Let's get this out of the way first off: I'm from Kansas. Not everyone from my home state is narrow-minded or politically conservative. Even those who are conservative tend toward the "live and let live" ethos so absent from much of the far-right fundamentalist playbook. This may explain why it's taken three decades for George Tiller, MD, to find himself on trial, defending his vocation as the abortion provider of last resort.
Tiller's Wichita clinic, one of the few places in the country where a woman can get a second-trimester abortion, is by all accounts a haven for those who need to be there. Nobody wants to be there (it seems ridiculous to have to point this out, but I think it's necessary). Many if not most of his patients are having an abortion so late because they have only recently discovered that the fetus they're carrying is afflicted with grevious birth defects. Women do not get a late-term abortion because they're frivolous, or heartless -- their hearts are only too broken by the situation they find themselves in. This is the point at which terms like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" start to mean less and less, and real life becomes as complicated as it's possible to be. Even though it's vanishingly rare, late-term abortion is the flash point where politics and pain ignite. This is why there's a whole section called "Kansas stories" on a website devoted to women facing difficult choices after devastating test results. It's why volunteers walk patients through the gauntlet of protestors, mostly organized by the Wichita-based Operation Rescue, which refers to everyone born after 1973 (the year of Roe v. Wade) as a "survivor." It's why Dr. Tiller has been shot for doing his job, and why he came back the next day to work anyway.
Now Tiller's on trial, charged with violating a Kansas state law mandating that any abortion slated to be performed after fetal viability (defined as 22 weeks gestation) undergo a second opinion phase by a doctor not legally or financially tied to the doctor performing the abortion. At issue in this trial is whether the relationship between Tiller and another physician, Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus, crossed that line. It's a case that's been brewing for years now, initiated by a rabid anti-abortion state attorney general who was since defeated by the kind of Kansas voters who, even though they might call themselves pro-life, realistically figure that life happens and they are not in the business of playing God. The new AG, a guy I went to high school with, is a moderate Democrat, pro-choice in this issue, who had no choice but to continue to proscute Tiller under the indictment (and law) he inherited.
There are no winners here. One of the patients seen by Drs. Neuhaus and Tiller and given an abortion by Tiller was ten years old at the time. As fetal viability moves one way on the scale (it wasn't long ago that babies born before 28 weeks almost never lived), genetic testing gets better but moves more slowly. A woman having an amniocentesis at 20 weeks will find out at 21 weeks that the baby she's grown to love will live a brief life of unendurable pain and no hope of cognitive function; her choice is awful any way you cut it. At clinics like Dr. Tiller's she's given the chance to perform a humane and awful duty, a mother's unendurably painful act of love and letting go. I hate that his clinic has to exist -- I wish all babies were wanted and healthy -- but I'd fight like hell to keep a bunch of righteous idealogues from taking it away.
More by this author:
Boomer Grandmothers: Out Of Control?
Move Over, Booties! Here Come Knitted Boobies
Think Your Baby's Car Seat Is Safe? Think Again
