Last Sunday, a Kansas doctor who worked in an abortion clinic was gunned down in his own church. Dr. Tiller worked for an abortion clinic performing abortions near Witchita, Kansas. He was brutally killed, in front of his pastor, perhaps family, friends and the one he understood to be God, or his Higher Power.
Women have abortions for many reasons, and it’s the inherent right of each woman to decide whether she should have one or not. It isn’t an inherent right to murder a doctor, in church or anywhere, despite what religious rationalization perpetrators of such actions may use in defence of their actions.
And here’s another problem surrounding Dr. Tiller’s execution: when anyone prevents someone from entering an abortion clinic, it’s a federal offence. The alleged suspect, Scott Roeder, had “super glued” the doors of the clinic shut. In fact, two times in the week just prior to the assasination of Dr. Tiller, the suspect/offender was seen doing the same thing as well as in 2000.
Both the local police and the FBI were notified by the manager of the clinic; a local detective came out and interviewed the manager. The FBI said they would investigate the situation, but apparently didn’t take immediate action even though the alleged perpetrator had a well-known record of terrorizing the clinic. The manager believes if they had taken immediate action, Dr. Tiller would be alive today.
The Federal Government despite a new administration that is overturning many of the horrendous laws and policies of the Bush Administration, must ensure that its policies of non-terrorism carried out through federal law is actuated at the street level. Beyond this, they have the responsibility and accountability to the American people to protect the civil rights of all people–this includes women who choose to have abortions–with the fullest legal means available.
The U.S. has a historically/hypocritcal record of telling other countries about their violations of human rights, but not practicing this in fact itself at home. Each time any human right is not defended and prosecuted to the extent of the law, it gives extremist groups, such as anti-abortion groups, the promiscuous permission to keep doing what they’ve been doing despite the repugnance most Americans feel when it comes to extremists taking the law into their own hands; in doing so they blatantly and flagrantly take life by assasinations of abortion doctors, and laugh at the inherent human right of all people to live safely and free from attack by terrorists such as anti-abortion guerillas. Clinics are vandalized and in one case a doctor was shot through his kitchen window–shot dead.
Each abrogation of any civil or human right must be squarely interrupted and legally prosecuted for what it really is, the rape of the Body Politic. It has been stated before, if we stand by in silence and passivity while these perpetrators keep terrorizing anyone at all, then one day they will come for us simply because we are human beings who speak truth to power in the name of freedom for all peoples everywhere.
We can’t allow apathy and ignorant assumptions based on inaccurate information to stop us in our tracks inhibiting us in defending the human rights of all, especially American citizens.
© Christopher Bear Beam, MA
June 5, 2009
