American Terrorists and their Enablers

My father was an OB-GYN and on quite a number of occasions performed abortions for women who were anti-choice...except when it came to themselves. He would ask how they voted on the issue and the incidence of hypocrisy was high. They had legitimate reasons. Like not being able to financially handle a sixth child. Being too old to have to go back to dealing with a baby. For their emotional health.

I write this because the rightwing voices calling the assassinated Dr. George Tiller so many names are at fault in his death for the very use of the word, "abortionist." Obstetricians who perform abortions are doctors, plain and simple, with patients who come to them with private, often agonizing decisions. The American terrorist who murdered Dr. Tiller in his place of worship today, where he was a church usher, in front of his wife who sang in the choir, could just as easily killed my father.

My father acted under the law, which in New York State limited abortion to the first trimester except in certain cases threatening the life of the mother. But what if he did perform a third trimester operation and he had vicious enabler Bill O'Reilly either purposely or irresponsibly goading the violent-minded by branding him a "baby killer" over 28 episodes of his show?

I look forward to the negligence lawsuit again O'Reilly.

Dr. Tiller wasn't bloodlusting for abortions; he actually refused to perform them when spurious, and then there are many women who are forever grateful that he helped them late in their pregnancies when the so-called "pro-life" alternative was actually greater horror.

Here's the man:



Yep, survived an earlier assassination attempt. And those most opposed to female reproductive freedom appear the least saddened. Take Randall Terry, messianic leader of the egregious Operation Rescue, with what can't really be called condolences:

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder."

After President Obama's wise bridge-building statement about coming together to reduce abortions in his Notre Dame speech, one can only hope that he brings the hammer down, since Terry and the group he leads are equally if not more guilty than O'Reilly in inciting this act of violence against Dr. Tiller:

The following words are used to describe George Tiller in the Operation Rescue video posted here: "corrupt, alcoholic, drug addict, blasphemer, liar, defiler, butcher, perverse, foul, evil, unethical, murderer, malicious." It concludes: "You may be the difference between life and death for a child."

The video, full of grotesque superimpositions, is foul and disturbing to watch -- far from holy, if that's what supposedly drives these people. What we know about he suspect under arrest, Scott P. Roeder, is that he mimicked this violent hate speech in his own web postings:

Scott Roeder
Mon September 03, 2007, 09:49:40

It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the “lawlessness” which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp “Mengele” of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation.

Yep, Scott has supported killing doctors performing abortions for a long time:

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.

"Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she said. "Then he (Roeder) said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, 'I've seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you're doing.'^"

Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.

And is also a member of the "Freemen", which is where it gets even scarier:

Roeder, who in the 1990s was a manufacturing assemblyman, also was involved in the "Freemen" movement.

"Freemen" was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.

In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.

Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.

"There wasn't enough there to blow up a building,'' Jimerson said at the time, ``but it could make several powerful pipe bombs...There was definitely enough there to kill somebody.''

Now's where you need to read about the metastasizing of the American terrorist movement:

More and more, anti-abortion extremists, white supremacist groups and the conspiracy-minded "Patriot" movement have come to share the same enemies list. Many in these previously separate movements agree that everything smacking of "one-worldism" — the Olympics, the United Nations and any other global agency — is part of a massive plot to subject Americans to tyranny.

Activists in all three movements describe homosexuals as "sodomites," people who deserve capital punishment. And in the latest development, many of those involved in these groups are bitterly attacking abortion.

"Eric Rudolph is symbolic of this new merger," says Dallas Blanchard, chairman of the University of West Florida's sociology department in Pensacola. "Militia types have shown more and more interest in the abortion issue, while anti-abortionists are becoming more and more militant and allying themselves with the militia movement."

Since the early 1990s, Patriot and white supremacist groups have used mainstream issues like gun control and land and environmental regulation to draw people into their organizations. Now, they are taking up the banner of fighting abortion.

America's Invisible Empire, a Klan group, describes abortion as "America's greatest crime." White Aryan Resistance, another white supremacist group, calls for "future Aryan justice" for abortionists — except in the case of non-white abortions. Leaders of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, a Patriot-linked group, have called for the death penalty for abortion doctors and even their patients.

Sound like logic and exhortation relatively similar to that of an anti-tax television extremist like, say, Glenn Beck?:

Beck literally advises his audience not to worry about the consequences:

"Still, most tax evaders don't end up in jail. [...] Let's just say a million people don't pay - not because they're cheap - but because they believe the principles that we were founded on have been violated. And they think this is wrong and they try to do something that they think is the only thing they can."

Then Beck tells them to...

"Put aside the fact America's federal, state, and local prisons are already overcrowded. They are packed 36% beyond their rated capacity. Overcrowded to the maximum. [...] All in all, it's probably not worth the government's time to toss you in jail."

Since I believe the entire "teabagging" mini-movement, as goaded and abetted by Fox News, has violent, seditionist and racist undercurrents, I'm hoping that Al Giordano is right and this murder actually works against these rightwing interests. My fear is that we're only seeing the beginning, which will be fueled as well by the economic depression, leading to more violence from those who traditionally kill when Republicans lose the Presidency.

The main target, of course, is the man of color at the top. And as I've said before, if anything happens to that leader or any member of his family, then it's those like Beck, who incites his viewers with violent imagery like this, who must be held accountable.

I say let's not wait until tragedy strikes to hold them accountable.

Let it begin now.