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I woke up this morning to this news. Sad to say I am surprised he survived this long.



Suspect jailed in Kansas abortion doctor's killing

By ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press Writer Roxana Hegeman, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 31 mins ago

WICHITA, Kan. – A man suspected of fatally shooting abortion doctor George Tiller in church was in jail Monday while investigators sought to learn more about his background, including his possible connections to anti-abortion groups.

Tiller, 67, was serving as an usher during morning services Sunday when he was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, police said. The gunman fired one shot at Tiller and threatened two other people who tried to stop him.

The suspect, identified by one law enforcement agency as Scott Roeder, was taken into custody some 170 miles away in a Kansas City suburb about three hours after the shooting.

Tiller had been a lightning rod for abortion opponents for decades. The women's clinic he ran is one of three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy, when the fetus is considered viable, and has been the site of repeated protests for about two decades. A protester shot Tiller in both arms in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985.

Roeder, 51, was returned to Wichita and was being held without bail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault. Formal charges were expected to be filed Monday.

In Washington, the U.S. Marshals Service said that as a result of Tiller's shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder had ordered it to "increase security for a number of individuals and facilities" in the country. Jeff Carter, U.S. Marshals spokesman, said he could not disclose details.

A man with the same name as the suspect has a criminal record and a background of anti-abortion postings on sympathetic Web sites. In one post written in 2007 on the Web site for Operation Rescue, a group that closely followed Tiller's work and legal troubles in recent years, a man identifying himself as Scott Roeder asked if anyone had thought of attending Tiller's church to ask the doctor and other worshippers about his work.

But police said Sunday that all early indications showed the shooter acted alone. Operation Rescue condemned the killing as vigilantism and "a cowardly act." The president of the group told The New York Times that Roeder was "not a friend, not a contributor, not a volunteer."

In 1996, a 38-year-old man named Scott Roeder was charged in Topeka with criminal use of explosives for having bomb components in his car trunk and sentenced to 24 months of probation. However, his conviction was overturned on appeal the next year after a higher court said evidence against Roeder was seized by law enforcement officers during an illegal search of his car.

At the time, police said the FBI had identified Roeder as a member of the anti-government Freemen group, an organization that kept the FBI at bay in Jordan, Mont., for almost three months in 1995-96. Authorities on Sunday night would not immediately confirm if their suspect was the same man.

Morris Wilson, a commander of the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia in the mid-1990s, told The Kansas City Star he knew Roeder fairly well.

"I'd say he's a good ol' boy, except he was just so fanatic about abortion," Wilson said. "He was always talking about how awful abortion was. But there's a lot of people who think abortion is awful."

In May 2007, someone posting to the Web site of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue used the name "Scott Roeder" in response to a scheduled vigil to "pray for an end to George R. Tiller's late-term abortion business."

"Bleass everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp," the posting read. "Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn't seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller."

The slaying quickly brought condemnation from both anti-abortion and pro-choice groups, as well as President Barack Obama.

"However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence," Obama said in a statement.

Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said that Tiller apparently did not have a bodyguard with him in church, although the doctor was routinely accompanied by one. An attorney for Tiller, Dan Monnat, said the doctor's wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time of the shooting.

Monnat said in early May that Tiller had asked federal prosecutors to step up investigations of vandalism and other threats against the clinic out of fear that the incidents were increasing and that Tiller's safety was in jeopardy. However, Stolz said authorities knew of no threats connected to the shooting.

Adam Watkins, a 20-year-old who said he has attended the church his entire life, said he was sitting in the middle of the congregation when he heard a small pop at the start of the service.

"We just thought a child had come in with a balloon and it had popped, had gone up and hit the ceiling and popped," Watkins said.

Another usher came in and told the congregation to remain seated, then escorted Tiller's wife out.

"When she got to the back doors, we heard her scream, and so we knew something bad had happened," Watkins said.

Church members said anti-abortion protesters have shown up outside the church on Sundays regularly.

"They've been out here for quite a few years. We've just become accustomed to it. Just like an everyday thing, you just looked over and see them and say, 'Yup they're back again.'"

He added: "We had no idea that someone would come into our church and do such a bad thing like that — inside of a church."

The last killing of an abortion doctor was in October 1998 when Dr. Barnett Slepian was fatally shot in his home in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. A militant abortion opponent was convicted of the murder.

Federal marshals protected Tiller during the 1991 Summer of Mercy protests, and he was protected again between 1994 and 1998 after another abortion provider was assassinated and federal authorities reported finding Tiller's name at the top of an assassination list.

One of Tiller's lawyers and friends, Dan Monnat, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that Tiller had been supported by his wife and children in his decision to continue providing abortion services.

"If Dr Tiller is not going to service a woman's right to chose, who will do it?" Monnat said.

"Many of those have been terrorized and run off by protesters," he said about other abortion providers.

One of the few remaining late-term abortion clinics is in Boulder, Colo., where Dr. Warren Hern denounced Tiller's killing as the "inevitable and predictable consequence of decades of anti-abortion" rhetoric and violence.

"Dr. Tiller's assassination is not the lone and inexplicable action of one deranged killer," Hern said Sunday. "This was a political assassination in a historic pattern of anti-abortion political violence. It was terrorism."

One of the few providers of the full range of women's reproductive health care, and some asshole has to go and shoot him. Typical.

Heard about this on the news this morning. How awful and disgusting! What the hell is wrong with people? Why is the life of a fetus sacred to these nutjobs, but the life of an adult human is OK for them to take?

And shooting him in CHURCH? In front of the other parisioners, God, and CHYLDRUN? WTF?

To say I am sad about this is an understatement. I think I have mentioned on this board before that I am active on another board that helps women who terminate their pregnancies for medical reasons. Many of my friends on that board were helped by Dr. Tiller. These are women whom no one else would help: women who found out very late that their fetuses had horrible complications that would result in suffering for them upon birth, women who found out late that their pregnancies would jeopardize their own health or life, women who suddenly developed complications. I am very afraid for the women who were scheduled to see Dr. Tiller in the coming weeks. Who will care for them now? Do these pro-lifers even care that the women will be victimized, that some may even lose their lives as a result of not having access to medical care?

I am also very disappointed in Obama's wishy-washy statement in response to this clear act of terrorism. To talk about "differences of opinion" when someone has been GUNNED DOWN IN A CHURCH for performing a legal, compassionate act shows a lack of spine.

It is very, very tragic.

I cannot believe so many people are happy that he a hard-working, dedicated family man was murdered.

These anti-choice people are crazy, hope he rots away in jail

What an idiot sick person. Someone should have shot him first.

I was disappointed in the media coverage of this(GM bankruptcy was more important?)
An exception to this was the 6/1 Democracy Now! show which devoted most of the hour to the story. I recommend it highly:

Democracy Now

The person who killed Dr. Tiller and the right-wring anti-choice nuts who egged him on with their rhetoric are terrorists. Pure and simple

Horse Racer - you've got it right. These whack jobs are terrorists. What a tragedy to take away a provider of needed medical care.

dune67- you are right about the women who were to see him in the coming weeks. I hope someone can help them.

The other issue is that most of the extreme anti-abortion idjiots would not have a problem with gunning down a man (kill one to "save" those he would abort so it doesn't count as part of the Thou Shalt Not Kill.) in his church. Because obviously, if he was going to that church it is a false church or non-Bible believing church. And thus free game for them since it isn't a "real church". And those others going there would need to "see the true light".

Now my brain hurts.

Horse Racer Wrote:The person who killed Dr. Tiller and the right-wring anti-choice nuts who egged him on with their rhetoric are terrorists. Pure and simple

I agree. These are the same people who talk about President Barack HUSSEIN Obama and yet the shooter of this doctor went into a public place where you don't expect to worry about crime and killed a man. Yet it's those evil Arabs who are the threat.

If these anti-abortion fanatics are so concerned about babies being killed, why don't they go to war torn nations, where people, including babies and young children are being killed almost daily, and try to save the children there? If a pregnant woman is shot and killed there, isn't that akin to abortion, as well as the murder of the woman? I guess that would require guts, which they don't have. It's safer to bomb an abortion clinic or kill the staff that works there.

I wonder how many of these pro-life people actually adopt an unwated baby. Probably not many. They don't want damaged goods (in their eyes), and they want their own DNA trophy.

I don't think a lot of people against late-term abortion realize what it is really all about.
They always talk as if a woman decides a month or so prior to giving birth that, well, she just doesn't feel like giving birth and will just have an abortion instead. Like she waltzes into a clinic and has the pregnancy terminated.

Beachbum -- you ain't woofin! Here's an essay from a woman who wanted her baby, but it died in utero, and she wanted the late-term abortion procedure, (1) because it's the safest way to expel a dead fetus, and (2) so she could have an autopsy performed to find out what went wrong before trying again. But because the PROCEDURE was banned, even her "legitimate" reason caused problems.

Great essay -- http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/wom...doctor.asp

Here's part of what Katha Pollitt wrote in http://www.thenation.com:

People mock the word "choice" --it's consumerist, euphemistic, wimpy, calculated. But one thing you can say for it: It honors the individual conscience. If a desperately ill pregnant woman wants to risk her life to give birth, if she wants to carry an anencephalic fetus to term so it can die in her arms, or have her rapist's baby, or become a mother at 14, or produce octuplets, pro-choicers are not going to compel her to abort. Pro-choicers don't go around lecturing girls and women that they will blame themselves forever if they have a baby they may not be equipped to raise well. They don't paint gory pictures of the horrors and dangers of childbirth to scare pregnant girls and women into ending their pregnancies with a quick and safe termination. They don't tell women Jesus is going to send them to Hell if they sacrifice their futures to the whims of a wayward sperm -- although they might mention from time to time that the Bible nowhere mentions abortion. Pro-choicers don't blow up churches or assassinate the leaders of Operation Rescue.

Only one side wants to force women to live by its so-called morality, and only one side murders and bombs to make its point. Only one side has a terrorist wing.

In the days to come, let the public discussion acknowledge that

Today's Democracy Now(6/3) interviewed the manager of a clinic in Kansas City, I believe, who said this asshole Roeder was vandalizing their clinic(gluing keyholes) days before the killing. He had to call the FBI, but they did not arrest the asshole.

beachbum Wrote:It is very, very tragic.

I cannot believe so many people are happy that he a hard-working, dedicated family man was murdered.

You mean those godly, law-abiding, neighbor-loving "Christians"?

eslbee Wrote:

beachbum Wrote:It is very, very tragic.

I cannot believe so many people are happy that he a hard-working, dedicated family man was murdered.

You mean those godly, law-abiding, neighbor-loving "Christians"?

Ya, thems peoples.

I didn't realize that the "Thou shall not kill" rule had an asterick beside it, listing exemptions to the rule such as abortion doctors, any foreigners perceived to be anti-Christian/American, etc.