Let’s lead with this: this week was terrible. On Wednesday, we said good-bye to one our heroes, Maya Angelou. (Here’s what we don’t talk about when we talk about Maya Angelou.) And on the fifth anniversary of Dr. George Tiller’s death, clinic violence is still a huge problem for providers.
In the wake of the Isla Vista shooting, Salon investigated how toxic male entitlement leads to violence. Need an example? Here are several.
Gunshots rang throughout the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31st, 2009. Abortion provider Dr. George Tiller had been murdered in his own church by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder. The murder of Dr. Tiller made national headlines, but it took the public assassination of a respected abortion provider for the media to examine the violent rhetoric and behavior of the so-called “pro-life” movement.
Earlier this month, in Kalispell, Montana, the receptionist for All Families Healthcare arrived at work on a Tuesday morning to find the clinic’s interior transformed into a sea of paper, broken glass, and overturned furniture. A suspect named Zachary Jordan Klundt has since been arrested for the vandalism. Klundt is the son of Twyla Klundt, a board member of the crisis pregnancy center Hope Pregnancy Ministries, and an anti-abortion activist who has a history of inflammatory rhetoric directed at All Families Healthcare. Unlike Tiller’s murder, this event has not made national headlines. Coverage that is out there has come primarily from Montana-based news outlets, the pro-choice movement’s online networks, and the progressive blogosphere.
We need a new paradigm that consists of kindness, courtesy, justice, love, and respect in all our relationships.
Dr. George Tiller
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/3/tiller_speech
A Few Choice Words 