For decades now George Tiller has been a late-term abortionist, who has often been the focal point of battles between pro-abortion and anti-abortion forces. He was shot dead while entering his Lutheran church on Sunday. Hours later a 51-year-old man was arrested over the shooting.
As I write this piece the details of the shooter are unknown, but undoubtedly they will soon be revealed. He may have been someone opposed to abortion. He may have been someone who had a close friend or family member who was grieving over having had an abortion. Time will tell.
But as I said, it was wrong to kill him. Our commiserations and prayers go out to his family. No true pro-lifer should condone the taking of an abortionist's life, no matter how much murder the abortionist is involved in. Late-term abortions are especially horrific and barbaric forms of murder of the unborn, but that does not make it right for the abortionist to be murdered as well.
The rule of law must be allowed to work itself out. And if the law is a bad law (as it is in this case, to allow late-term abortions) then we must re-double our efforts to change those laws. But if this killer was an anti-abortionist, then he has contradicted his own message and value system by committing this crime.
Because details are so sketchy at this point, little more can be said about the shooting. But much can be said about this monstrous form of abortion. (Of course all abortions are monstrous, but this one is especially so.)
Late term abortions are also known as partial birth abortions, or dilation and extraction (D&X) abortions. I have elsewhere written on how this form of baby killing works, and I repeat that information here:
"The D&X method is barbaric. The abortionist pulls the baby out with a forceps. He then delivers the baby's body feet first, leaving the head inside. Scissors are then inserted into the base of the skull of the live baby and spread to enlarge the hole. The brains are then sucked out with a suction catheter.
"The difference between the D & X procedure and homicide is about three inches. If the head had also been taken out of the mother, the doctor would have a legal requirement to do all he can to save the child. But by leaving the head in, he can perform his 'family planning' technique without fear of consequence."
A set of diagrams on the gruesome procedure can be found here: http://www.ppl.org/PBA.html
One nurse who had been involved in that abortion method had to walk away from it. This is how she described the situation in a testimony to the US Congress:
I am a registered nurse, licensed in the State of Ohio, with 14 years of experience. In 1993, I was employed by Kimberly Quality Care, a nursing agency in Dayton, Ohio. In September, 1993, Kimberly Quality Care asked me to accept assignment at the Women's Medical Center, which is operated by Dr. Martin Haskell. I readily accepted the assignment because I was at that time very pro-choice. I had even told my teenage daughters that if one of them ever got pregnant at a young age, I would make them get an abortion….
[We] inserted laminaria to dilate the cervixes of women who were being prepared for the partial-birth abortions - those who were past the 20 weeks point, or 4 1/2 months. (Dr. Haskell called this procedure "D & X", for dilation and extraction.) There were six or seven of these women.
On the third day, Dr. Haskell asked me to observe as he performed several of the procedures that are the subject of this hearing. Although I was in that clinic on assignment of the agency, Dr. Haskell was interested in hiring me full time, and I was being given orientation in the entire range of procedures provided at that facility.
I was present for three of these partial-birth procedures. It is the first one that I will describe to you in detail. The mother was six months pregnant (26 1/2 weeks). A doctor told her that the baby had Down Syndrome and she decided to have an abortion. She came in the first two days to have the laminaria inserted and changed, and she cried the whole time. On the third day she came in to receive the partial-birth procedure.
Dr. Haskell brought the ultrasound in and hooked it up so that he could see the baby. On the ultrasound screen, I could see the heart beating. As Dr. Haskell watched the baby on the ultrasound screen, the baby's heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen.
Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby's legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby's body and the arms - everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus.
The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall.
The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I was really completely unprepared for what I was seeing. I almost threw up as I watched the doctor do these things.
Dr. Haskell delivered the baby's head. He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw that baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he'd used. I saw the baby move in the pan. I asked another nurse and she said it was just "reflexes."
I have been a nurse for a long time and I have seen a lot of death - people maimed in auto accidents, gunshot wounds, you name it. I have seen surgical procedures of every sort. But in all my professional years, I had never witnessed anything like this.
The woman wanted to see her baby, so they cleaned up the baby and put it in a blanket and handed the baby to her. She cried the whole time, and she kept saying, "I'm so sorry, please forgive me!" I was crying too. I couldn't take it. That baby boy had the most perfect angelic face I have ever seen.
I was present in the room during two more such procedures that day, but I was really in shock. I tried to pretend that I was somewhere else, to not think about what was happening. I just couldn't wait to get out of there. After I left that day, I never went back. These last two procedures, by the way, involved healthy mothers with healthy babies.
I was very much affected by what I had seen. For a long time, sometimes still, I had nightmares about what I saw in that clinic that day. . . . I wish I hadn't seen it. But I did see it, and I will never be able to forget it. That baby boy was only inches, seconds away from being entirely born, when he was killed. What I saw done to that little boy, and to those other babies, should not be allowed in this country…..
The full account by nurse Shafer can be found at numerous places. Here is one: http://www.priestsforlife.org/testimony/brendatestimony.html
Dr Tiller should not have been murdered. But unborn babies should not be so viciously murdered either.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE54U1JW20090601