The Work Goes On

Bill O'Reilly spent an entire hour last night assuming that the murder of George Tiller was actually an attack on him. He brushed past his rote one-line expression of sorrow, claimed that everything he ever said about Tiller was true and based on facts, and then played the "who's attacking me now" game for the rest of the program. It looked to me like his only regret at Tiller's murder was that he wasn't on vacation at the time.

O'Reilly hosted a couple far-right lawyers who have been active in trying to get Tiller's perfectly legal clinic shut down, using some of those "facts" that are actually vicious lies that show their bias. But Scott Roeder and the fascist movement also dedicated to this goal did not succeed. The clinic will stay open.

The slaying Sunday of one of the nation's most prominent abortion providers has left a local colleague outraged but with a renewed resolve. Dr. LeRoy Carhart of Bellevue is preparing to temporarily take the helm at his slain friend's clinic in Wichita, Kan.

"Harm one of us, it won't do anything to harm the movement," said Carhart, head of the Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska.

Carhart described himself as a close friend of Dr. George Tiller's. Tiller was shot and killed Sunday morning in the lobby of the Lutheran church he attends in Wichita, Kan. He was serving as an usher [...]

After Sunday's fatal shooting, Tiller's chief nurse called Carhart. Carhart made arrangements to keep his Bellevue clinic open while he is gone. When contacted Sunday, he said he was en route to Wichita to run Tiller's clinic for at least the next week.

That's key. Intimidation and extremism have helped deny access to women's health services across the country. But brave men and women are stepping up, and refusing to be cowed.

By the way, it's important to understand what Tiller provided, legal services that have been demonized by the right.

I know most of my readers are pro-choice but I still think it worth considering what it means to ask a woman to carry a pregnancy to term when she knows that the baby will have one of the following conditions:
Anencephaly
Trisomy 13
Trisomy 18
Trisomy 21
Polycystic kidney disease
Spina bifida
Hydrocephalus
Potter's syndrome
Lethal dwarfism
Holoprosencephaly
Anterior and posterior encephalocele
Non-immune hydrops

The cached version of Dr. Tiller's admission criteria shows the following:

Admission Criteria
In order to offer you an appointment, we require that a physician refer you to our center. In addition, we need your genetic counselor or doctor to provide us with gestational and diagnostic information regarding your pregnancy. Over the past twenty-five years, we have had experience with pregnancy terminations in such situations as anencephaly, Trisomy 13, 18, and 21, polycystic kidney disease, spina bifida, hydrocephalus, Potter's syndrome, lethal dwarfism, holoprosencephaly, anterior and posterior encephalocele, non-immune hydrops, and a variety of other very significant abnormalities.

Amanda Marcotte has a great video about this as well.

RH Reality Check: Late Term Abortions from RH Reality Check on Vimeo.