I could have written this last week, but it is my personal policy to let a subject such as the killing of Dr. George Tiller age in my mind a bit and not write my first knee-jerk reaction which I might, since these columns live forever on the internet, later regret.
Well, I’ve thought and thought about this and, unlike Michael Reagan—whose viewpoint I understand, respect and have run on page 3—I’m going to have a hard time getting all weepy for a guy who reveled in killing completely viable babies as late as nine months into a pregnancy.
Forget for a minute the debate on when life begins.
When a fetus can live outside the mother’s womb than it is a baby, not a fetus.
And when you take such a baby half way out of the mother and stick a knife in its brain, then I’m pretty sure the definition of that act is first degree murder.
Except in Sedgwick County, Kansas and Boulder County, Colorado.
Further, here’s what Tiller told Judy Thomas, a former reporter at the Wichita Eagle and a current writer for the Kansas City Star, “I am a willing participant in this conflict. I choose to be here.”
Now while we in this nation have rejected an eye for an eye—it’s what separates us from radical Islam—as Tiller himself said, “Nature makes mistakes.”
And while I never would have condoned the actions of Tiller’s accused killer, I can’t help but think that the end result might have been caused by a mistake of nature but wasn’t all that unfortunate. Because if you live by the sword, sometimes you die by the sword.
This is, after all, a man who, in 1991, ranted in public about President Bush 41 and the Republican Party. “They have been taken over by religious fanatics like this man right here who wants to deprive the citizens of the United States … of their religious freedoms.” He was referring to a protestor who had chained himself to the gates of his abortion clinic.
Now I can acknowledge that the freedom to have an abortion is a freedom but a religious freedom? What religion condones killing babies? What kind of religion condones killing babies?
The truth is that Tiller placed himself in the forefront of a political movement which—at the lunatic fringe end—was about the freedom to kill a baby which would have been able to live outside of the mother’s womb using the flimsiest of excuses. Using excuses so flimsy that such abortions could only be performed in Wichita, Kansas and Boulder, Colorado under the color and protection of what can only be described as corrupt public officials. You can’t even do what these guys did in San Francisco.
And, by the way, lest you think that these kinds of abortions were a small part of the “work” done by Tiller’s clinic, the Kansas City Star reports that from Tiller’s own testimony and an unsuccessful prosecution in 2003, Tiller’s gross profit (a term which was never more appropriate) that year from such “abortions” was in excess of a half a million dollars.
So his “cause” was also profitable.
So, was taking this guy out with a head shot right?
Unequivocally, no. But Tiller’s supporters are real big on moral equivalency, so maybe there is some moral justice here.
I don’t want this to be taken as an anti-abortion rant. That is a subject for another day. This is strictly about what are euphemistically called “late-term abortions” which are also known less politically correctly as “partial birth abortions” or by many people as “first degree murder”.
One last thing.
Bill O’Reilly has been accused of inciting this killing by calling the deceased “Tiller the baby killer” on his broadcasts.
I think the record will show that Tiller didn’t need O’Reilly’s help to get himself killed.
He got what he asked for and now his 15-minutes are over.
FRED WEINBERG
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