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Will you help us "Party with a Purpose"?
JOIN US AT COMFEST!
Ohio RCRC is in need of some fun lovin' volunteers to work at the FOCO booth at Comfest - June 26, 27, and 28!
We are joining with our other Freedom Of Choice Ohio (FOCO) partners to pass out information and get petition signatures.
We will be asking people to sign a petition supporting the Act for Our Childrens' Future. This Act will require that sex education in our schools must be comprehensive and medically-accurate.
In other words, no more abstinence-only-until marriage programs!
Energetic, friendly people are needed to help with our outreach at this fun and exciting summer festival.
Never done anything like this before? This is a perfect event to start your involvement!
We will provide you with everything you need to know to be an effective advocate! There are always at least 2 people in the booth, one of them an experienced shift leader.
We have shifts available all weekend long so you should be able to find one that fits your schedule.
Copy this link and paste it into your browser to sign up at a time convenient for you! http://jotform.com/form/91520017180
About Comfest
Comfest is the annual community festival in Goodale Park in Columbus’ Short North featuring music, food, arts, crafts, and non-profit organizations’ booths.
About Freedom of Choice Ohio
About FOCO
FOCO is a coalition of progressive, pro-choice organizations across Ohio working together to protect access to safe, legal reproductive health services. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Ohio is a proud member of FOCO.
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MEDITATIONS FROM MEMORIAL SERVICES FOR DR. TILLER
On Sunday, May 31, Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas was killed while attending church. Memorial services were held in Cleveland on Wednesday and in Columbus on Thursday. Rev. Richard Venus, Ohio RCRC Board President, and other clergy in the Ohio RCRC network offered meditations on Dr. Tiller's life and themes related to his life and work. Some of these meditations are printed below, following comments by Rev. Carlton Veazey, President of RCRC.
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Rev. Veazey, President of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
June 1, 2009
Mourning for Dr. George Tiller, Dedicated to Women's Rights, Justice, and Liberty for All
Today, we mourn the death of a humble, courageous man who dedicated his life to justice, liberty and freedom - Dr. George Tiller. George Tiller was murdered yesterday in his church, a place of peace and worship. This good doctor put his life on the line every day to make sure that safe, legal abortion was available to women in the greatest need, women with late-term complications and emergencies, who often had nowhere else to turn. He did so in respect for each woman he served and in the service of a great and noble cause - preserving the promise of reproductive freedom for all women.
Dr. Tiller had a powerful vision that sustained his daily actions of courage. In a letter thanking RCRC for our support during the hate-filled assault on his Wichita clinic in the summer of 2001, he wrote: "Together, we will create a society and a paradigm shift so that every pregnancy is an invited guest in the woman's body and a welcome addition to her family."
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Women in the greatest medical need came to Dr. Tiller's clinic in Wichita; women in the final weeks of pregnancy, with crushing medical conditions were among his patients. His clinic was a warm, welcoming place. Once past the gauntlet of angry demonstrators, women found a compassionate staff, a well-run medical practice, and the sense they were respected and safe.
Reformation Lutheran Church, Dr. Tiller's church, also sought to be a safe place for all people. In a statement yesterday, church members wrote: "...we reject any notion that violence against another human being is an acceptable way to resolve differences over any issue. We must always strive to engage in peaceful discussion. Our faith calls us to this. Our humanity demands it."
With members of Dr. Tiller's church, we pray for healing and peace to be restored. We pray for Dr. Tiller's family, for the clinic staff, for patients and their families, for friends, and for our country.
We pray for George Tiller - a true American hero, who lived his life according to his values and his faith, who was selfless and fearless in the line of danger to the very end.
Peace and blessings, Rev. Carlton Veazey, CEO and President of RCRC
Meditation by Rev. Richard Venus, President of Ohio RCRC, Memorial Service, Columbus, June 4, 2009:
Respect and Nonviolence
Meditation for Dr. George Tiller
Rev. Richard Venus
Dr. George Tiller stood where it is right to have stood. He stood in the clinic over which he presided, not to block entrance, as would his opponents, but to provide access for any woman or man in need of advice, counsel or family services.
The United Church of Christ put it this way: George Tiller dedicated his life to providing high quality, compassionate and vital reproductive health care services to women in great medical need, often in the most difficult and heart-breaking situations. He was one of only a very few doctors to provide medically indicated late-term abortions, even in the face of frequent threats, lawsuits and acts of violence committed against him and the clinic he served, Women’s Health Care Services.
How ironic that those who live to serve others and advocate for non-violence, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and Jesus of Nazareth were all killed by violent means. Dr. Tiller is now in their company for the ages.
Respect for Dr. Tiller means honoring all that he lived and died for in ways that would win his approval. It means calling for justice for women in need, health care for all, and a response from those of his community who have benefited from his life, as well as from those who encouraged violence against him.
Respect for Dr. Tiller calls for a response, not a violent response as would his critics counsel and advise, but a non-violent response from those who have benefited from his life-giving service, which includes all of us.
His murder calls for a non-violence response from the medial profession, which he so ably and courageously served. It calls for the American Medial Association to begin training at least 15 doctors to replace this man of medicine as a way of repudiating those who now carry signs saying, “God Sent the Shooter,” an apparent reference to Scott P. Roeder, who committed murder to stop one who was seeking to preserve life. It calls for the medial schools around the country that refuse to train medical students in abortions procedures, to reverse that decision and require all OB/GYN interns to be skilled in this practice. In addition, the AMA should establish a fund that will support and protect all physicians and their staffs who work in this life affirming, but very dangerous practice.
Dr. Tiller’s life calls for local and national politicians to cease and desist from campaigning on a platform that encourages violence and protests against clinics and clinic staffs and enact laws that protect those same clinics and staffs. It is time they wrote legislation in support of the lives of women and men who serve in these clinics as well as the services they offer while protecting a woman’s right to choose. Such legislation is the only just response to the murderous behavior of these anti-choice zealots.
A non-violent response should come from the news media, which has all too often played to the voices of intolerance. Operation Rescue’s chief has quickly distanced his organization from this crime, a call that is insincere at best, as are the calls from fundamentalist Christian churches for its members to distance themselves from Dr. Teller’s killer. Given their ongoing voices calling abortion doctors killers, these calls are simply hypocritical attempts to exonerate themselves from culpability in his death.
Organizations and leaders who echo these sentiments include Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association. These groups continue to broadcast their calls for the use of any means necessary to stop the right of a woman to have an abortion, which encourages the likes of Scott Roeder and the many others who have done violence to clinics and staff.
Another non-violent response would be to vote out of office those whose major reason for victory is their anti-choice, right to life positions. In my case, that means Mike Turner in the US House of Representatives and Peggy Lehner in the Columbus state house. They should be removed from office in honor of Dr. Tiller and all those who have or currently are giving their lives on behalf of women’s health.
The loss of George Tiller depletes our universe, it saddens us and we deeply mourn his going. Yet, I believe, he would want us to not only mourn for him, but also, in our personal and our public lives, live out with courage the principles and the programs he so much fought and lived for.
No one was braver or fairer or more justice-seeing than Dr. Tiller, a man who knew how to live, to care for and be present with his family, his clinic clients, his neighbors, his staff, and church and his friends. He did not always get it right, but he came very close. His life calls us to advocate for just health care for all, particularly those neediest among us.
Many centuries ago, in the long darkness of the Alaskan winter, a solution was devised by the Yupik Eskimos, the metaphysicians of the ancient common house. They said that when one among them dies, it is the beginning of a sweet, infinite journey on a beautiful underground river. But there is danger along the way. The departed person’s kayak can get caught in one of the vicious currents and be trapped forever in one of the eddy pools near the riverbanks. The traveler has no power to guide the kayak.
Only those who remain behind can keep the kayak in the center of the river, safe from the dangerous currents and eddies. They do this by the words they speak and the thoughts they hold about the one who has left the common house. In this way, for more than 10,000 years, the Yupik have avoided the end of the world. It is what we wish and what the heroes of our common house, including Dr. George Tiller, merit now.
Meditation by Barbara Avery, Director, Ohio RCRC
June 9, 2009
Taking off the veils of secrecy and shame:
At the Memorial Service last Thursday one of the speakers quoted some of Dr. Tiller's patients who praised him for giving them not only the life-saving medical care, but compassion, particularly in the way he honored their spiritual and emotional needs.
We can honor Dr. Tiller's life and work by being honest about the ways that we elied on him and other doctors to provide compassionate health care for us and other women--safe, supportive, and respectful reproductive health care.
It is my hope that women from all walks of life will step forward and identify themselves as one of the millions of American women who made the moral decision to have an abortion. If they do, they will provide support for other women who will someday have to make difficult decisions about their reproductive futures, their lives, and the lives of those around them.
The Religious Coalition is made up of many denominations and faith groups who upport women as moral decision makers, as the only people who can make the decisions that are best for them, based on their own faiths, consciences, and deep understanding of their own circumstances.
My thoughts on this day are with these many women who made the life-saving decision to choose what was best for them, whether it was to have an abortion, or to carry it to term and place the baby for adoption, or carry it to term and care for their baby themselves. Each of these is a decision in favor of life.
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The Ohio Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice seeks to ensure that every woman is free to make decisions about having children according to her own conscience and religious beliefs.
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