What Dr. George Tiller and His Staff Were About
Jun 1st, 2009 by admin
The women in my father’s practice who had abortions before abortion was legal have taught me that abortion is not about families, it’s not about babies, abortion is about women’s hopes, dreams, potential…the rest of their lives. Abortion is a matter of survival for women. Abortion is a matter of survival for women.
If you can deny women birth control before the initiation of, shall we say, a personal relationship, if you can deny birth control ahead of time, if you can deny a woman emergency contraception at the time of a personal relationship, and if you can deny women abortion services after a pregnancy has become established, then you can control women. Because you will overwhelm them with parenting and child rearing responsibilities. You will be controlled. You will be subjugated. You will be marginalized. And when subjugation walks in, freedom walks out. That means gone will be equal opportunity in the work force. Gone will be equal education. Gone will be equal pay for equal work. Gone will be health care benefits. Gone will be retirement benefits. Your freedoms will be gone. Because this is not about babies, again. It’s about subjugation of women by male dominated societies. It’s no more; it’s no less.
These women began to let me know I’d saved their lives. It was a very big deal.
We have made higher education possible; we have helped correct some of the results of rape and incest; we have helped battered women escape to a safer life; we have made recovery from chemical dependency possible. …. God Bless all the abortion workers who make FREEDOM possible in ways that we will never completely understand for hundreds of thousands of women and families each year.
We have created and hoisted our Women’s Healthcare Flag as a symbol of our Outpost of Reproductive Freedom. It reminds us that we must refocus and rededicate ourselves to the proposition that all freedom and all equality for women begins with reproductive freedom.
Women Need Abortions and I’m Going to Do them. –George Tiller MD, 1941-2009
Women are emotionally, mentally, morally, spiritually, and ethically competent to struggle with complex healthcare issues and come to decisions that are correct for themselves.” (Banner at Tiller’s practice)
Abortion is not a cerebral or a reproductive issue. Abortion is an issue of the heart. Until one understands the heart of a woman, nothing else about abortion makes any sense at all.” -banner at Tiller’s practice
From In Their Own Words, h/t Jeyoani. Dr. George Tiller was gunned down yesterday while at church with his family.
Dr. Tiller was a man who comprehensively understood the politics of abortion and why abortion is not just about babies or families but is about women’s hopes, dreams, desires and wishes. All of which are denied by the anti-abortion campaign. Dr. Tiller was deliberately murdered because he rightly believed women’s rights includes reproductive freedom not male control of women’s bodies and lives. Denying women the right to have abortions is one of the central ways male-dominated/patriarchal societies maintain their power over all women.
There is nothing praiseworthy in deliberately murdering another human being simply because he dared to challenge misogynistic beliefs that women’s bodies belong to everyone else but themselves. Conveniently forgotten by anti-abortionists is the fact millions of children continue to live in poverty and millions of girl children continue to be subjected to male sexual, physical and psychological violence but these issues apparently are irrelevant when all one need do is to oppress and control women’s lives, women’s sexualities and women’s bodies.
I sincerely hope the murderer is tried before a court and convicted but given the excuses/justifications for violence and murder committed against individuals who are seen as ‘monsters’ I have my doubts.
This is so sickening and tragic.
I wonder how Rush Limbaugh and the Repugs are going to spin this now?
Note that all those quotes came from an ANTI-Dr. Tiller site! The folks who published them thought they were proof positive of how evil he was.