Dr. George Tiller

by hilzoy

My thoughts are with the family of Dr. George Tiller, who was killed today. 

I'm not sure how many doctors still perform late-term abortions in this country -- one and two seem to be the most common estimates. This is, of course, due to the campaign of terrorism that has been waged against them. I cannot imagine the courage it takes to go on doing what you think is right in the face not only of consistent harassment and death threats, but of actual attempts on your life. 

Why go on doing it? Here's one reason:

"Sometime early in the 8th month my wife, an RN who at the time was working in an infertility clinic asked the Dr. she was working for what he thought of her discomfort. He examined her and said that he couldn’t be certain but thought that she might be having twins. We were thrilled and couldn’t wait to get a new sonogram that hopefully would confirm his thoughts. Two days later our joy was turned to unspeakable sadness when the new sonogram showed conjoined twins. Conjoined twins alone is not what was so difficult but the way they were joined meant that at best only one child would survive the surgery to separate them and the survivor would more than likely live a brief and painful life filled with surgery and organ transplants. We were advised that our options were to deliver into the world a child who’s life would be filled with horrible pain and suffering or fly out to Wichita Kansas and to terminate the pregnancy under the direction of Dr. George Tiller.

We made an informed decision to go to Kansas. One can only imagine the pain borne by a woman who happily carries a child for 8 months only to find out near the end of term that the children were not to be and that she had to make the decision to terminate the pregnancy and go against everything she had been taught to believe was right. This was what my wife had to do. Dr. Tiller is a true American hero. The nightmare of our decision and the aftermath was only made bearable by the warmth and compassion of Dr. Tiller and his remarkable staff. Dr. Tiller understood that this decision was the most difficult thing that a woman could ever decide and he took the time to educate us and guide us along with the other two couples who at the time were being forced to make the same decision after discovering that they too were carrying children impacted by horrible fetal anomalies. I could describe in great detail the procedures and the pain and suffering that everyone is subjected to in these situations. However, that is not the point of the post. We can all imagine that this is not something that we would wish on anyone. The point is that the pain and suffering were only mitigated by the compassion and competence of Dr. George Tiller and his staff. We are all diminished today for a host of reasons but most of all because a man of great compassion and courage has been lost to the world."

Here's another:

"A routine ultrasound on October 26--meant to be a time of great joy (my best friend came with us to the appointment--revealed terrible news: one of the twins had died, probably about a week before. We went from the ultrasound appointment to my obstetrician's office and were met with even more grim news. My weight had spiked up about 18 pounds, my blood pressure was soaring, and I had protein in my urine.

It turned out that I was in full-blown preeclampsia. I was admitted to the hospital immediately.

After that, everything happened very quickly. I was put on medication (magnesium sulfate) in an attempt to treat the preeclampsia and save the remaining twin until he reached outside-the-womb viability--a mere two weeks away (I was just over 22 weeks pregnant). But I got much worse overnight; my blood pressure couldn't be controlled, I had a massive headache and was vomiting uncontrollably. My kidneys shut down. I was moments away from seizures, coma, and death when the doctors came and told us the bad news: my remaining twin could not be saved. My pregnancy had to be terminated or both the baby and I would die.

You might, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, be able to imagine what it felt like to be my husband--to imagine being terrified of losing your children and your wife in one fell swoop. Ms. Clinton, you might be able to imagine lying in the hospital, so sick you barely feel any of what is happening, only knowing that the long-fought-for children you so desperately wanted are now both going to be dead.

Here's the part of the story where choice comes in. I could, of course, have gone through induced labor and delivered my tiny twins. But my blood pressure was hovering around 165/120 (often going higher), even with treatment. Can you imagine what labor would have done to my body with blood pressure that high? My doctor recommended, and I agreed, that I undergo the much less stressful intact dilation and extraction procedure (...)

As I lay on the gurney, waiting for my procedure to start, I felt a gulf of grief and emptiness the like of which I have never known. I felt abandoned by God. I lay there, crying, alone, surrounded by doctors and nurses. You can't imagine the sadness.

I was lucky. Are you surprised that I would say that? I was lucky because the partial-birth abortion ban was not yet in effect in October of 2004. If it had been, I would have been forced to undergo labor and delivery, no matter the risks to my health, and I might right now be either dead or so brain damaged I would be unable to type this."

And this:

"I also know a woman who had two "partial-birth abortions," or D&Xs (dilation and extraction) as they are more accurately called. My friend Tiffany is a carrier of a terrible genetic abnormality. In addition to other defects, her babies developed with no faces, with no way to eat or breathe. They were doomed. The only way to extract them without hurting her chances of ever having another baby was through a D&X."

And this essay that I will never forget, about a woman whose child died in her womb, and who couldn't find anyone to do a dilation and evacuation, the safest procedure for someone in her condition, because it was too controversial:

"I could feel my baby's dead body inside of mine. This baby had thrilled me with kicks and flutters, those first soft tickles of life bringing a smile to my face and my hand to my rounding belly. Now this baby floated, limp and heavy, from one side to the other, as I rolled in my bed.

And within a day, I started to bleed. My body, with or without a doctor's help, was starting to expel the fetus. Technically, I was threatening a spontaneous abortion, the least safe of the available options.

I did what any pregnant patient would do. I called my doctor. And she advised me to wait. (...)

On my fourth morning, with the bleeding and cramping increasing, I couldn’t wait any more. I called my doctor and was told that since I wasn’t hemorrhaging, I should not come in. Her partner, on call, pedantically explained that women can safely lose a lot of blood, even during a routine period.

I began calling labor and delivery units at the top five medical centers in my area. I told them I had been 19 weeks along. The baby is dead. I'm bleeding, I said. I'm scheduled for a D&E in a few days. If I come in right now, what could you do for me, I asked.

Don’t come in, they told me again and again. "Go to your emergency room if you are hemorrhaging to avoid bleeding to death. No one here can do a D&E today, and unless you're really in active labor you’re safer to wait.""

Why didn't her own Ob/Gyn do the procedure? 

"I can't do these myself," said my doctor. "I trained at a Catholic hospital."

George Tiller endured decades of terrorism to help women like these, women in unspeakably awful situations whom very few people were willing to help, given the price domestic terrorists had decided that anyone who helped them would have to pay. Now he has given his life. 

Comments

[wonkie]

From the Colorado Independent:

"Hours after the Sunday morning shooting death of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kan., a Boulder physician — who says he could be the only doctor in the world still performing the procedure — said Tiller’s assassination was the “absolutely inevitable consequence” of decades of anti-abortion fanaticism.

“I’m profoundly sad and I’m furious and I think the American people need to understand that we have a fascist movement in this country,” Dr. Warren Hern told The Colorado Independent on Sunday. “We don’t have to invade Iraq to find terrorists. They’re right here killing abortion doctors.”

“Every doctor that does abortions has been under an assassination threat for decades,” Hern said. “The anti-abortion movement message is, ‘Do what we tell you to do or we will kill you,’ and they do. This is a fascist movement.”

Hern laid blame for Tiller’s death at the feet of the anti-abortion movement’s encouragement of violence against abortion providers and the Republican Party’s “exploitation” of the extremist rhetoric."

Now I suppose whe'll hear lots of talk from self-proclaimed pro-lifers who will do their usual self-aggrandizing about their superiority while trying at the same time to distance themselves from the terrorist.

Well I don't buy it. For years the prideful anti-abortinists have been claiming that abortion is murder. Well the terrorist acted on their claim. He believed the rhetoric.

[Matt12]

It's unbelievable to me that there are men out there who hate women so much that they want to murder someone who saves their lives. I just cannot comprehend that level of hatred.

So sad.

[claudia]

I've been in the same situation as the woman in your last example. The only difference was that I wasn't hemorrhaging - and that I was lucky enough not to be in the US, I suppose.

We lived overseas back then, and had been visiting the US for some weeks for the summer. In retrospect, I'm now really really glad that it wasn't discovered until we were in Germany that our baby had died in utero.

There was not a question about what needed to be done. I was admitted to the hospital right out of the office of my Ob-Gyn. The nurse I talked to on the phone was very sympathetic and told me to drive slowly and carefully. She was relieved to hear I had my mother with me.

From the moment I stepped into that hospital -- just a normal German hospital -- I was being wrapped in sympathy and competence. Everyone knew what to do, and everyone felt with me. There was not a moment's doubt that it was about making the whole procedure as comfortable and painless (both physically and psychologically) for me as possible - but they also treated my son with utmost respect. After the extraction, he was washed, and the nurses took a photo of him, and his foot prints and gave them to me in a sealed envelope, to keep and look at if I wanted. They gently dressed him in a tiny little wrap. I had the option of holding him and saying good-bye to him.

I was in the hospital for three days, to recover and, as the doctor put it, to center myself. He knew I had two little boys at home and he thought I needed the time alone - and I did. I cried a lot. But I was amazed how even the cleaning lady was understanding and sympathetic. It took me a bit to work out that the little sign with a flower on my room door was the hospital code for "mother has lost her child, be gentle". On the second day, the hospital social worker came, and we arranged Benjamin's funeral.

In Germany, birth before 20 weeks is considered a miscarriage - the fetus is, technically, just organic waste. In this hospital though, parents are given the option of a common burial. Every few weeks, all "earliest born" children were laid to rest in the local cemetery with a short ceremony. The nurse who held my hand while I delivered my dead son was there. I have a printed card with my son's name on it and a little poem, and I have a place to go when I want to leave him some flowers. It's incredibly helpful to have had both the funeral and the burial site.

It is still painful for me to think about this time but I can't imagine how different this experience might have been just a few weeks earlier in the US.

Respect for life is more than just respect for a fetus.

[publius]

thank you for posting this

[PhoenixRising]

Claudia, thank you.

The most frightened hours of my life were those in which my sister was suffering through a medically similar health crisis in a US hospital 600 miles from her home. She arrived by helicopter, unconscious, at the only non-Catholic facility in the state.

She might have died--because no doctor in her region had the experience or capacity or training to treat her medical condition--leaving her 4 year old motherless, and her husband a widow who had lost not just his wife but his wanted second child.

[mythago]

Claudia, I am so sorry for your loss.

[hilzoy]

Claudia: thanks for sharing that. Like mythago, I am very, very sorry for your loss.

[claudia]

Thank you all for your kind words. But... I didn't post this for sympathy, really. I just wanted to tell how differently the same medical situation is dealt with in another country - better, in my eyes.

In many European countries, the experience of pregnancy is a bit different than in the US. For instance, in Germany, almost every pregnant woman has a midwife whom she sees more often than her doctor. This relationship often lasts for years (with baby swimming, baby massage classes, gym classes, etc.). Mother's Leave (from work) is extensive and well paid. There is a strong ethic of supporting the mother. Partly this is expressed through government programs, but partly it's just something that everyone agrees upon. (Yes, I know, it doesn't explain sinking birth rates but that's a different topic.)

The point I'm getting at is hard to explain: the mother is put first, even though there is a great respect and joy for the unborn child. From the very start, a pregnant woman is handled differently here.

So the baby-centered way of viewing this seems strange and a little frightening. Does it encourage this fringe behavior? I think it does.

BTW, I have four children -- including a baby who's loudly asking why I am not paying her attention now? I'm also pro-choice (have always been) and horrified by the murder of Dr. Tiller. My thoughts are with his family and friends.

[Loudon is a Fool]

I am sorry for your loss, Claudia. I think we can all agree that the abortion laws in Germany are preferrable to those in the United States.

[Hartmut]

But that took its time too and every few years the Right tries to undo it (and there are some Roman Catholic bishops here that would love to join forces with OR).

[Joe]

Germany might have treated Claudia better than many states would treat a woman in her condition here, but as a whole, Germany has more conservative abortion laws than the U.S. has. See, e.g., the Wikipedia entry on abortion in Germany.

Also, her own account compares a certain hospital and the nation as a whole. More power to the public service they did to help her. Dr. Tiller, I reckon, served as such an island of justice for the women in his care too.

[Chris Winter]

Something that hasn't been touched on much in this discussion (if at all) is pro-life women who need abortions. I happened across this collection of anecdotes:

http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html
"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion"
When the Anti-Choice Choose
By Joyce Arthur
Copyright © September, 2000