Are you?

[pecunium]

I am Dr. Tiller

As such things go, I am more like, "Orderly Tiller", but I defend the right to choose, and I do it in public.

Comments

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

The terrorists fucking won.

I can see why they'd want to close the clinic, why they wouldn't want to risk the lives of the doctors and nurses and receptionists and cleaners and other people working there, and I don't blame anyone for making that decision.

But still, the terrorists won.

[betnoir.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not.

I never lived in his skin. I never did the things he has done. I have not lived his life.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I don't feel entitled to say "I am Dr. Tiller." (Orderly Tiller, maybe.) I speak out for women's rights, I give money to Planned Parenthood, and I have used their services (not for abortion, and the services they provided me were exactly the reason I never needed one - well, that and the decision not to have children, because I understand that a fair fraction of his cases were wanted babies who just wouldn't have survived outside the womb.)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Not a fair fraction; at least not of those which he was, falsely, villified for.

To get a post 23rd week abortion in Kansas one has to get two physicians to agree it's needed. Dr. Tiller was interested in women's health. He refused abortions which weren't needful, helped women who wanted to bear children.

He did pro bono cases (thus giving the lie to the idea he was in it for the money). He was bombed, harrasssed, protested, shot.

He put up with all that because the work needed doing.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If the clinic merely moves, no. They didn't win.

Lost at Mahablog.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

As I understand it some of the women he served were women whose babies would not have survived more than a few minutes past birth or young girls who had been raped and who might not have known they were pregnant or what to do about it. Or women who needed an abortion in order to get chemotherapy. That's all from a quote from a woman who referred patients to him over a couple of decades. I don't honestly have any idea what fraction of patients fell into those categories, or who might have needed the 23 weeks just to raise the money or to be able to get to an abortion provider. I don't know whether Dr. Tiller chose patients according to the reasons for their need or whether he provided his services to all comers. (Your comment above is the first I've seen on the two-doctor rule or on his refusal of some cases; being outside the US I miss some of the coverage and I haven't researched the case's details.)

I'm pretty sure he and his patients were better able and had a better right to make those distinctions than I do, anyway.

The stories I've seen supporting Dr. Tiller have made it sound like quite a lot of his cases were those in which the baby couldn't survive independently. I chose my phrase because I didn't know whether those were a majority, a plurality, or what. Are you saying that it was less than "a fair fraction" or more?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that all the post 23 weeks were medically justified, if not, "necessary".

A lot has been made of the word, "elective", which is a medical term of art for surgeries which aren't being done to, at the point of performance, needful to save a life.

Liver transplants, coronary bypasses, and pretty much every other surgery is "elective". Elective doesn't mean not needed, merely something which can wait, because a day, or a week, without it won't kill the patient.

Put it off long enough at it won't be elective, but the patient it a lot more likely to lead to complications, or death, of the patient.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clarifying. Yes, not carrying an about-to-die baby to term is an 'election'. But to force a women to do otherwise is inhuman.

For that matter, so would forcing a woman to abort be in the same case - that's definitely one that *has* to be individual. Same for forcing a mother to choose between her own life and her child's.

(edited for tyops)

[zoje-george.livejournal.com]

I was one of his pro bono late-term abortion patients.

I'm not interested in getting into the details of my situation however as a former patient I can verify:

1. I was required to have two doctor referrals.
2. Every woman who was in the small group of patients he was serving that week had the same requirements in order to be there.
3. This was no walk in the park, the procedure took a few days, it was not a spur of the moment decision. Even early term abortions aren't.

I also worked in womens' health care for a number of years during some of the very worst clinic violence the last time around (this was a few years after I was his patient) -- our doctors, Dr Carhart and Dr Wicklund, did refer patients to Dr Tiller because even though they could/did perform late-term abortions, they couldn't do them in our state. Stories about the dire situations Dr Tiller's patients were struggling with are not just hyperbole or providers closing ranks to protect one of their own -- the vast majority of the cases he took on were as dire as they have been portrayed.

Where we have failed, as someone else has said in the past week (Susan Hill, I think), is that we have allowed the discussion of this topic to be diverted to how "awful" abortion is -- because abortion is messy and uncomfortable, and late-term abortion is even more so -- but telling the truth of what Dr Tiller did through his long career can take back that conversation, and that the service he performed was absolutely necessary.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's very helpful for argument purposes. Because while I do support the concept that the woman and her doctor are the best equipped to make an individual decision, I confess I'm lazy and will take the easy arguments when possible. These dire cases are the easy ones to argue, and when someone with actual knowledge tells me those are the vast majority it becomes even more so.

[zoje-george.livejournal.com]

You might find this essay that someone just sent me even more helpful "for argument purposes" to support the "concept."

Aaaand, now I'm stepping right back out of this conversation.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I apologize for saying it badly. Bitch Ph.D. puts it better on the site you link to: I believe that the woman concerned is the person with the right and ability to make moral decisions on her own pregnancy.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the site -- it's inspiring.