PrairieGirl
06-08-2009, 09:33 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/us/08wichita.html?hp
Closed Clinic Leaves Abortion Protesters at a Loss
By MONICA DAVEY
WICHITA, Kan. — For the first time in years, only a Wichita police car has been waiting outside the abortion clinic of Dr. George R. Tiller, who was shot to death a week ago. Gone are the trucks bearing enormous images of bloody fetuses, the signs offering the home addresses of clinic workers, the crowd of protesters yelling to women as they enter.
Over almost 20 years, a vocal, diverse constellation of anti-abortion forces has grown up in this conservative city with an intensity rarely seen elsewhere, converging around Dr. Tiller’s practice. With his death, its future suddenly seems uncertain, too.
This city of 358,000 people, once the focal point of protests because of four abortion clinics — most significantly Dr. Tiller’s, which provided rare late-term abortions — last week had no abortion facility open for business, no target in chief, no immediate reason for this network of anti-abortion forces to be based here.
“I don’t know what the future holds,” said Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, one of the most well-known anti-abortion organizations. Seven years ago, Mr. Newman moved his organization’s national headquarters, its leaders and his family from Southern California to Wichita to focus a national spotlight on Dr. Tiller, whom he described as “the flagship” of the country’s abortion business.
“I think it’s too early to say what comes next,” he said.
Although Operation Rescue worked for years to close down Dr. Tiller’s clinic, his death was never the outcome Mr. Newman wished for, he said. Of the man charged with killing Dr. Tiller, he tearfully said, “This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine.”
Wichita has five separate operations aimed at discouraging women from having abortions. One of them, the Choices Medical Clinic, opened next door to Dr. Tiller’s now-closed offices in 1999 — after spending six years fighting city zoning rulings.
The Choices sign, facing into Dr. Tiller’s lot, promises “Free 4-D Sonogram.” The group’s Web site helps explain its reason for being: “Our location next door to a nationally recognized late-term abortionist provides us with even greater opportunities to serve mothers and their families at this critical point in their lives.”
Marilyn Manweiler, the group’s director of volunteer services, said last week that she knew of no immediate plans to move Choices. “At this point, we are here,” Ms. Manweiler said.
Since what is known here as the “Summer of Mercy,” when thousands of people from around the country converged here in 1991, blocking clinics and being arrested, the city has been a hot spot for the nation’s abortion debate and for an ever-shifting array of organization names, leaders, protesters and preferred tactics.
“There’s so much disagreement,” said Mark S. Gietzen, president of the Kansas Coalition for Life. Mr. Gietzen spent his time last week juggling calls from volunteers who wondered what would come of their regular shifts outside Dr. Tiller’s clinic, where they planted rows of crosses each day and tried to talk to women going in.
“If you went to a meeting, sometimes you would think the enemy was other pro-life people, not abortion,” he said.
Not all anti-abortion advocates, he said, favored the bloody “truth truck” (“Abortion is an ObamaNation,” it reads) parked outside his house or agreed on what protesters should call out to women going inside the clinic (obscenity-filled insults or offers of help) and how loudly.
Even now, Mr. Gietzen said, they were not of one mind about statements many groups here have issued condemning the killing of Dr. Tiller. “You can’t be pro-life and go around killing people, but some people are really mad at me for saying that,” he said.
In Kansas, battles have been waged endlessly over matters of morality — alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, the teaching of evolution, abortion. And Wichita, once a town popular with cattle drovers on their way from East Texas and now a manufacturing center for aircraft makers, has a solidly conservative, religious grounding.
Dr. Tiller’s clinic, which drew patients from all over the country, seemed unlikely ever to have landed here. But Dr. Tiller, 67, was born here and took over his father’s medical clinic in 1970 after he died in a plane crash.
The clinic drew sometimes violent objections all along (including a firebombing in 1986) but the “Summer of Mercy” turned what had previously been a mostly small-scale skirmish into a national battle.
The founder of Operation Rescue, Randall Terry (who is in a legal dispute with Mr. Newman over the use of the group’s name), helped draw thousands here to highlight the issue of late-term abortions and to block the clinic entrance for weeks. More than 2,000 people were arrested, and the efforts culminated with a rally of tens of thousands in the Wichita State stadium.
Afterward, abortion opponents flocked to Wichita. Over the years, tactics shifted. When blocking clinic entrances became a federal crime in 1994, some tried pointing out Dr. Tiller’s employees outside their favorite restaurants and churches. They also searched his workers’ trash for information, and appeared at his home and church.
Later, they turned to the courts, gathering citizen petitions (allowed by an obscure, century-old Kansas law) that led to two grand jury investigations against Dr. Tiller, filing technical complaints against the clinic with state regulators and regularly pressing prosecutors to charge him with crimes.
Some opponents have come and gone; at least three main advocacy groups exist in Wichita now, and leaders of those say they know of others in the form of religious coalitions and pregnancy crisis advocates. (Abortion rights advocates say that they believe the numbers are exaggerated, and that some organizations really amount to a person or two.)
Dr. Tiller’s family has said it hopes his work can continue. But the clinic’s future is uncertain: there is no immediate plan to reopen it, the family said in a statement last week, and no patients are being given appointments.
“This will change things in the pro-life movement, of course,” said David Gittrich, development director of Kansans for Life, which has its state office in Wichita. “They’re not going to be able go out in front of Tiller’s now. But until abortion is illegal, unthinkable and unacceptable, there’s going to be plenty of things for pro-lifers to do.”
Still, even some anti-abortion advocates wondered whether donations and interest levels might drop without the tangible presence of Dr. Tiller and his patients. There was backlash to face, too, they said. Some callers have been blaming the groups for the killing, a notion their leaders said was inevitable but absurd.
Scott P. Roeder, a Kansas City man charged with murder in Dr. Tiller’s death, was not a member of Operation Rescue or a contributor to it, Mr. Newman said. But the authorities found a slip of paper with the organization’s name in Mr. Roeder’s car when he was arrested, as well as the name of one of its leaders and her telephone number. He had also met Mr. Newman at least once.
“I have been racking my brain to see if there was something I could have done,” Mr. Newman said of Mr. Roeder.
Dr. Tiller’s clinic was the one — the big one — Mr. Newman had always hoped to close. Still, he said, if it closed now it would be no victory for Operation Rescue.
“Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason,” he said. “Every kook in the world will get some notion.”
Mr. Newman and other anti-abortion leaders here say the timing could not have been worse. They believe, they say, that Dr. Tiller’s clinic would have finally been closed down by state regulators in a matter of months. This year, the State Board of Healing Arts had announced it was investigating a complaint against the clinic.
Despite the family announcement about the clinic’s uncertain future, some here seem convinced that it will secretly reopen on Monday. On Sunday, Mr. Gietzen said some of his more than 600 trained volunteers already were organized in shifts for a new week, in case visiting doctors were flown in.
“If it happened,” he said, “we’re going to act like the Minutemen and be there.”
Closed Clinic Leaves Abortion Protesters at a Loss
By MONICA DAVEY
WICHITA, Kan. — For the first time in years, only a Wichita police car has been waiting outside the abortion clinic of Dr. George R. Tiller, who was shot to death a week ago. Gone are the trucks bearing enormous images of bloody fetuses, the signs offering the home addresses of clinic workers, the crowd of protesters yelling to women as they enter.
Over almost 20 years, a vocal, diverse constellation of anti-abortion forces has grown up in this conservative city with an intensity rarely seen elsewhere, converging around Dr. Tiller’s practice. With his death, its future suddenly seems uncertain, too.
This city of 358,000 people, once the focal point of protests because of four abortion clinics — most significantly Dr. Tiller’s, which provided rare late-term abortions — last week had no abortion facility open for business, no target in chief, no immediate reason for this network of anti-abortion forces to be based here.
“I don’t know what the future holds,” said Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, one of the most well-known anti-abortion organizations. Seven years ago, Mr. Newman moved his organization’s national headquarters, its leaders and his family from Southern California to Wichita to focus a national spotlight on Dr. Tiller, whom he described as “the flagship” of the country’s abortion business.
“I think it’s too early to say what comes next,” he said.
Although Operation Rescue worked for years to close down Dr. Tiller’s clinic, his death was never the outcome Mr. Newman wished for, he said. Of the man charged with killing Dr. Tiller, he tearfully said, “This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine.”
Wichita has five separate operations aimed at discouraging women from having abortions. One of them, the Choices Medical Clinic, opened next door to Dr. Tiller’s now-closed offices in 1999 — after spending six years fighting city zoning rulings.
The Choices sign, facing into Dr. Tiller’s lot, promises “Free 4-D Sonogram.” The group’s Web site helps explain its reason for being: “Our location next door to a nationally recognized late-term abortionist provides us with even greater opportunities to serve mothers and their families at this critical point in their lives.”
Marilyn Manweiler, the group’s director of volunteer services, said last week that she knew of no immediate plans to move Choices. “At this point, we are here,” Ms. Manweiler said.
Since what is known here as the “Summer of Mercy,” when thousands of people from around the country converged here in 1991, blocking clinics and being arrested, the city has been a hot spot for the nation’s abortion debate and for an ever-shifting array of organization names, leaders, protesters and preferred tactics.
“There’s so much disagreement,” said Mark S. Gietzen, president of the Kansas Coalition for Life. Mr. Gietzen spent his time last week juggling calls from volunteers who wondered what would come of their regular shifts outside Dr. Tiller’s clinic, where they planted rows of crosses each day and tried to talk to women going in.
“If you went to a meeting, sometimes you would think the enemy was other pro-life people, not abortion,” he said.
Not all anti-abortion advocates, he said, favored the bloody “truth truck” (“Abortion is an ObamaNation,” it reads) parked outside his house or agreed on what protesters should call out to women going inside the clinic (obscenity-filled insults or offers of help) and how loudly.
Even now, Mr. Gietzen said, they were not of one mind about statements many groups here have issued condemning the killing of Dr. Tiller. “You can’t be pro-life and go around killing people, but some people are really mad at me for saying that,” he said.
In Kansas, battles have been waged endlessly over matters of morality — alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, the teaching of evolution, abortion. And Wichita, once a town popular with cattle drovers on their way from East Texas and now a manufacturing center for aircraft makers, has a solidly conservative, religious grounding.
Dr. Tiller’s clinic, which drew patients from all over the country, seemed unlikely ever to have landed here. But Dr. Tiller, 67, was born here and took over his father’s medical clinic in 1970 after he died in a plane crash.
The clinic drew sometimes violent objections all along (including a firebombing in 1986) but the “Summer of Mercy” turned what had previously been a mostly small-scale skirmish into a national battle.
The founder of Operation Rescue, Randall Terry (who is in a legal dispute with Mr. Newman over the use of the group’s name), helped draw thousands here to highlight the issue of late-term abortions and to block the clinic entrance for weeks. More than 2,000 people were arrested, and the efforts culminated with a rally of tens of thousands in the Wichita State stadium.
Afterward, abortion opponents flocked to Wichita. Over the years, tactics shifted. When blocking clinic entrances became a federal crime in 1994, some tried pointing out Dr. Tiller’s employees outside their favorite restaurants and churches. They also searched his workers’ trash for information, and appeared at his home and church.
Later, they turned to the courts, gathering citizen petitions (allowed by an obscure, century-old Kansas law) that led to two grand jury investigations against Dr. Tiller, filing technical complaints against the clinic with state regulators and regularly pressing prosecutors to charge him with crimes.
Some opponents have come and gone; at least three main advocacy groups exist in Wichita now, and leaders of those say they know of others in the form of religious coalitions and pregnancy crisis advocates. (Abortion rights advocates say that they believe the numbers are exaggerated, and that some organizations really amount to a person or two.)
Dr. Tiller’s family has said it hopes his work can continue. But the clinic’s future is uncertain: there is no immediate plan to reopen it, the family said in a statement last week, and no patients are being given appointments.
“This will change things in the pro-life movement, of course,” said David Gittrich, development director of Kansans for Life, which has its state office in Wichita. “They’re not going to be able go out in front of Tiller’s now. But until abortion is illegal, unthinkable and unacceptable, there’s going to be plenty of things for pro-lifers to do.”
Still, even some anti-abortion advocates wondered whether donations and interest levels might drop without the tangible presence of Dr. Tiller and his patients. There was backlash to face, too, they said. Some callers have been blaming the groups for the killing, a notion their leaders said was inevitable but absurd.
Scott P. Roeder, a Kansas City man charged with murder in Dr. Tiller’s death, was not a member of Operation Rescue or a contributor to it, Mr. Newman said. But the authorities found a slip of paper with the organization’s name in Mr. Roeder’s car when he was arrested, as well as the name of one of its leaders and her telephone number. He had also met Mr. Newman at least once.
“I have been racking my brain to see if there was something I could have done,” Mr. Newman said of Mr. Roeder.
Dr. Tiller’s clinic was the one — the big one — Mr. Newman had always hoped to close. Still, he said, if it closed now it would be no victory for Operation Rescue.
“Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason,” he said. “Every kook in the world will get some notion.”
Mr. Newman and other anti-abortion leaders here say the timing could not have been worse. They believe, they say, that Dr. Tiller’s clinic would have finally been closed down by state regulators in a matter of months. This year, the State Board of Healing Arts had announced it was investigating a complaint against the clinic.
Despite the family announcement about the clinic’s uncertain future, some here seem convinced that it will secretly reopen on Monday. On Sunday, Mr. Gietzen said some of his more than 600 trained volunteers already were organized in shifts for a new week, in case visiting doctors were flown in.
“If it happened,” he said, “we’re going to act like the Minutemen and be there.”
If you don't have cable, then you don't know about Rachel and Keith. Oh well, you get good info from Amy Goodman and Democracy Now anyway. You can always find Thom Hartmann on internet radio if your town doesn't have him, like mine. San Diego kicked progressive radio to the curb almost 2 years ago.