I am now writing as an expatriate in Argentina, as a person who had to get out of the United States because life was just too frustrating for me there, in many different respects. From where I am right now, I can observe major happenings in the States from afar, and not get so caught up in all the drama. There is plenty of drama in the national news here to get caught up in, if I want. From afar, I am not unaware of what is going in in the United States, rather, I have an entirely different viewpoint, filtered through Spanish-speaking news casters in Argentina, Venezuela, Spain, Miami, all further informed by my more familiar news sources on the internet.
And so, on this day, a cool fall day in June, I am compelled to comment on the cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, who has been running a women’s health clinic that women from all over the world come to. The trained physicians and psychiatrists at the clinic literally risk their own lives in order to save the lives of women who need late-term abortions, women who are denied these medical services in the places where they come from. This doctor and all of his colleagues are very principled in their commitments to aid women whose lives are truly at stake, who may have discovered that they have cancer, or that some other life-threatening emergency has come up, or that the birth process endangers them, or that the fetus has not developed a brain or has other drastic medical problems that would deny them any kind of meaningful life. All of these reasons are legitimate, complicated reasons why a woman might need a late-term abortion, and there are many others, as well. The doctor, who was shot while he was at church, was simply being a doctor, a person who does not judge the patient and does not ignore what she – her body, her mind, her intuition, her will - is telling her to do, in the face of pressure from others who, because of religious ideology, are dangerously simplifying a complex issue that they are not very well informed about. Religion is a very powerful thing, but it is not medicine.
Dr. Tiller has been harassed in every way possible by single-minded opponents of women’s rights to safe abortions, from intimidation to threats to actual physical violence to the spreading of misinformation to use of the legal system. Citizen groups have forced him into court several times in recent years, and every time, they have lost their cases. They have been accusing Dr. Tiller of providing late-term abortions without any medical justifications, and they have tried to force the patients’ medical records into the public record, and every time, the doctor has prevailed, the medical records kept confidential, and his practices proven to be medically necessary and legal.
Because of all this, I been thinking about the issue of women’s rights to abortion, and have added a few words to my essay on the subject over on the writers’ website, Helium. Also, see the Democracy Now! show on this subject (as well as Amy Goodman’s blog post) for some insight into who Dr. George Tiller was and what his clinic was doing for desperate women in need. Perhaps this slaying of a medical professional by a religious zealot will bring the national discussion about women’s rights to proper health care into the spotlight in a way that brings the real issues forward, instead of just grazing the philosophical ideologies that people hold on the subject, ideologies that can lead to grave consequences when they are allowed to be pushed forward to the extent that this shooter did. Did that man consider the psychological effects that a bloody murder in a church would have on not only the witnesses in the church, but on the entire nation and the world?
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