect in custody Sunday afternoon
in the shooting death of George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was one of the few
doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions.
Mike Hutmacher/The Wichita Eagle, via Associated Press
Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few late-term-abortion providers, was
killed Sunday in church.
Dr. Tiller, who had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of
abortion and had survived a shooting more than a decade ago, was shot inside
his church here on Sunday morning, the authorities said. Dr. Tiller, 67, was
shot with a handgun inside the lobby of his longtime church, Reformation
Lutheran Church on the city’s East Side, just after 10 a.m. (Central Time). The
service had started minutes earlier.
Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a
lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion, particularly in
Kansas, where abortion opponents regularly protested outside his clinic and
sometimes his home and church. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion
opponent but recovered.
Dr. Tiller had also been the subject of many efforts at prosecution, including
a citizen-initiated grand jury investigation. In the latest such effort, in
March, Dr. Tiller was acquitted of charges that he had performed late-term
abortions that violated state law.
Shortly after Sunday’s shooting, police said they were searching for a man who
had fled in a powder blue Taurus. By mid-afternoon, they said someone had been
taken into custody, but offered no additional details.
“This is going to be a larger search than maybe just Wichita,” said Brent
Allred, a police captain, who said that the FBI and state police had been
called to the scene. Few parishioners remained at the church, a modern, red
brick facility that seats about 500 people. Police cars surrounded the building.
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group that has led
opposition to Dr. Tiller’s methods, denounced the killing on Sunday, as did
other national groups opposed to abortion. “Our prayers go out to his family
and the thousands of people this will impact,” Mr. Newman said in a telephone
interview from his home in Wichita.
“Operation Rescue has worked tirelessly on peaceful, non-violent measures to
bring him to justice through the legal system, the legislative system,” Mr.
Newman said. “I’m a tireless advocate and spokesman for the pre-born children
who are dying in clinics everyday. Mr. Tiller was an abortionist. But this
wasn’t personal. We are pro life, and this act was antithetical to what we
believe.”
Leaders of national abortion rights organizations, meanwhile, expressed
outrage. Some described Dr. Tiller as one of the only doctors in the nation who
performed third-trimester abortions when the life or health of a mother was at
stake, and said that his death would make it even harder for women in such
circumstances to end their pregnancies.
“Dr. Tiller was a fearless, passionate defender of women’s reproductive health
and rights,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive
Rights, based in New York, which had worked on a legal case related to Dr.
Tiller. “It’s time that this nation stop demonizing these doctors, and start
honoring them.”
At St. George Orthodox Christian Church, next door to Dr. Tiller’s church,
members said they had often been concerned about being so close to a church
that often was the scene of protests because of Dr. Tiller’s presence. Dr.
Tiller had attended the church for a long time, they said, and had contributed
significantly to construction of the current facility, which was built in about
1996.
“This is a God-fearing community,” said Mickey Cohlmia, who was at services at
the neighboring church on Sunday morning and said she was horrified that such a
thing had happened in Wichita, a city of about 358,000 in southern Kansas. “How
does this scar everybody in his church?”
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