There is a new website http://iamdrtiller.com/ devoted to the memory of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor who was shot and killed in his church. The site contains letters and photos sent in from people. In some (but not all) of the photos, people are holding signs saying “I am Dr. Tiller” over their faces.
So Bill O’Reilly is discussing the site with Amanda Carpenter on his show last week, and asks what must be one of the stupidest questions possible:
Why are they hiding their faces, Amanda, if it’s such a noble cause?
Mind you, O’Reilly is the person who kept calling the doctor “Tiller the baby killer”, a “barbarian”, “murderer”, said he was “executing babies”, compared him to Hitler and Stalin, and said that anyone who didn’t help stop him had “blood on their hands”. So now he wants people to uncover their identities so he can demonize them on his TV show?
Yeah, right. Does O’Reilly want more blood on his hands?
On a lighter note, all this reminds me of something that happened to me many years ago, when I was a volunteer doing clinic escorts. Our job was to escort patients into health clinics to help them get through the phalanx of anti-abortion protesters. One time, I had given a ride to another volunteer — a woman about my age — and as we were walking toward the clinic the pro-life forces started running after us, thinking we were a couple going to get an abortion. They started screaming at us that we were killing our baby, and without thinking I spun around and yelled “Can’t you see that she was raped by an Albanian dwarf?” For some reason that stopped them in their tracks and they left us alone.
Apologies to any Albanians.
6 Comments
That’s funny! I wish I was that quick on the wit.
I have always wondered if there is a geographic variation in where these protests happen. I was a Planned Parenthood client for many years. In Los Angeles and Pasadena (CA) I never saw a single protester in the 5 years I was a patient there. When I moved to Boston, the very first time I went to the Planned Parenthood clinic there was a huge crowd protesting, escorts, and I had to pass through a metal detector to get into the clinic. I had never seen that before. It was all the more bizarre for me because I was accused of having or getting an abortion (lots of mixed messages from the protesters) and was called a whore/slut/etc. I was stunned. I was, in fact, a long time married woman with no health insurance going in for my annual exam and birth control. I have never understood why this was happened in Boston but not in L.A., Pasadena, or in Delaware?
My wife used to translate at a clinic, and eventually came across some of their literature. It was all about why birth control is evil……….Hmmmmmmmm.
My sister was the Tillers’ babysitter some years ago and when she went to his office (I’m guessing ’70s) for non-pregnancy or abortion services (i.e., just woman-type stuff) she was often accosted by protesters. It made a simple doctor’s appointment very uncomfortable.
When I was in college in the early 70’s, I was a volunteer at Seattle’s Abortion Referral Service. At that time, Washington was the only state in the northwest with legal (and, therefore, safe) abortions so women would call in to get referrals as well as driving and housing for abortions. Are we heading back to that, again?
anti-abortion protesters still going strong in NYC. They seem to think the only reason women go to planned parenthood is to get an abortion. Should women just stop going to the doctor completely?
Starluna, I used to go to the Boston Planned Parenthood because the staff was really tremendous. This was years and eons ago before it was fashionable for nut jobs to harass anyone walking into a family planning center. This was so long ago that it was safe for doctors who performed abortions to advertise in the Phoenix and The Real Paper.
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