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.
Current public speech by religious extremists, some religious leaders, and talk show hosts has created an environment in our country which fosters violence against clinics and doctors, such as the murder of Dr. Tiller on Sunday. Such speech has often given the impression that all religious people are anti-abortion, anti-choice, and support extreme measures.
However, a majority of religious people support women as moral decisionmakers about their own reproductive health and futures--support them in making decisions according to their own faith, consciences, and deep understanding of their personal circumstances—and support them in seeking counseling from their own religions or spiritual advisers, if they choose.
Religious pro-choice people, both clergy and laypersons, can change this toxic environment by speaking out. They have done so in the past. In 1967, when abortion was still illegal, several clergy, including a Baptist minister, a Reform rabbi, and other concerned clergy, gathered in New York City to discuss what to do about women congregants who came to them seeking not only crisis counseling, but also, safe abortions. (As you may recall, during those years, over 200 U.S. women died annually of unsafe abortions, and many others were permanently maimed or made infertile.)
In 1967, this small group of clergy decided that they could not provide support for the spirits of their women congregants while ignoring their bodies. So they took on the responsibility of finding doctors who were performing safe abortions, and then spread the word to each other by telephone. Within a year the group, which called itself the Clergy Consultation Service (the CCS), had expanded to include 1400 clergy across the United States.
The CCS clergy did not merely start a counseling and information service, they also publicized it. An article in the New York Times stated the group’s intentions very clearly. CCS clergy made sure their congregations knew they were offering this service; In 1968, my minister at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Rev. George Whitney, announced it to our entire congregation.
By making their intentions public, CCS clergy gave several important messages:
The CCS clergy, along with doctors who were telling the public about the damage caused by illegal abortion, helped to change the public attitude toward abortion. They influenced state legislators to legalize abortion in several states. Their influence was shown in the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Justice Blackmun, writing the majority opinion, stated that, because there was no consensus among theologians about when life begins, “the judiciary …is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” Thus, the Court did not accept the state’s assertion that life began at conception as a justification for banning abortion.1
Immediately after the Roe decision, those religious denominations and faith groups who had supported the Clergy Consultation Service came together to form the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR), to protect the right to safe, legal abortions granted in Roe. The United Methodist Church and many churches and faith groups represented by clergy laypersons here tonight started RCAR. In 1994 RCAR became the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), expanding its scope to cover access to contraception and comprehensive sex education, and other matters which were under attack. (On the table at the back of the church is a pamphlet entitled “We Affirm” which lists the members of RCRC and contains their pro-choice national statements along with those of other religions and faith groups.)
Clergy and laypersons from RCRC and Ohio RCRC have continued to speak up publicly to assert that a majority of religious and spiritual people support women as moral decisionmakers and that the religions which oppose abortion do not hold the only religious view. However, their voices have not been enough to counter the religious extremists. In fact, people are often surprised to learn that there is religious support for choice.
What can we do to change the climate created by extremists? Keith Olberman, on MSNBC has suggested that we can change it with an “indirect boycott,” that is refusing to patronize public places where Fox News is playing. However, ignoring or stifling speech can not change the current climate.
Instead, we must all speak out as religious and spiritual pro-choice people in every way that we can to counterbalance and, I hope, overwhelm the other voices. We must not only speak up to provide support for women, we must also provide morale support for the workers at women’s health centers who so faithfully provide services.
For example, during the hate-filled assault on Dr. Tiller’s Wichita clinic in the summer of 2001, RCRC clergy and laypersons showed up as peaceful demonstrators and put on religious services. When Dr. Tiller wrote a thank you letter to RCRC for the religious support, 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."
We can speak out as religious and spiritual people to create the society envisioned by Dr. Tiller in many different ways: by displaying “Pro-faith, pro-family, pro-choice” buttons and bumper stickers; by writing letters to the editor in response to letters asserting there is only one correct view of abortion (like those in the Dispatch last week); by sponsoring workshops and panels of speakers to discuss religious pro-choice views in our congregations and colleges; by becoming a clinic escort; or if you are a clergy person, by taking training workshops in All Options counseling and counseling for reproductive loss.
Most important, we can tell our family, friends, and co-workers that we are pro-choice because of our faith and beliefs, not despite them.
(1) Roe v. Wade: 410 U.S. 113. Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. [p160]