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(More customer reviews)People who commmit violent crimes, who believe they have the right to live outside the laws of our Democracy always, upon examination, have histories of a dysfunctional even violent upbringing. So it is with Randall Terry, Shelley Shannon, Paul Hill and Scott Roeder and the other high profile violent anti choice people written about in this book. All had experimented with illegal drugs and/or abused alcohol, imagined unrealistic and fantastic dreams of celebrity, and all had had very sad setbacks in their personal lives as mature adults which they did not or could not deal with. When such people evade mental health counseling and intervention, they find themselves drawn to extreme positions to explain the disappointments of their pasts. Hence the "birth" of the violent and hopefully soon to be proscecuted "Operation Rescue" by Randall Terry and hence the murder of Dr. George Tiller. The normalcy even banality of George Tiller's life growing up in Witchita which gave rise to an ambitious, compassionate, hardworking man is in stark contrast to the wholly dysfunctional youths of Terry, Roeder, Hill, Shannon, and others. This alone should enlighten anyone about the actions of violent anti choice people. As with this author's expose on the murder of Alan Berg revealing an insanely violent organization behind this heinous crime, Berg shot to death 12 times in his own driveway, the background of the anti-abortion movement is peeled away and who these men and women are is revealed. Patriots, freedom fighters, warriors, protectors of the innocent? All these people are NONE of those things. They are highly disturbed individuals such as all of us have met, and usually avoid, who latch on to controversial topics to expiate their personal sufferings.
We are in the midst of a culture war. Just the other day our own government was nearly shutdown over Planned Parenthood. A Republican Senator on the floor of the Senate stated that over 90% of Planned Parenthood's activities are in abortion services. In truth it is less than 3%. Glenn Beck stated on his radio program that ONLY prostitutes use Planned Parenthood. And Fox News revealed that Walgreens drugstore chain can supply the services of Planned Parenthood and so PP is no longer needed. We are in the midst of a culture war. And our enemy are people who for the most part are disturbed and are using this movement instead of facing their personal demons.
Colorado was faced first with the prescence of Operation Rescue which targeted that state to set up violent and disruptive demonstrations aimed at shutting down safe abortions there. It is because law enforcement, public leaders, educators, and ordinary people of that state stood up to them stridently that Operation Rescue left and turned to Kansas and Dr. Tiller's clinic. We should all learn from Colorado's example.
It is no longer enough for us to remain silent when these people are killing doctors, blowing up clinics, stalking the employees and harassing and attacking innocent women and girls who are the patients. We must in mass, since the majority population of the United States supports a woman's right to choose, stand up and condemn these people and these groups for the terrorists they are. Make no mistake. These people and these groups are terrorists. We must stand up and condemn the House when they DARE to shut the United States government over the very existence of Planned Parenthood. We must request that groups like Operation Rescue leave our communities or face legal consequences just as Colorado did. Had Kansas followed the actions of Colorado I suspect George Tiller would still be alive today. Though free speech is protected Operation Rescue has never stayed within any guidelines or court orders to practice this right. Instead they have caused violent mayhem and suffering whereever they were and they intended to.
Perhaps the worst for me is reading what sort of men Roeder and Tiller were. Two more different lives I could not imagine. When they finally met their histories dictated one would kill the other. George Tiller was raised in a successful and loving family who were involved in the raising of their children. A young man who dreamt of serving humanity, who pursued an excellent academic career and could not think of a better way to live than to be a doctor. A former Naval officer who faced the premature loss of his family with bravery and who decided to carry on his father's work which included abortion services and adopt his sister's and brother-in-law's orphaned child. Compared to Roeder who suffered serious mental illness but refused to do what was needed to be well, who used illegal drugs, who drank heavily, who never finished college, who demeaned his college graduate wife and son, who failed to support his own child financially, who never held down any job for any length of time. Roeder is alive but thankfully in prison for life. But Dr. Tiller, who helped so many people even at the risk of his very life, is dead. Murdered by Scott Roeder.
Now another doctor would like to carry on Dr. Tiller's work. Her life has already been obscenely and violently threatened. This must stop. We all must condemn these actions loudly through our votes, letters to editors and to our State and Federal representatives UNTIL they hear us, with counter demonstrations whereever Operation Rescue sets up, and complete personal and financial support of our local womens' health services clinics. No one should have their name and location stamped on a "Wanted Dead or Alive" poster. Right now that is happening in North Carolina to another doctor providing abortions. Noone should have their property and belongings firebombed and destroyed as a doctor in Nebraska who performed abortions suffered. 2 family pets and 17 horses burned to death along with every single building on the property. Noone should be shot and killed while trying to help a doctor get to his clinic as a man in Florida was when trying to help another doctor simply get to his clinic. Paul Hill killed that man and the doctor and severely wounded a woman in the same van. Receptionists and security guards have also been murdered in this 20 year reign of terror that Operation Rescue and others have been waging.
Read this book and ask yourself, if you believe in a woman's right to choose, will you remain silent any longer. If this book does not move you as it has me to say this violence must stop now, then nothing can. But I suspect as more and more people read "The Wichita Divide" they will begin to stand up as Colorado did and fight back. This culture war has thrived because we have been too silent. We cannot, must not, be silent anymore when men and women are being killed and wounded throughout this country. The risk of murder and severe injury should not be the chief occupational hazard of these men and women and their patients. If we believe, as the majority of us do, in the right to choose, then we must all protect these very brave men and women from these violent and, now revealed, dysfunctional terrorists. The violent anti choice movement is not about the lives of children. The violent and violence promoting members of these groups are exposed by this author in all their rigidity, madness, morbidness, and religious hysteria. In their individual failures to cope with and adjust to life's continual uncertainities, the age old fight for control, they have latched on to the topic of abortion with all the intensity of any zealot. And like any zealot, they all imagine they hear the voice of God singling them out and compelling them to believe that the solution to legal abortion, though it could be any issue imagineable, is to kill and to promote killing. This is terrorism in it's purest form. Make no mistake here. The idealogy that killed over 3000 innocent people on September 11th, 2001 is the exact same type of idealogy that killed Dr. George Tiller on May 31, 2009 in the foyer of his church just before the Sunday sermon. The driven beliefs of disturbed men and women who have willingly thrown themselves into a pit of religious hysteria and falsehoods when unable to adjust to the real world the rest of us live in. Men and women who have not succeeded in confronting their own personal demons and disappointments. Their violence has never been about the lives of children. Never.
Read this book. Be counted visibly and vocally on the right to choose. Tell these violent people and groups their time is over. We must.
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The Wichita Divide: The Murder of Dr. George Tiller and the Battle over AbortionThe New York Times bestselling author offers an in-depth account of the life and death of a controversial doctor, the debate that sparked his assassination, and the place where two Americas collide On May 31, 2009, Scott Roeder walked into a Wichita church, drew a pistol, and shot Dr. George Tiller at point blank range. Tiller, who was the most public practitioner of late-term abortions in America, had been a lightning rod for controversy, regularly referred to in the conservative media as "Tiller, the Baby Killer." Tiller's death was a pivotal, public murder in a war that has been raging for decades. It's a war of violently opposing ideologies, encompassing abortion, but also questions of privacy, sexuality, and religion. It's being fought in our nation's courtrooms, school and churches, on television sets, at our dinner tables, and in our bedrooms. And more and more, the key battlegrounds are in Kansas, once home to Brown vs. Board of Education and some of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War. This is a gripping look at a cold-blooded terrorist action, two men representing opposite ideological extremes, and the region where those violent forces clash.
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