Just past 10 am Sunday morning, controversial Kansas doctor George Tiller was shot in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Dr. Tiller was pronounced dead at the scene and several witnesses were escorted from the church.
Dr. Tiller was an usher and his wife was a member of the choir. He is survived by his wife, four children and ten grandchildren.
Wichita police Capt. Brent Allred said that there were no other injuries, but declined to say how many shots were fired. According to the Wichita Eagle, Allred said it was unclear whether the shooter exchanged any words with the victim before the shooting. The search began for a white male driving a 1990s blue Ford Taurus whose license plate had been noted by witnesses. The FBI was summoned to assist local police.
Tiller and Clinic Targets of Attacks
As one of the few remaining doctors, nationwide, who still performed later-term abortions, Tiller had been a high-profile target under constant hostile scrutiny and continuous lawsuits. In March, Tiller was acquitted of 19 criminal charges of performing illegal abortions, specifically, violating a state law requiring second opinions before performing late term abortions. The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts recently made public a similar complaint filed in December of 2008.
In 1991, Tiller’s clinic had been blockaded during the “Summer of Mercy” protests and he was shot and wounded in both arms in 1993 at his clinic by Rachelle Shannon, who serves time in prison for that crime. A bombing occurred at the clinic in 1986, but no arrests were made. Earlier this month, the clinic was vandalized, resulting in thousands of dollars of damage. Security cameras were disabled while vandals stopped up the downspouts and cut through the roof where rain poured into the clinic.
A resident of the neighborhood where the church is located said that protests of as many as two dozen people occurred from time to time outside the church, the latest having been last fall. A neighbor said, “They call him the baby killer, but killing him was not the right thing to do, at all,” seen on FNC tape. Another distraught resident called Dr. Tiller, “a good, Christian man” and another said, “I am totally in shock. I don’t believe in abortion, but I don’t believe that we have the right to take anyone’s life, including Dr. Tiller.”
Fox News also reported that Dr. Tiller was one of three reamining abortionists performing the later term procedure after viability and that he had been guarded by Federal Marshalls in the past.
Tiller’s Abortion Philosophy
CNN ran tape of an interview with Dr. Tiller on August 30, 1999, where he explained that late-term abortion was part of abortion.
“Until you have natural survival hood, the woman is the patient, not the fetus. Now when does natural survival hood come on? Good question; sometime after the end of the second trimester."
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