I don't know if it'll be hide-recd or ignored. I've never posted a diary before and I didn't expect my first to be this emotional. But I've run out of people to talk to in the real world and I could not go without saying it as much as possible. Apologies in advance to anyone who stumbles on it accidentally.
Dr. George Tiller is a martyr.
I am a sometime Catholic and a former student of theology. I do not use that word lightly. I do not mean it as a snipe at Christianoid political rhetoric. I mean it in the fullest sense of the word.
Dr. George Tiller died for me.
No, I didn't have a late-term abortion. I have been lucky enough not to have to make that choice. I don't know him personally. I only know what everyone knows: that he was the target of constant death threats, that his home address and other information was made public by anti-abortion groups, that he was shot in both arms and his clinic vandalized. I know that on the last day of May he was murdered in the lobby of his church.
We've all read the diaries.
The people responsible for those acts believe that a woman’s life becomes expendable in the event of pregnancy. Dr. Tiller willingly put his life on the line because he did not.
This is a personal issue for me because I am both a woman and a human being.
A world in which abortion is safe and legal is a world in which I am safe and respected and where the decision to have a child is recognized as the tremendous and life-changing responsibility it is. I was lucky enough to be born into this world, and to have had access to relatively safe, abundant and affordable birth control-- for my life to be acknowledged mine. I know women who have benefited from abortions and women who have fought to keep their children over pressure from friends and family. They were able to do so because we live in a culture that, whatever its flaws, generally accepts that women are human.
He died for me and for every woman I know, including women who believe that abortion is murder. These women—among them many family members and friends whom I love— live in and benefit from the same world that I live in and benefit from—one that respects and honors their choices, one in which they are allowed to be whole and free and women all at the same time.
Dr. Tiller helped to preserve that world. He was vilified for it and threatened for it and he was murdered for it. That isn't hyperbole, it's fact.
It's already been established on dKos that a late-term abortion is nearly always performed to avert a medical emergency. It is performed in the event of fatal fetal anomalies or fetal death, and in cases where delivery would lead to extreme trauma or death for the mother. I don't think we can stress that enough. This is not that thought experiment from Ethics 101 where Carrie Bradshaw strolls into the delivery room after brunch and decides to abort instead just for the hell of it. That does not happen in real life. And if you don’t know that already, instinctively, as part of your existence as a person, I don’t know what to tell you except the truth, over and over again.
The stories on Kos and elsewhere speak for themselves. Late-term abortion is a life-saving procedure. Dr. George Tiller saved women’s lives. He died for it, in this beautiful country I love, in this astonishingly rare time in which I was blessed with the chance to grow up taking my personhood for granted, my choices as mine.
I grew up in the Catholic Church and in many ways I still consider myself a Catholic, though I cannot ally myself with the Catholic Church as it is today. I can't advocate, even by association, many of the things it advocates, defend what it defends. I try my best to resist sentimentalizing it. But I want to believe I can take away from the Church what is best in it. The Church taught me that good works are in themselves sacramental, and that the dead who died in service to truth and humanity can continue to help us.
I want to believe that now more than ever.
It was with Dr. Tiller in mind that I signed up to volunteer for Planned Parenthood this weekend. If he can put his life on the line, I thought, I can overcome my shyness and hand out a few condoms at the fun fair, and find out about other things I can do to help. Some friends and I are organizing a donation drive. I may even finally have a serious talk with my anti-abortion family members about why I believe what I do. It isn't much on its own. I am ashamed to admit out loud, even anonymously here on dKos, how little it is, and how little I have done. But it's not nothing.
We can't -- we shouldn't -- all be martyrs. But we can work hard to honor the dead, and through our works in their name the dead can help us.
Lux perpetua luceat ei.
ETA: Wow, everyone. I left my house for work this morning with sixty comments on this post and when I got to work there were twice as many! Thank you so much for all your kind comments, suggestions, and memories of Dr. Tiller.
While the diary is still afloat, here are some places you can spend your money, from the comments:
The National Network of Abortion Funds: http://www.nnaf.org
Medical Students for Choice: http://www.ms4c.org/
The link below to Dr. Tiller's PAC, http://www.prokando.org, is broken, but it may be repaired soon, so check back.
Or go to http://www.plannedparenthood.org and find a clinic near you (or within 900 miles, as the case may be).
Please add your suggestions below!