Dr. Tiller was a kind, generous, thoughtful, and compassionate man. During his life, he was vilified by the anti-choice movement and called the most horrific names imaginable. Even after his murder, some anti-choice extremists still insist on defiling his memory with this insulting, inflammatory rhetoric. See Rachel Maddow’s astute analysis from last night.
I also encourage the BMG community to read some insightful postings by Christina Page (on HuffPo), Gloria Feldt (on Salon), and Kierra Johnson (on Feministing).
As we begin to move forward from this tragedy, we should all come together to honor Dr. Tiller’s legacy by working to create a supportive environment for reproductive health care providers and to improve women’s access to this critical care.
Andrea Miller
Executive Director
NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts
There are several pieces about this on Salon today.
Does this mean that we should raise the terror alert level to orange? Or is political killing only bad if it’s done by someone with an accent?
tends to steer clear of abortion issues. I can understand that, in some degree, but ultimately what this silence suggests is an unwillingness, indeed, even a laziness, to engage on the single most divisive issue of our times. There are a few cranks who turn out but there are a few extremely honorable men (I can count on two or three fingers) who will step up and engage. (shrug) As a woman of a certain age, I’m not surprised. This site is largely consumed with the muscular minutiae of local politics and less enamored of the larger gender issues that divide us as a nation.
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p>Tiller’s death may well be a gauntlet. We’ll see. I go elsewhere to discuss the implications.
Maybe, maybe not. I personally stay clear because there is no issue I’ve seen on the blogosphere except perhaps the Israeli/Palestinian one that devolves so quickly, so strongly, and so uselessly to heated rhetoric. I do decry Dr. Tiller’s assassination, and I do think this is part of a larger pattern of domestic terrorism. I just didn’t think it had to be said.
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p>It may devolve quickly, but I would argue this: half the population of this nation is neither Israeli nor Palestinian. It is, indeed, however, female. And while the “devolution” of the I/P conflict is common on many blogs, I would argue that the I/P conflict is largely abstract, a playground for the backseat driver with an invested interest. I suppose I could take offensive at the notion that females of reproductive age in this nation are tantamount to Palestinians, but I won’t.
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p>This issue is qualititative different. This issue affects millions of citizens in this nation in real and concrete ways. This is not a conflict played out half way around the world and neither is it a conflict in which a resolution has little daily influence on the lives of half the population for the majority of their lives.
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p>So I stand by my assessment of the demographic sensibilities of this website. Not an indictment, necessarily, but an observation that suggests something larger. I’ll leave it to others to name that.
“the notion that females of reproductive age in this nation are tantamount to Palestinians”
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p>That’s hardly what he’s saying. My take is that what he’s saying is that there are some issues where discussion often devolves into something not (or counter-) productive and that as such, he tends to steer clear of them for that reason. He indicated abortion as one, and gave an example of another. He didn’t make any attempt to equate the two.
But he suggested the equivalency in some respects, not me.
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p>I supposed I can equate reproductive rights to the discussion (or lack thereof) of climate change or gambling or Mass Pike tolls, for that matter, but that is intellectually disingenous.
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p>The reproductive rights of females in this nation has no equivalency in either tenor or relevance to any other divisive issue. When someone can prove to me that any other issue is so vital and so relevant to fully 50% of this nation’s population, then, yes, I may concede an equivalency or relationship in vehemence. But until then, no. Yes, there are divisive issues, but claiming divisiveness as a justification for failure to engage reveals nothing about the issue of female reproductive rights and everything about the person who demurs.
… he suggested equivalency in that conversations can devolve. Looking at what he wrote I don’t see any other equivalences drawn. He simply didn’t say anything else on the matter.
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p>As far as ‘equating’ different issues… that’s not what he’s done. He’s ‘equating’ a specific aspect of two issues, and that’s not disingenuous at all. Equating abortion and climate change as a whole issue would certainly be odd, but equating the tendency for liberals to show particular preferences (a particular aspect of the two issues) is certainly a reasonable thing to talk about (and people often do). This is done not to make assertions about the issues, but to make assertions about liberals. Similarly, Sabutai’s point on this particular aspect of those particular issue isn’t a comment on either issue, but a comment on the character of discussions on these issues.
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p>You are quite right, however, in that what he’s claiming (it seems to me) is that his preference is to avoid engagement. Your stated reason, however, is decisiveness. I take from his writing that this isn’t actually his reason… his reason is ‘devolvement’. Decisive conversations can be productive, but devolved ones, for the most part, cant. At least at that point it ceases to be a conversation per se.
My take is the issues around choice have been hashed and rehashed to the point where further discussion is useless. Neither side is going to move.
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p>That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be condemning the climate which allows something like this to occur. Or celebrating Obama’s reversal of the idiotic Bush Administration policies on reproduction. Like removing all mention of condoms (and clean needles) from the CDC Web site.
… saying that ‘further discussion is useless’. I’m just trying to clarify what it seems to me that Sabutai did and didn’t assert. It’s just a pet peeve of mine when people say I asserting something when I didn’t and I try to be specific in what I say. It seemed to me that lightiris was reading into Sabatai’s statement and I tried to add some clarity is all.
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p>If people are really interested in what I have to say,… I’d say that while I have had several useful discussions on the issue (see my first post above), it is true that many discussions on this issue are contentious to the point of ‘devolving’. I can also see how that would result in many people wishing to avoid such discussions.
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p>That being said, however,… I also see that there is utility to bringing up the issue, even if it doesn’t result in a productive discussion. When the pro-life people become vocal, they don’t really do so from the standpoint of starting a productive discussion… they do it to ‘inflate’ the apparent ‘dominance’ of their position in the public. This is deceiving of course (louder doesn’t mean you poll better), but judging by the trend of laws restricting access, delaying procedures, as well as the effect of intimidation in general on the medical profession’s ability to operate, I’d say that the utility of just becoming vocal is demonstrative. Even if it ‘devolves’, it can still be effective just in demonstrating the ‘presence’ of the pro-choice side and indeed the ‘magnitude’ of their feelings on the position.
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p>Furthermore, I’d say that if you can show good arguments, they might actually be productive ‘after the fact’ in that it can be a ‘seed of doubt’ that can eventually bare fruit. This phenomenon often works for assertions of atheism (or at least agnosticism). That’s why mere ‘engaged discussion’ is insufficient for some… demonization becomes a necessary arrow for their quiver because it can be effective (in opinion swaying) against good logical arguments.
Mr Lynne was right … AND my take is….
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p>I’m a strong advocate for “keep it safe, rare, and legal.”I try and make my voice clear when the subject comes up.
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p>I still think any discussion here will only end in a shouting match. We’re already seeing deliberately offensive comments on the subject.
… efficacy in looking calm and rational next to a shouter. Gary actually uses it to great effect sometimes.
I did not and do not seek to equivocate either political/policy issue, except to point out that both devolve quickly into exchanges of strongly worded, emotional appeals. Insofar as anything else can be inferred, that is a cause of poor-quality writing or interpretation.
but can you see, perhaps, that your willingness to forego conversation in the presence of louder voices is actually a concession?
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p>I agree. Abortion debates are tiresome and often repetitive. But what happens when people stop doing the heavy lifting? When the only voices heard are those we’d rather not engage? What happens when men stop speaking up for the reproductive rights of women because it’s frustrating, taxing, and seemingly futile?
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p>Yes, these discussions devolve. They’re frustrating, unproductive, and futile. But that does not absolve you of your responsibility to the girls and women in your life to speak up for them even when it hurts, it’s tiresome, or it’s inconvenient. Sorry.
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p>
Comments this ignorant can’t be the only ones on the subject.
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p>I’m going to repeat myself and recommend this article by someone with far more to say.
I’m not sure that a pro and con back and forth will accomplish much here. I think it’s time to pull out the We Won’t Always Play With You and have a discussion among the pro-choice folk about what it would take to advance this issue.
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p>There are lots of perspectives: the secular vs. religious, the odd hypocrisies one comes across, how gendered opinion is on this issue, and so on. There’s also a big murky gray territory on abortion. The anti-abortion movement remains remarkably mum on what criminal sanctions they intend to impose. Will the prosecute women? Jail doctors? For how long? They never say. They have never made a widely held proposal. What does that mean? That they’re underneath it all pro-choice and they just want to use moral suasion? Or maybe it’s a kind of orgy of moral indignation free of policy implications and the policy implications make the moral indignation less exhilarating because they introduce head-scratching dilemmas.
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p>There’s also gray on the pro-choice side. As Atrios repeatedly points out, there are pro-choice liberals who must constantly remind us that abortion is “icky”. If it’s the right decision for some women, isn’t all the worry about ickiness an unnecessary obstacle? Especially when abortion can be emotionally troubling? Why throw in the concern trolls?
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p>So I guess I think we should figure out where the gray areas are and how to make them more pro-choice. Debating it with those who make opposition to abortion a component of their faith is a cul de sac.
… some detailed discussions in the past. Admittedly I can’t remember any very recently. This was the most recent one I remember. There was this during the campaign. I seem to remember some pretty cool threads on this issue around when I first became active on here like this one.
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p>I suspect we’ll hear more as confirmation hearings get underway.
I buried two babies born shortly after their births. It is sheer hell to bury your child, even a newborn. The decision to abort belong solely to the individuals involved in initial production. NOBODY ELSE! Toss that down the liberal pipe and see what comes back up.
on the loss of babies?
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p>Your idiocy knows no bounds.
For your rudeness in only being able to count only two or three men with knowledge of the subject. You need to expand your circle of friends.
… the liberal position of ‘choice’ is exactly that. Those affected get to choose and efforts by others to ‘but in’ legally should be fought.
Probably not an original thought, but make the comparison to slavery, as in, is the African a person, or not? You know, as in “if you don’t like slavery, don’t own one” or by contrast “if you don’t like abortion…”.
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p>Isn’t the abortion debate one of personhood?
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p>
, said the South to the North.
Yes, but not in the way you mean.
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p>If you believe women are people, you’re pro-choice.
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p>If you believe that one person has the right to the use of another’s body without the latter’s consent, so long as the second person is a woman, you’re “pro-life.”
So, to be pro choice, must you have ascertained whether a fetus is or is not a person?
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p>You know, because if it’s not a person, then abortion isn’t murder. If an African wasn’t a person, then owning one was the same as owning property.
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p>To appropriately label one as pro-life or pro-choice, is it necessary to have an opinion whether the fetus is or is not a person?
No, it’s not necessary.
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p>It doesn’t matter whether a fetus is a person. Definitions of “personhood” are fuzzy things anyway, but all actual medical evidence indicates that there are good reasons not to ascribe it to, at least, an embryo or fetus (“fetus,” by the way, is not a general term that applies at all stages of development. For the first nine weeks, it’s an embryo, and the vast majority of abortions happen in those first nine weeks); that’s not what matters, though.
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p>You and I, I’m sure we both agree, have the full complement of human rights, including the right to life. I trust you aren’t going to claim that an embryo or fetus has more rights than an adult human. If you’re dying, and you need a kidney transplant do save your life, and the only person who can be found who’s a match is unwilling to be a donor, do you have the right to compel that person to donate a kidney? Clearly you don’t.
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p>Even if a proto-blastocyst has full human rights from the moment of fertilization, using the woman’s body to sustain itself, against her will, is not one of those rights.
Personhood was real fuzzy too in the 19th century, even though it’s plain that the slaves of the South were people by today’s standards. Perhaps the fetus will by future medical standards be regarded as persons also.
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p>Certainly there are people today who regard the fetus as a person, and there were abolitionists who regarded Africans as persons then.
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p>Progressing through the analogy, you explain that if a proto-blastocyst has full human rights from the moment of fertilization, using the woman’s body to sustain itself, against her will, is not one of those rights.
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p>Similarly, the punishment for killing a slave in the 18th century was non-severe too.
slave fetuses.
Which I’m sure were also at one time regarded as property. And now, I’m not sure whether those leaning pro-choice regard African fetuses as i) property or ii) persons or, iii) if the distinction is relevant.
I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.
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p>Your comparison to slavery is utterly invalid and deeply offensive, and you have completely failed to engage with the actual substance of my argument.
So, since you can’t actually explain the difference in the debate of the personhood of a slave that transpired in the 19th century, with the debate of whether a fetus is or is not a person, or if the distinction matters at all in the abortion debate, you flee, offended.
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p>Sorry I offended you.
I’ve no interest in arguing with someone who doesn’t display basic reading comprehension skills. The first thing I said to you included an answer to your question of whether personhood matters, and an explanation of that answer. You’ve stuck steadfastly to your red herring, and it’s not worth my time anymore.
Of course there’s a difference between offended and disgusted. Which did you mean, because you typed “offended”. I take you at your word. (and you critique my basic reading skills!)
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p>Re: personhood. I asked the question if it matters, to you, if the fetus is regarded as a person. You dodged the question with a tawdry attempt at a definition:
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p>
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p>Am I to understand from your statement that the fetus is the person who is using the other person’s body without her consent? Because, you know, she kinda consented, unless we’re talking rape.
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p>My very straight forward question is this: is the determination that the fetus is, or is a person important to those espousing pro-choice?
I described your analogy as “offensive,” because it was. My overall reaction to your “arguments,” however is mere disgust.
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p>I have already answered your “very straight forward question” a few times, but I’ll give it one more go. I don’t speak, of course, for the whole pro-choice movement, but 1) consenting to sex is not the same as consenting to pregnancy, 2) I didn’t “dodge” anything, I said quite clearly that it doesn’t matter, as far as I’m concerned, whether an embryo or a fetus is a person, 3) are you sure you actually know what “tawdry” means? Because I don’t think it makes sense in that sentence.
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p>The question of personhood at issue is not the personhood of the embryo, it is the personhood of the woman. I’ll repeat again that I don’t think that an embryo is a person, and I think medical science backs up that conclusion reasonably solidly, but even when there is no debate whatever over personhood, as in my organ donation analogy, it is clear that no person has any right to compel the use of another’s body, even to sustain their own life. If women are people, then they have the same right to bodily autonomy as all people do, which includes the right not to have their bodies used by other persons against their will (and, it should go without saying, certainly not by non-persons).
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p>If you really can’t understand this, or you still think I’m “dodging” or being unclear, then I can’t imagine what else there is to say.
Except for the ‘s’ on “individuals,” there.
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p>The decision belongs solely to the individual, singular, whose body is sustaining the embryo.
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p>The liberal — and the feminist — position is, as Mr. Lynne says, precisely that that individual’s right to make that decision, access to competent, accurate and compassionate medical consultation and information to help in making that decision, and access to safe, competent, and again compassionate medical practitioners and facilities to perform the procedure (AND access to information and resources to assist her in bearing and raising the child, if that’s her freely-chosen decision: pro-choice goes both ways), must be protected as integral components of her fundamental human rights.
Comments like this billxi just make conservatives sound contemptible. Limbaugh’s neologism “feminazi” simply serves as a disqualification from being taken seriously.
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p>Please, please think a little longer before commenting and confirming liberal stereotypes of conservatives. Vituperation does no good for the left-right dialog here. It makes it that much harder for our more thoughtful friends on the right to participate.
rather than offensive. Somewhere between “you feminazis!” and “abortion is a choice!” I got lost in the woods.
I am not a liberal. I think we all know that. Choice is the single most important reason I am not a Republican. Yes “feminazism” was rude, but so is:
“but there are a few extremely honorable men (I can count on two or three fingers) who will step up and engage. (shrug)”. If I were to insult any demographic like that, I’d get hammered.
You apparently think that suggesting that people who believe women are human beings are equivalent to mass-murdering fascists isn’t insulting.
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p>I’m actually sort of not sure what to say to that.
Different social contexts have different rules. What’s fair here is not fair there.
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p>Using the term “feminazi” here is disqualifying; “wingnut” isn’t. Not so everywhere. I’d never argue for something on Red Mass Group and describe my ideological opponents as wingnuts. It would be disqualifying and self-defeating. Why bother? I might as well confirm their prejudices and write, “I’m an emotional liberal who cannot make a rational argument.”
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p>Finally, LightIris’s comments about how interested or not men are in women’s issues is hardly some horrible, unbearable stereotype men will never live down. Don’t you imagine most volunteers for pro-choice organizations are women? Wouldn’t that be unsurprising?
I don’t think Operation Rescue has ever had a female President, for example.
pro-choice to “pro-death”.
… is ‘anti-choice’ accurate. I think so.
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p>Is ‘pro-death’? Don’t think so. Many pro-choice people are against the death penalty and still want to reduce the need for and number of abortions in this country. In this way, they can’t be said to be ‘pro-death’ which would imply that what they really want is to persuade people to with healthy pregnancies to abort them. Hardly an accurate description of this crowd.
Surely you’d agree that “anti-choice” people would also explain how they are for being able to “chose” many things in their life (what to have for lunch…) or maybe should they get pregnant to begin with. So they aren’t “anti-choice” about everything…
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p>Concerning abortion I believe you can call people Pro-choice and Pro-life and the disagreers can be happily labeled. But those stirring the pot with “anti-choice” should also be called “anti-life”.
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p>People have used names/labels for various ethnicities and races (colored, negro, balck, African-American…) over time and the rule I’ve heard is “call them what they want to be called”. I believe people against abortion wish to be called “pro-life”.
… and applying it: In a conversation about abortion being “anti-choice” should be assumed to mean “anti-choice” with regard to abortion.
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p>Problem still exists though. In the context of abortion being “pro-abortion” is a miss-label. Restricting ourselves to the context of abortion all the problems I pointed out earlier still exist.
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p>Your point about what people want to be called is well taken. I was merely speaking to the accuracy. Sorry, but “anti-choice” is accurate and “pro-abortion” isn’t.
my comments here are unnecessary.
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p>I posted my thoughts on the Globe’s blog on today’s story and also on the blog for today’s editorial.
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p>In the first, I wrote:
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p>In my comment on the (too wimpy) editorial, I wrote:
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p>I agree with Sabutai that I didn’t think my feelings (that this is domestic terrorism) needed to be stated here. I appreciate the nudge, however — I don’t know whether I rate “honorable” or not, but I’m certainly eager to engage the question.
…it wasn’t discussed because in MA it seems to hardly generate controversy. There was the blip in the 2002 race where Romney had to reassure voters he wasn’t going to tamper with current laws and O’Brien may have gone too far in the other direction for the comfort of some. Other than that even Republicans tend to be prochoice for the most part it seems, though interestingly there are conservative Democrats who aren’t. In the MA context there seems to be not much to talk about.
I want to add some additional emphasis on what exactly it is Dr. Tiller did. This post at Bitch, PhD is a reasonable place to start.
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p>Third-trimester abortions are never, ever performed except in cases of medical necessity: either because the mother won’t survive childbirth, or the fetus won’t (or will live only a very short, painful time), or the fetus is already dead. The deeply misogynistic, hateful myth of “frivolous” abortions needs to be buried forever. In virtually every case, the women for whom Dr. Tiller performed this lifesaving, necessary, completely legal medical procedure wanted their pregnancies — but something had gone terribly wrong.
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p>Any and all claims or implications that the late-term abortions Dr. Tiller provided killed otherwise viable fetuses or weren’t medically necessary are vile, evil lies, and it’s very important they be debunked.
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her his experiences having a uterus would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life been pregnant”
Men were thought of as people (citizens) about 60 years before women were. Another one to toss down the liberal pipe…
I am probably one of the few pro-life Dems on these message boards and I have taken a lot of flack for it historically. I will not re-ignite the old abortion debate now.
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p>I will say that the whole point of the pro-life position, particularly Cardinal Bernadin’s consistent life ethic that I subscribe to, is that the taking of any human life is a terrible thing that human beings lack the moral authority to do. Thus, while I am sure the murderer thought he was doing a morally just act by killing a man who he viewed as a murderer, he was in fact engaging in the very same anti-life policy he decried. He killed a man who by all accounts was a decent man and a regular church goer. Now to be fair, Dr. Tiller was an extremist on the pro-choice position, but the only right way to end such extremism is to fight it with protest, with non violent action, civil disobedience, and political action. Violence is never the solution. Pro-life activists from Eugene McCarthy, to Martin Luther King, to Robert F. Kennedy, to Cardinal Bernadin all would have decried the violence expressed by this murderer.
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p>My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of all involved, the victim, and the murderer whose family will also endure a terrible tragedy. I also hope and pray the FBI brings him, and all other domestic terrorists, into custody. Taking a life is never, ever, a justified option.
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p>Pro-life means anti-death penalty, anti-euthanasia, anti-abortion, and anti-unjust war. Any politician who declares themselves to be pro-life without embracing ALL of those tenants is a hypocrite.