If George Tiller Reaped What He Sowed, He Would Be the Commencement Speaker at the Medical School Graduation of Hundreds of Committed Future Abortion Providers. He Would Not Have Been Murdered.

As the predictable and immediate shock and anger over the death of Dr. Tiller has given way to sadness, confusion has also come to mark these past few days.  No, Randall Terry’s heartless, evil, and insane statement regarding Dr. Tiller’s assassination is not the root of this confusion, though I can see how you would think so.  The source of my current confusion is a more personal conflict.  Here’s what I mean.

On Monday, I posted a link to a newspaper account of Dr. Tiller’s death on Facebook.  My friend Miriam’s response, in the form of a comment beneath the link, was that she supposed Dr. Tiller reaped what he sowed.  Most of my friends don’t echo Randall Terry.  This was an unusual occurrence, so much so that I didn’t know what to feel at first.  I was initially so angry at her response that I nearly unloaded all my pro-choice rhetoric on her in an email.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t respond at all.  Today, in response to another link on Facebook, Miriam left a comment reminding me and other readers of her having put a baby up for adoption, and her having had a good experience in doing so, and asking me to reconsider my support for abortion rights.  I replied that I respected her position, and her bravery, but asked that she respect my position on abortion.

There’s more to this story, however.  I met Miriam when she was pregnant with the child she gave up for adoption.  She appeared in New Orleans during a period of years that I consider to be some of the most formative in my life.  Miriam was a member of a neighborhood family, a family composed of a wildly divergent group of individuals who—for reasons known only to the universe—encountered one another at a time when we all needed and were able to offer to each other a kind of understanding and support we were not receiving elsewhere.  I, personally, had begun to spend so little time at home in response to my biological family’s increasing instability that I carried a small bag with a change of clothes in it at all times in case I happened to not end up at home at all.  Most of my time, apart from work and school, was spent with Miriam and the other people from this group.  They are partly responsible for shaping me into the person I am when I am at my best.  They gave me confidence in my ideas and sensibilities, accepted my stubbornness and erratic moods, and most of all, taught me by example that surviving hard times is possible.

I admired Miriam instantly, and not simply because she had made what I knew was a difficult choice to carry a child and give it up, though this played a large part in it.  I admired her immediately because she possessed (and still possesses) a sense of purpose, because she has a work ethic that is rare in human beings, and because she is considerate and thoughtful in her treatment of others and in the decisions she makes.  This is the source of my conflict.  Miriam and I do not see each other frequently anymore.  In fact, the members of our mid-1990s patchwork family are spread out across the city and country.  One is dead.  Others haven’t communicated in years.  When I reflect on the state of these relationships, and I do so more often than you might believe, it amazes me that we’ve all fallen so far out of touch.  Simultaneously, I tell myself that that time in all our lives was meant to be limited.  I also tell myself to suck it up and not to mourn the end of this time. (But I do anyway.)  My respect and admiration for Miriam is deep, and the gratitude I have for hers and the others’ intervention in my life is great.  For someone I respect and admire, someone who taught me so much about living life on my own terms, to adopt a callous position on the death of an honorable man literally makes my heart ache.

I don’t expect to change Miriam’s position on abortion, or anyone’s for that matter.  I am writing this because I’m trying to figure out how a pro-life stance on abortion can translate into a blithe dismissal of gunning down a doctor.  I know that Randall Terry and Miriam are not the only people in the world suggesting that Dr. Tiller “reaped what he sowed.”  For three years, I worked in the office of a medical association for abortion providers (of which Dr. Tiller was a member).  Over those years, I helped run many direct mail campaigns and, because the mailers were sent out widely, we always received responses from people whose views did not include support for women’s retaining control over their own bodies.  On one hilarious and rainy Monday, I opened a return envelope containing our mail piece covered in one gentleman’s dried snot.  On the card, a series of pro-life statements were scrawled.  Snot!  The man mailed us his snot to show his opposition to abortion!  On several less hilarious days, I opened death threats.  These threats ranged from lucid suggestions of group suicides for “baby killers,” to crazed, foaming-at-the-mouth diatribes ending with threats to shoot us all in the face as we left our offices.  Those people probably believe that Dr. Tiller got what he deserved.

I didn’t seek out a job with this organization because the abortion “issue” was my issue.  I was broke and sick and needed a job that came with health benefits.  I took the job because it met that criterion.  Over the three years that I spent there, I watched the organization and the doctors and clinics it represented deal with repeated political and physical attacks that ranged, like our negative direct mail responses, from simple disagreement, to enraged ranting, to bombings.  The lesson that has stayed with me even since I’ve left the organization is the one I learned about dedication.  Everyone who worked there, whether they complained about their job or not, fought and continues to fight for women to be considered bright enough to decide what to do about an unsupportable pregnancy.  No one, from the hotline operators, to the directors, to the doctors, to the clinic staff, to the office staff of an organization like the one I worked for, is in it for the money or the health plan.  We were or are in it because the right to a safe and legal abortion needs defenders, and because the best defenders of this right get killed.

What I hope comes of this post is that Dr. Tiller’s murder is responded to with some respect going forward.  He did not get what he deserved.  He did not reap what he sowed.  He deserves honor, he sowed faith in women.  And he died for that sin.

Comments

[carolinagasolina]

excellent post. thoughtful and thought-provoking. thanks for sharing your insights.

[Manda]

this is a very good message. i agree with you 100%. i admire miriams strength to carry the child and give it to another family. it was hard for me personally when my family memeber decided that abortion was her only option, but the reality was that it was her descision to make and not mine. to support leagal and safe methods of abortion for women seems to not be sinful to me. but i am not god. alas. and everyone is entitled to his or her opinions. perhaps they should just keep that idea in mind as well.