Another sad chapter to the George Tiller saga:
George Tiller's clinic will close in the wake of the Wichita abortion provider's shooting death, lawyers for the Tiller family said today.
Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat, the family's lawyers, said in a statement that the clinic, Women's Health Care Services, will be permanently closed, effective immediately.
Tiller family members will not be involved in any other similar clinic, the statement said.
On the one hand, you really can't blame them. The family surely wants to grieve in private now, without attracting any more attention. They certainly must continue to be worried for their own safety as well. You can't do anything beyond respecting their wishes, and you certainly can't ask them to be martyrs.
But on the other hand, this does feel like a surrender to the terrorists. Operation Rescue and their allies got what they wanted--with collateral damage in terms of PR, certainly, but ultimately got what they wanted, which was the shutdown of the clinic. And the span of time in which it took--from the shooting on May 31 to today, 10 days--was a far shorter time span for accomplishing that end than trying to shut it down through the legal system.
They claim the shooter was a lone nut. How many other "lone nuts" do you suppose are out there who are more than willing to take the fall in order to guarantee the same result at the other two clinics who perform late-term abortions, with either the explicit or implicit encouragement of Operation Rescue, Bill O'Reilly, and others in the anti-choice movement? Especially now that they know it will be successful?
And why stop with clinics who perform late-term abortions? If you can shut down those clinics through terrorism, why not go onto other clinics who only provide earlier-term abortions? You could still just shrug off all the shooters as "lone nuts."
The Obama Administration needs to understand one thing--if the Justice Department does not act quickly to protect the doctors, nurses, and staff of these clinics, more people (living, breathing people) will die.
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The lede on NYT.com -
The shooting of a doctor in Wichita, Kan., has left a broad array of anti-abortion forces without a clear point of focus.
Oh, yeah, since it's ALL ABOUT THE ANTI-ABORTION FORCES. Where do they go now? Sheesh.
God forbid they not have something on which to focus after ONE OF THEIR OWN SHOT THE DOCTOR WHO RAN IT!
Pity the poor forced-birthers! Who, who, who will hear their shrill screams? Who next to wage a 20 year campaign of death threats, stalking, assault, shooting, defacing, sabotage? Wherever will they go? Whatever will they do?
What they'll do next is try to buy Dr. Tiller's clinic. It worked for them in the last Wichita clinic closing, and they're hoping it will now, too. They want it to be a museum, because they consider it the equivalent of Auscwitz. Unsurprisingly, there is no thought for the mothers who were saved by Dr. Tiller.
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