Life's Work by Dr. Willie Parker

Author:Dr. Willie Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria / 37 Ink

CHAPTER 7

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Slings and Arrows

On Sunday, May 31, 2009, I was just finishing up my final day as a teaching doctor in ob-gyn and family planning at Washington Hospital Center, in Washington, D.C., when text messages began flooding my cell phone. Dr. George Tiller, one of the abortion movement’s bravest practitioners and an outspoken advocate for the rights of women—a man we in the abortion rights community sometimes called “St. George”—had been shot, point-blank, in the forehead.

Dr. Tiller was, as I am, a Christian, and at the moment of his assassination he had been standing in the vestibule of his home church, Reformation Lutheran, in Wichita, Kansas, handing out bulletins for the day’s services. It was Pentecost—a joyous thanksgiving to God for the gift of the Holy Spirit—and the service had already commenced, with the choir singing an African song, and the senior pastor accompanying on drums. At a few minutes after ten in the morning, Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who used the online handle ServantofMessiah, entered the vestibule with a handgun, approached Dr. Tiller, and pulled the trigger. He then ran into the parking lot and threatened the churchgoers who happened to be lingering there, before fleeing the scene in a powder-blue Taurus. In the entrance to the church, one usher attempted CPR on Dr. Tiller, while another rushed into the sanctuary, found Jeanne Tiller, and escorted her down the aisle to the spot where her husband of forty-five years lay sprawled on his back in a pool of blood. Parishioners recollected later that they could hear her scream.

In 2006, as an eager first-year Family Planning fellow, I began attending meetings of the National Abortion Federation (or the NAF, as it is known), a professional association for abortion providers that establishes clinical standards of care, offers continuing education for practitioners, does clinic security assessments, and, through an anonymous donor, helps to subsidize abortion procedures and travel costs for poor women. At my very first meeting, I had been seated across the table from Dr. Tiller during an educational panel. His work and his bravery were legendary, and I was awestruck. He was one of three doctors in the country who continued to perform third-trimester abortions despite the vitriolic political outcry against the procedure and legislative attempts to criminalize doctors who performed them. He was a veteran, quite literally, of the abortion wars and wore his wounds with pride. His clinic, Women’s Health Care Services, in Wichita, had been bombed twenty-three years earlier, and in 1993, a terrorist named Rachelle Shannon had shot Dr. Tiller in both his arms. In a gesture of defiance and outrage, Dr. Tiller had returned to the clinic the very next day, his arms bandaged from his wounds, and proceeded, as usual, to perform abortions. With fondness and reverence, abortion rights advocates regarded Dr. Tiller as more than a movement leader: he was a guru, a teacher, a saint. Even opponents, in awe of his toughness and righteousness, acknowledged that he was a warrior.

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