Posts Tagged ‘George Tiller’
On Abortion
Andrew Sullivan has been running testimonials about late–term abortion on his site all week, tragic stories of a sort that normally get no attention in detached public-sphere moralizing. They seem to be, judging from his most recent post on the subject, starting to change his mind:
I have to say I am beginning to believe that these abortions, given their excruciating moral and personal choices, may be the most defensible in context of all abortions. And yet they seem to be taking life in a more viscerally distressing way. I need time to think and rethink these things. I would not have without reading these extraordinary accounts.
It’s amazing what happens when circumstances force us to confront reality of difficult choices in practice, not just “in the abstract.”
Thursday! Again!
Thursday again! How does this keep happening?
* Today is the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. MetaFilter remembers.
* Planetary #27 finally on its way. October.
* New Hampshire officially passes marriage equality. It looked for a while like nitpicking from the governor’s office might actually kill this; very glad it didn’t.
* Country first: Lindsey Graham admits he puts the Republican Party before the good of the nation.
* In the wake of Dr. George Tiller’s assassination, a frequent Fox News guest has put photos and addresses for the last two late-term abortion providers in the country on the Web.
* Obama speaks in Cairo.
* E.J. Dionne on the corporate media’s continued rightward slant. More from Steve Benen.
* The recession: a global view. It’s important to remember how good America actually has it—and that the current level of hardship in the States is, relatively speaking, not even all that bad.
* Here comes heath care. Donkeylicious says Team Edwards has something to crow about here. Maybe, but the health-care justification for Edwards’s (and later Hillary Clinton’s) candidacy long past viability was always weak—the plan you campaign on is never the plan that gets passed.
* And sad news: Bill, killed. Early reports declare David Carradine a suicide.
Assassination
George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning inside the lobby of his Wichita church.
When people like me bemoan the rise of eliminationist rhetoric in political discourse, it’s not just elected officials but also people like George Tiller we are hoping to protect from attack or assassination. As Amanda Marcotte discusses at length, Tiller was providing medical treatment to women under very difficult circumstances. That was his crime. Undertaking difficult service on behalf of those who needed it was enough to mark this private citizen for demonization, lies, hate, and now death. What else would you call this, if not terrorism?
Gerry Canavan 