Five Years After Dr. Tiller’s Murder, Abortion Is More Stigmatized Than Ever

On Sunday, May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in his Kansas church by Scott Roeder. Later found guilty of the murder, Roeder claimed that his action was justified because Tiller performed abortions; indeed, George Tiller was one of the most high-profile abortion providers in the country. And he was also no stranger to anti-choice harassment and violence. In 1991, Tiller’s Wichita clinic was the site of a months-long protest by anti-choice activists, and two years later Tiller was shot in both arms by an anti-choice extremist.

Between 1993 and 2009, seven doctors, security guards, and staffers were killed because they worked at abortion clinics. Nine people were seriously injured in those years, and countless individuals have been harassed and threatened because they work at abortion clinics.

It is tempting to dismiss the perpetrators of the most violent of these crimes as uniquely deranged individuals. Many in the wider anti-choice community have done just that, disavowing any connection between their work to end abortion and the actions of a few extremists. And of course, the vast majority of those opposed to abortion do not resort to violence to make their point. But the relationship between conventional anti-choice speech, death threats leveled against providers and clinic staff, and violence is impossible to ignore.

The relentless attacks on reproductive rights perpetrated by anti-choice activists follow a certain script: portray abortion as the worst sin in the world, cast the women that choose it as alternately evil and weak, and clearly state that the “abortion cartel,” to borrow a favorite phrase, is wantonly killing children and must be stopped immediately. This language can be heard almost everywhere in the anti-choice movement — from statements given to media publications, to protests at abortion clinics, to leaflets handed out to the neighbors of physicians and clinic employees. We heard it in 2011, when reproductive rights opponents protested outside the middle school attended by the daughter of an abortion clinic landlord. And it even informs the accepted terms used in the mainstream media, which reflexively refer to anti-choice activists as being “pro-life.”

But it’s more than just language, of course. By advocating for laws that would require physicians to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and clinics to meet the same building standards as surgical clinics, the anti-choice movement is actively promoting the misconception that abortion is a dangerous procedure that must be viewed with extreme suspicion. And this, in turn, contributes to a dangerous environment for the physicians, counselors, nurses, security personnel, and staffers who work in abortion clinics.

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