Dr. Tiller's Murder: Fascist Terrorism and Its Pampered
Apologists
by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
Attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice
Statement on behalf of the
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
The rampant terrorism and violence against women and health
care professionals who dare to provide women's health services took its latest
victim when Dr. George Tiller was brutally gunned down in his church on Sunday
in Wichita, Kansas.
The government and the corporate media coddle these anti-women terrorists.
In the last 30 years, right-wing bigots have carried out 5,800 reported acts of
violence against women's health care providers, including targeted
assassination, bombings, arsons, death threats, kidnappings and assaults,
according to NARAL.
Hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of women have been assaulted and
harassed by the right wing as they tried to see a doctor.
The Fascist Strategy
By targeting and intimidating health care providers, the fascist movement hopes
to effectively ban abortion services in the United States. If they were to
succeed, not only would it deprive women of their fundamental right to control
their own bodies, it would be a health care catastrophe. One out of three women
in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45, according to Planned
Parenthood.
The only question is whether women will be maimed or left to die because they
cannot access quality health providers. Dr. Tiller took over his medical
practice from his father, a doctor who began performing abortions himself in
the 1940s after a patient whom he refused to help died in a back-alley
abortion.
Dr. Tiller, like many other health care heroes, kept providing abortion
services to women despite the threats. He had been shot previously in both
arms; had his office bombed, shot at and frequently vandalized; and he and his
patients were routinely threatened, intimidated and attacked.
Dr. Tiller kept providing health care services because, as his family said in a
statement, he was “a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women
everywhere.” He was past retirement age, with four children and 10
grandchildren, and he lived under a virtual military siege because of the
terrorist threats. But he didn't stop.
It Wasn't Just the Gunman
This assassination is the culmination of a coordinated assault by the right
wing. This included the Kansas Attorney General's efforts to prosecute Tiller,
the demonization of Dr. Tiller by Bill O'Reilly, who ran dozens of hit pieces
targeting him as a "murderer," and by "Operation Rescue,"
which prominently called him "America's Doctor of Death."
In the aftermath of the murder, amid reports that the killer had worked with
them, Operation Rescue scrambled to take down their prominent "Tiller
Watch" webpage, apparently sanitizing it, while their founder continued to
call Dr. Tiller a "mass murderer” and held a press conference to do so.
The New York Times coverage of the murder was pathetic. On its front page it
stated, "Officials offered little insight into the motive, saying that
they believed it was 'the act of an isolated individual' but that they were
also looking into 'his history, his family, his associates.'"
The decision to question or suggest uncertainty as to the killer’s
"motive" reflects an effort to depoliticize and isolate this most
violent of political acts and to disconnect the killing from right-wing groups
who seek as their goal to deprive women of their rights using assassination as
they see fit. Some right-wing groups and leaders have been quick to announce
that the killing was not a homicide, but a justifiable act of
"salvation."
The mass media has leapt to the defense of many anti-woman, right-wing groups
who directly targeted Dr. Tiller by giving their spokespeople more time in the
wake of Dr. Tiller's death to express their primary grievance with his murder
-- that it might make them look bad.
Fake Terrorism and Real Terrorism
In recent months, Dr. Tiller reported to the FBI that the threats were increasing.
Obviously, stopping real terrorism is not a "priority" for the FBI,
which has allocated limitless resources to infiltrate and sabotage lawful
political organizing all over the country. The FBI and police have disrupted
and spied on progressive organizations that built a powerful anti-war movement
in the last years. They have paid agents provocateur to infiltrate and frame up
organizations and individuals engaged in dissent.
Nor is any mosque or Muslim community center safe from FBI infiltration and disruption
activities. From Southern California to upstate New York, undercover FBI agents
are trying to entrap Muslim youth into "terrorist" plots that emanate
from the FBI itself.
The U.S. government's use of the terrorist label is used to frame up and imprison
Muslims in the United States. Just last week in Dallas, representatives of the
Holy Land Foundation (HLF) were sentenced to as much as 65 years in prison for
the “terrorist” crime of raising money for desperately needed humanitarian
relief. HLF had been the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. The charity's
"crime" was that the humanitarian relief was going to those starving
and dying in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine. The U.S. government has
determined that it is an act of terrorism to get medicine to hospitals and food
to children when U.S. foreign policy supports the strangulation of a civilian
population for geostrategic reasons.
When Anthrax Threats Were No Big Deal
Yet, when it comes to the right-wing organizations that engage in violence and threats,
the FBI and the corporate media are conspicuously mute.
For instance, shortly after the September 11 attacks, letters containing
anthrax were sent to media and Senate offices. Hundreds of anthrax threats were
also sent to reproductive health clinics, according to the website of NARAL,
which states: "Between October 15 and 23, 2001, more than 250 abortion and
family planning clinics in 17 states and the District of Columbia received
letters purporting to contain anthrax. In each instance, a powdery substance
was accompanied by a letter stating, 'You have been exposed to anthrax. We are
going to kill all of you.' An additional 270 letters were sent to clinics
during the first week of November."
Very few people know about this kind of extreme terrorist intimidation. Can you
imagine the reaction of the FBI and the media if anti-war organizers or Arab
Americans were linked to anthrax threat letters? There would be screaming
headlines and nationwide police sweeps.
Coddling Right Wing Terrorists
But in 2007, in Washington, D.C., when a man showed up at an immigrant rights
rally, covertly carrying a map of the demonstration area with sight lines drawn
on it, with a cache of weapons including a converted fully automatic M1-Carbine
and apparent plans to massacre participants, you probably never heard about it.
Why? Because the man, Tyler Froatz, was a right-wing vigilante bent on
attacking immigrants and their supporters.
Froatz, who organized with the Free Republic and acted as a spokesman for the
Minuteman, stalked a May Day demonstration in 2007. He was arrested after he
was confronted by a courageous young woman working as an organizer with the
ANSWER Coalition. She was then assaulted by him when she objected to the racist
signs he was posting depicting the graphic slaughter of immigrants, including
pregnant women and children.
In addition to the weapons Froatz brought with him, in his apartment was found
a large arsenal of rifles, handguns, ammunition, a Molotov cocktail, a hand
grenade and a 100,000-volt taser gun.
So is Froatz in the special terrorist prisons in Terre Haute or Marion? No. He
was released to the custody of his parents in Connecticut and thereafter
allowed to plead to a minor weapons charge. The U.S. Attorney’s Office never
charged him with any terrorism-related offense or hate-crimes offense. And
today, members of Froatz’s group, the Free Republic, celebrated this latest
cold-blooded terrorist murder of Dr. Tiller in their postings.
More than Bullet-Proof Vests and Federal Marshals: A New Strategy is Needed
The murder of Dr. Tiller is a misogynist attack against all women. It is also
the foreseeable outcome of a climate of bigotry and vilification fostered by
the right wing, normalized by the media and the U.S. government.
A political calculus has been made by the government as to what will be deemed
terrorism: what political acts will be crushed and what political violence will
be supported or tolerated. As it stands, there is no mobilized effective
counter to this fascist violence and the threat that it poses. It’s time for a
new strategy and a new challenge.
There must be a multi-faceted mobilization of women
themselves and of all those men who stand with us against anti-woman bigotry.
