Mandatory Motherhood

The cover article of a recent issue of New York magazine was entitled "My Abortion". It included first-person accounts from 26 women who had abortions between 1968 and 2013. While each woman's story is gripping and provides vital perspective, there is one I haven't been able to get out of mind.

In 2002, Cherisse, a paralegal, thought she was going to an abortion clinic, but the ultrasound technician she was referred to told her that having an abortion would ruin her uterus for bearing children in the future. Cherise kept that baby, but went on to have three abortions over the next five years before meeting a "reproductive-justice advocate who finally taught me how to understand my fertility."

And Cherisse is but one voice for throngs of desperate women seeking to make the best choices in difficult situations. Why would anyone who opposes abortion not want to equip women with the knowledge they need? Why not teach women to understand and care for their own bodies? Why rely on "lies and scare tactics"? Why give misleading or erroneous information like telling women they can go to college for free if they have a child?

At the ripe age of fourteen and a half, I was already learning and spouting many lies myself, winning a $50 prize from Right to Life for a speech in which I announced that "more abortions have occurred from Christians using the Pill than in all the abortion clinics combined" and lauded a couple in Tennessee with eleven offspring. I quoted the Old Testament: "Be fruitful and multiply" and paraphrased from the prophet Malachi. "God's purpose for marriage is that Godly offspring might be raised from the union."

Parroting arguments I'd heard, I threw myself headlong into subjects of which I was almost completely ignorant: "Islam is the most rapidly growing religion today", I said, "because of their respect for life. The average Islamic woman has six children; that's really pro-life!" And I went on: "Children are blessings, God's rewards to those who fear Him. But why do we place a limit on how many we'll take? With attitudes like that, how can ever expect to persuade the world to abolish abortion? Today many couples are having reversal surgeries and trusting God for more children..."

Little did I realize that I was promoting arguments from the Middle Ages. 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas posited that an unprotected vagina was the only place a man could ejaculate without imperiling his soul. For centuries since, this teaching on sex has been part of the good news of the gospel the Roman Catholic Church has promoted around the world. And if that isn't enough, the Church also opposes all forms of contraception.

Little did I dream standing under a portrait of the Pope on that spring night, that ten years later my own parents would have produced eleven children, that another three years later I would have conceived every time I ovulated since my marriage, that there was nothing natural about natural family planning, that condoms were as essential for my babies' wellbeing as for my own, that birth control is an expression of selflessness, and that one day my husband's vasectomy would be an occasion for rejoicing.

Cherisse was in Chicago, but women in Kansas face similar hurdles to self-care. Take A Better Choice, for example, a crisis pregnancy center operated by the Catholic Church. ABC offers pregnancy testing, STD education, information about abortion procedures, compassion, and "chastity mentoring". On the other side of town, the evangelical Pregnancy Crisis Center of Wichita offers pregnancy tests, STD testing, counseling on abstinence, parenting classes, Bible studies, and adoption information. PCC's website assures clients:

"Everything we do is focused on empowering you to make healthy, informed choices. Here you will meet people who care about you."

However, it also states:

"PCC is a limited medical facility and does not provide or refer for abortions or birth control."

Dr. Scott Stringfield is a family practitioner who is also the chairman of the board at Choices Medical Clinic, an anti-abortion organization affiliated with Via Christi Health that has the stated goal of helping women "come to know Christ". The Bible is his favorite book and his faith his primary passion. Stringfield serves on the faculty of Via Christi's Family Medicine residency program: according to the Choices website, the clinic has served as community rotation for over 200 residents. Nursing students from Wichita State also rotate at Choices, and the clinic offers internships for student sonographers from Washburn University. 

When asked recently--at a Q & A after a film screening in Wichita last month--about how his clinic helps women to avoid future unplanned pregnancies and whether he and his staff counsel women about contraception after delivery, Dr. Stringfield squirmed a bit. He does not see access to birth control as a problem for his clients. According to Dr. Stringfield, a woman can easily purchase contraceptives (condoms) at Walmart. But he had to choose his words carefully because he does, indeed, have a moral objection to any birth control method that might prevent a fertilized egg from becoming a pregnancy.

As a Protestant, Dr. Stringfield does not hold any religious objection to "barriers" that prevent sperm from entering a cervix, but after that...  Information on abortion risks? Oh, my, yes. But information on how not to get pregnant again? Well, no, that is a service Choices Medical Clinic does not currently offer.

My own unplanned pregnancy forever changed my perspective on reproductive rights. I well remember months of guilt and confusion, trying to learn about my body and sort out myth from fact. I often fantasized about visiting the pregnancy crisis center down the street, not that I needed financial help or was debating my options: I just longed for support, compassion, and honest information about controlling my fertility. What could they tell me, I wondered, to help me be there for my babies instead of dazed and sick on the couch? I loved sex, and I loved my husband, but I had no intention of spending the rest of my childbearing years pregnant! I wanted to be a devoted mom, an energetic wife. So what options did I have?

Today, ten years later, I finally called, heart racing as emotional memories flooded my soul. I chatted with a nurse--I'll call her Susan--on the Choices staff. I told her about Cherisse's experience. I told her about my own. I asked her what services are available to help women prevent future unwanted pregnancies. At first she echoed Dr. Stringfield's remarks, saying that women can purchase condoms at the grocery store. I agreed, but pointed out that condoms require a high degree of cooperation and are of little efficacy if a woman finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship.

"Susan" told me that her clinic refers pregnant women to either Via Christi (a Catholic hospital) or GraceMed (with ties to both Via Christi and Wesley Medical Center (HCA)) for prenatal and obstetric services. A discussion about contraception would presumably take place between a woman and her doctor after delivery.

"Do you tell them that the doctors at Via Christi cannot offer contraceptives?" I asked (remembering a conversation in our Catholic doctor's office).

No, the women are not told that. However, if a pregnant woman states that she does not want any more children in the future (i.e., desires a tubal ligation), the Choices staff will recommend she go to GraceMed, because Via Christi doctors are not permitted to perform that surgery.

Our conversation was cordial, and I could feel at its close that "Susan" could see how offering prenatal care is not enough. "We really need to have a talk about that here," she said. Perhaps she really had never pondered the subject before.

Women who don't want to get pregnant need options. They need to be empowered and educated about their own bodies. Right now, anti-abortion groups are focused on "supporting" pregnant women and telling women not to let a penis come near their vagina. As if married women never need to avoid pregnancy! Do they assume that married women don't even want sex anymore? Or that once a woman has borne a child, she knows all she needs to know about how to prevent it next time?

Certainly planned pregnancies account for some abortions, but if opponents of abortion also refuse to educate women about fertility or allow them access to contraceptives they can use on their own, how can they ever hope to reduce the number of abortions? I was largely ignorant of birth control methods when I became sexually active (after marriage, in my case), and I have written elsewhere of my experience trying to educate myself without breaking any commandments or accidentally creating any new human life. 

When Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics are the only organizations offering to help women understand, manage, and guard their fertility, it is time for the anti-abortion movement to realize that it is not about protecting or supporting women--it is about protecting fetuses by controlling women and making motherhood mandatory.

Hobby Lobby: Deep Pockets

Since we're talking about Hobby Lobby's values, here is more about the family behind the company.

David Green, founder of Hobby Lobby, is a pastor's son from Emporia, KS. The Greens are Pentecostal and have a long history of supporting charismatic ministries and organizations. In 2003, David Green received the Assemblies of God Superintendent's Medal of Honor. The next year, he donated $10.5 million to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

In 2007, the Green family came to the rescue of charismatic Oral Roberts University, paying off debts to the tune of $70 million. In return, Mart Green, son of David Green and CEO of Christian book store chain Mardel, became chairman of the new ORU board of trustees. The same year, David Green donated a Massachusetts campus to Zion Bible College, which was renamed Northpoint Bible College to avoid being mistaken for a Jewish organization. "Northpoint Bible College exists to teach and train students for excellent Pentecostal ministry."

In 2009, AG News reported that a gift of $10 million from Hobby Lobby to Southeast University, an interdenominational school in Lakeland, FL with a long Pentecostal tradition. Mart Green was quoted as saying, "We appreciate your commitment to Christian higher education and all that Southeastern is doing to raise up students with a Christian world view."  In 2010, Hobby Lobby donated $1.5 million to Northwest University, a private college in Kirkland, WA, operated by the Assemblies of God.

The Green Family Trust supports numerous churches and parachurch organizations, purchasing dozens of properties and donating them to evangelical causes, such as Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. The Greens also own the "Passages" exhibit, a collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts assembled by Steven Green, now Hobby Lobby's president. Hobby Lobby partners with the controversial right-wing group Wallbuilders to run full-page newspaper ads around the country.

Mart Green is also the founder of Every Tribe Entertainment, which produced "End of the Spear", a 2005 film about five male missionaries killed by a tribe in Ecuador while attempting to evangelize them in 1956. One of the missionaries is played by actor Chad Allen, a gay Christian. Green has stated that he was unaware of Allen's sexual orientation when he offered him the contract. "We found out Chad was gay after we offered him the parts. We felt like when we offered him the contract, we were obligated to honor it." Green told Christianity Today, "To be honest, I would not have hired Chad had I known everything about him. But God had to work around me to get Chad on this project. He wanted Chad on this project. I wish I were able to articulate all the things that led me to understand that. It is very hard to share the ways the Lord leads, especially when you can't fully grasp why he is doing things that don't make sense to the natural man."

The Green family has a friendly relationship with cult leader Bill Gothard, whose seminars they have attended. They bought him a decrepit VA hospital in Little Rock in 2000 and another hospital building in Nashville in 2003. (Gothard lacked the resources to see either project completed.) Hobby Lobby also purchased the Ambassador University campus in Big Sandy, Texas from the Worldwide Church of God and turned it over to Gothard's IBLP for an ALERT training campus.

Steve Green, Hobby Lobby's president, has spoken alongside Gothard at an ATI conference (attended by the Duggars) at the Big Sandy center. Last year, he was a keynote speaker at a businessmen's seminar held at Gothard's headquarters in Oak Brook, IL (and also advertised on the very strange website of the "World Trade Center of Illinois", of which Gothard claims to be president). Steve Green is a featured speaker for Gothard's Embassy Institute.

And David Green has allowed Gothard to speak to employees and distribute IBLP materials at a Hobby Lobby store near Oak Brook, IL. According to an IBLP staff member:

"Friday evening, a small group of us had the amazing opportunity to go with Mr. Gothard to the local Hobby Lobby store. We had been invited by CEO and Founder David Green to present the message of God’s freedom and power to their staff. Each employee who attended the meeting was given the opportunity to receive one of Mr. Gothard’s latest books: How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses. During this meeting, three of us had the privilege to give our testimonies of how we transformed the “stresses” from our past experiences by applying the commands of Christ to our situation and life. The staff seemed intrigued seeing the renewed joy, peace, and blessing that came as a result."

Bill Gothard, who has never been married but has been accused of sexually harassing young women on his staff, shares the Greens' opposition to contraceptives. He tells attendees of his Advanced seminar, "There is no question that many birth control methods and devices simply kill the conceived child. Chief among these is the IUD. It comes as a shock to many couples, however, that taking the pill also results in aborting a conceived child." Gothard cites a 1979 report from Britain to convince couples that taking the pill is more dangerous than pregnancy. He assures his followers that overpopulation is a myth, that God intends couples to "multiply exceedingly", and that reducing family size is "the hidden agenda of secular humanism".

"Humanists have carried on a persistent propaganda campaign to convince nations that the world is overpopulated and has dwindling natural resources."  

(Bill Gothard, Advanced Seminar textbook)

In July, Hobby Lobby won a temporary exemption from the law requiring it to offer its employees insurance coverage for birth control. The Green family says some contraceptives, including the morning-after pill, violate its religious beliefs. The Denver appeals court observed that the company had "drawn a line at providing coverage for drugs or devices they consider to induce abortions, and it is not for us to question whether the line is reasonable."

Last month, David Green explained his position:

Hobby Lobby merchandise

A new government healthcare mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs.

Since emergency contraception violates Hobby Lobby's conscience, I can only hope that in the future Hobby Lobby will be redirecting some of its evangelistic budget into programs such as women's self-defense classes, violence prevention, equal rights for women, abuse intervention, and sex education for teen girls.




Update 7/5/14 -- For more information, check out Micah Murray's post at Hobby Lobby, The Duggars, and Bill Gothard

The Rights of Women

Quick history review:

One hundred years ago, women in America were still marching for the right to vote.

An American suffrage event in 1913

Jeanette Rankin, the lonely female voice in Congress in 1917, was proud to vote for woman's suffrage. Her male colleagues finally approved women's voting rights in 1920, ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment more than forty years after Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first drafted it. Men in Switzerland did not approve federal female suffrage till 1971.

Much more recently, married women in Wichita still needed their husband's permission to get a library card and women in Memphis could only get a library card in their husband's name.

In the 1980's, I grew up in a religious cult that did not permit women to wear pants (lest they cause a man to lust after them and rape them). Contraception was also considered immoral, so my mother had 15 pregnancies: 4 miscarriages, 11 births. When I realized (just a few years ago!) that women actually have equal rights with men, I was amazed. And then I discovered that those rights are under attack right here in heartland.

For example, our governor and some of our male state legislators are continually eroding, in the name of religion, the rights of Kansas women to not be pregnant. If women were making these rules, that affect only women after all, maybe I would feel differently. But these men were born with the right to never be pregnant. Why would they insist that a woman grow another human inside her body against her will?

My daughters need to know they can be whatever they want to be. That motherhood is their choice--even if they are victims of sexual violence. Even if they are minors. Even if their birth control fails. Even if they are ignorant or irresponsible. Even if they don't discover they are pregnant until 8 weeks later. And if they choose to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion, they should not have to fight a state-mandated obstacle course of shame, fear and lies. 

Men, especially religious men, have a long history of telling women how God intended women's bodies to be used:

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another...
--St. Paul (Romans 1:26-27)

You really wrote that, Paul? "The natural use of the woman"? Oh, God. Got that straight from Him, did you? You'll be glad to know the church in Rome took it seriously. In fact, they've spread the good news all over the globe--letting it be known that the only morally acceptable place for a male orgasm is inside a woman's vagina. Yep. Thanks, Paul.

Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
--St. Paul (I Corinthians 11:9)

Of course. What was I thinking?

But others drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived.
--St. Jerome (Letter 22, to Eustochium 13)

How the heck? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Therefore, women do wrong when they seek to have children by means of evil drugs. They sin still more grievously when they kill the children who are already conceived or born, and when by taking impious drugs to prevent conception they condemn in themselves the nature which God wanted to be fruitful. Let them not doubt that they have committed as many murders as the number of the children they might have begotten.
--St. Caesarius of Arles (Sermon 51, 4; CC 103, 229)

Inconceivable!

By that primitive name [Eve], says he, He showed for what labor the woman had been provided; and He said accordingly, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Now, who among ourselves denies that the woman was provided for the work of child-bearing by the Lord God, the beneficent Creator of all good?
--St. Augustine (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book II, Chapter 12)

 I guess no one else is going to do it...

...We see how weak and sickly barren women are. Those who are fruitful, however, are healthier, cleanlier, and happier. And even if they bear themselves weary—or ultimately bear themselves out—that does not hurt. Let them bear themselves out. This is the purpose for which they exist. It is better to have a brief life with good health than a long life in ill health.
--Martin Luther (The Estate of Marriage, LW 45)

I've seen such women. It is a heartbreaking sight.

Woman is more guilty than man, because she was seduced by Satan, and so diverted her husband from obedience to God that she was an instrument of death leading to all perdition. It is necessary that woman recognize this, and that she learn to what she is subjected; and not only against her husband. This is reason enough why today she is placed below and that she bears within her ignominy and shame.
--John Calvin (author of Institutes of the Christian Religion, cited by Brown in An Apology to Women)

So glad I don't live in Calvin's Geneva.

Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him. After the fall, she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of God. In which sentence there are two parts.
    (a) A dolor, anguish and pain as oft as ever she shall be a mother.
    (b) A subjection of her self, her appetites and will to her husband and his will.
From the former part of this malediction can neither art, nobility, policy nor law made by man deliver women: but, alas, ignorance of God, ambition and tyranny have studied to abolish and destroy the second part of God's punishment.
--John Knox (First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women)

And so it goes on. From Calvin and Knox to Doug Phillips and Jim Bob Duggar. Let the women kill fleas!

Sisters, we have come far. Occasionally with the support of religious groups, more often without. Our daughters are watching us to determine their own value. For their sake, let's not give up any of our hard-won progress now.

Why We Need Abortion

Abortion is nothing new. For as long as sexual intimacy has provided pleasure and birth has been painful and life-threatening, some women have taken their fate into their own hands and attempted to prevent "nature" from taking her course. 

In her article for the New York Times, Kate Manning lists some of the dangerous and horrible methods used by desperate women throughout history to induce miscarriage. In the mid-1800's, newspapers carried numerous advertisements for abortifacient remedies. And in 1930, one-fifth of the reported maternal deaths were caused by [illegal] abortion. 

"What is most striking about this history of probes and poisons is that throughout all recorded time, there have been women so desperate to end a pregnancy that they were willing to endure excruciating pain and considerable risk, including infection, sterility, permanent injury, puncture and hemorrhage, to say nothing of shame and ostracism. Where abortion was illegal, they risked prosecution and imprisonment. And death, of course."

Consider Jan Wilberg's story of her risky and illegal abortion in 1967 after a single sexual encounter with her boyfriend. A teenager, a college freshman, Jan did not have the security of a home herself in which to raise a child. Neither was the boyfriend prepared to provide one. She describes the feeling of being trapped in a dark corner while her boyfriend could be nonchalant:

"It wasn’t right to punish women who have been cornered by circumstances — unplanned pregnancy, no job, no money, no options — by daring them to find the $250 illegal abortionist in their city or worse. It wasn’t right that women should have to pay for a mistake with their fear, risk their future health and their very lives while men could walk away and be free." [emphasis mine]

Today, thanks to brave doctors, good medical schools, and Roe v. Wade, abortion is among our safest procedures. Bearing a child carries more risks than abortion. According to Amnesty International's report on maternal health, nearly half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended and two women die of pregnancy/birth complications every day. African-American women are four times more likely than white women to die of pregnancy-related complications. If the pregnancy is deemed high-risk, those odds are even higher. According to the 2010 report, the state of Georgia has a maternal mortality rate of 20.5 per 100,000 live births and reporting of maternal death is not even mandatory there!

"More than a third of all women who give birth in the USA – 1.7 million women each year – experience some type of complication that has an adverse effect on their health."

According to a study by ANSIRH of the effects of abortion on women's health and economic situation, specifically comparing women who received abortions with those who wanted abortions but could not obtain them (turnaways), the women who received abortions were better off than those who continued the unwanted pregnancy.

"When a woman is denied the abortion she wants, she is statistically more likely to wind up unemployed, on public assistance, and below the poverty line.

"Turnaways were more likely to stay in a relationship with an abusive partner than women who got abortions. A year after being denied an abortion, 7% reported an incident of domestic violence in the last six months. 3% of women who received abortions reported domestic violence in the same time period. Foster emphasized that this wasn't because the turnaways were more likely to get into abusive relationships. It was simply that getting abortions allowed women to get out of such relationships more easily....

"... the Turnaway Study found no indication that there were lasting, harmful negative emotions associated with getting an abortion. The only emotional difference between the two groups at one year was that the turnaways were more stressed.

"...But turnaways did face a greater health risk from giving birth. Even late stage abortions are safer than giving birth. The researchers said at the APHA meeting: 

'We find physical health complications are more common and severe following birth (38% experience limited activity, average 10 days) compared to abortion (24% limited activity, average 2.7 days). There were no severe complications after abortion; after birth complications included seizure, fractured pelvis, infection and hemorrhage. We find no differences in chronic health conditions at 1 week or one year after seeking abortion.'"

 [emphasis mine]

We can see that even if a woman is able to give up her baby for adoption, carrying a pregnancy to term is no simple solution. Of course human life starts at conception, agrees Mary Elizabeth Williams, but the story doesn't stop there: "Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal."

"... We make choices about life all the time in our country. We make them about men and women in other nations. We make them about prisoners in our penal system. We make them about patients with terminal illnesses and accident victims. We still have passionate debates about the justifications of our actions as a society, but we don’t have to do it while being bullied around by the vague idea that if you say we’re talking about human life, then the jig is up, rights-wise." [emphasis mine]

Besides, most women having abortions are already mothers raising children. The choice is as much about those children's lives as about the mother's. Yes, abstinence prevents pregnancy, but how effectively can a married woman use that? Every contraceptive method fails, and not every sexual encounter can be planned against in advance (I am speaking of rape, including marital rape, but one could also include carelessness caused by alcohol). There are women who long to be mothers to the children they have, and another pregnancy would prevent them from caring for the little ones that already need them desperately.

Those families holding signs in the Life Chain, will they pay for a planned-against birth? Will the crisis pregnancy center provide iron tablets? Perhaps the nuns protesting contraceptives will reimburse a woman's employer for missed days of work? Cover antidepressants and counseling? Provide daycare? In ten years, who will help cover college bills for the older children? Or ought their education be sacrificed to provide food and daycare for the surprise addition to the family? Choosing to raise a child is a commitment that far outlasts the free diapers, crib, or donated maternity clothes. It spans decades and affects every life choice from then on.

Personally, I believe there are worse fates a human being could suffer than being aborted before taking a breath. Abortion needs to be legal because we value human life. I was "pro-life" because life was cheap, men were designed to reproduce themselves, women were intended to bear men's children, and we wanted as many Christians as possible. When I realized the value of each human being, the immense responsibility of parenthood, the lifetime effects of childhood nurture on the adult psyche, and the awful societal price of ignorance, poverty, and abuse, my view of abortion evolved, too. This is why I am glad that a courageous doctor is reopening a women's clinic in Wichita, at the same location where the late Dr. Tiller provided abortions until his murder.

Last week, Michelle Kinsey Bruns told her story to a train car filled with Catholic teenagers on their way home from the annual "March for Life" in Washington, D.C. "By eighteen it had begun to seem I might survive my childhood, but I didn’t believe I could survive being responsible for someone else’s. Since then, though, I have survived and thrived in a way that would have quite simply not been possible without the abortion that cleared a path for me to eventually get here." [emphasis mine]

As long as human beings begin their growth inside women's bodies, we will need abortion. As long as women can conceive against their will, we will need abortion. As long as human birth is difficult, we will need abortion. As long as we believe children are precious, we will need abortion.

My Journey to Pro-Choice

Someday I'd still like to write Dr. Tiller's biography...


From June 10, 2009:

Sometimes I worry about myself. Maybe I am going insane. I read today that the Jews brought insane people to Jesus, and he made them well. So if I am, there is still hope. I feel so much less insane these days!

Issues used to be so cut and dried. Life issues were so black and white. When I was a child, I thought and understood and spoke as a child. Maturity--thinking, understanding, and speaking in love--is much more difficult.

Since Dr. George Tiller's murder (by what folks are calling a "Christian terrorist"), my emotions have been mixed. I've heard him described as a monster, a murderer, a wicked man, brutal and greedy and selfish. The fact that he was handing out bulletins at his church (also my polling place!) just shook up the mental image I've always had. Why would a wicked man be in church? Serving and welcoming others? Most Sundays I can think of reasons not to go to church, but I go because of Jesus. Why was he there? Some would call it religious compensation to assuage deep-seated guilt. Was that it?  This year I finally realized that Jesus wasn't going to show up at church and quit going myself. 

So I started reading, piecing together information from both friends and foes, trying to figure out who this man was. And the results shocked me. All I knew was that he performed procedures few abortionists would attempt. I was unprepared to learn of a complex and deeply caring man who loved life and had a strong desire to help women. He acknowledged that life is a gift from God. Relationships were everything to him. His marriage had lasted for 40 years, he had strong bonds to his four children. He spent the week before his death enjoying DisneyWorld with his grandkids. He loved coffee, Star Trek, hiking and skiing in the mountains...

His professional colleagues had only praise for him, but what would you expect from fellow abortionists? They described his courage, his skill, his humility and his determination. But then there were the pages of women who spoke even more gratefully of his soft-spoken gentleness, his kindness, his generosity, his empathetic listening, and his respectful manner. He personally arranged adoptions and, with his wife, opened his home to young pregnant girls so that they could give birth to their babies.

Tiller saw the women and couples coming to his clinic as individuals, not statistics. Dr. Tiller gave hope to distraught parents and encouraged them to pray for miracles. He believed parents (particularly mothers) were capable of making complex medical decisions for their babies, and should be trusted to do so. In some cases, he actually refused to perform an abortion; sometimes he talked mothers out of having an abortion. Other times he waived the fee.

Certainly he performed many early elective abortions, but Tiller's specialty was late-term abortions. Those marginal cases most of us will be able to avoid our whole lives. He saw them every week. The worst situations from all over the country, and even from abroad. He was able to save the lives of many grateful women who went on to raise their families, or to bear more children later on. He also ended the lives of many babies with "fetal anomalies"--babies who could not survive birth or outside their mother's womb. To many physicians, the mother's body is viewed as a kind of life support, and not permitting the child to be delivered meant protecting it from a short and difficult life at the hands of medical technology after delivery. Scientific advances in prenatal diagnoses have certainly made the issues more complex. "Prenatal testing without prenatal choices is medical fraud," Tiller said. "Nature makes mistakes."

George Tiller didn't set out to perform abortions, he planned on dermatology. When his parents and sister died in a tragic plane crash, he got a discharge from the Navy and returned to Wichita to close his dad's medical practice. Instead, he ended up taking over the practice and caring for his grandmother and his infant nephew.

Only later did George Tiller find out that his dad had performed illegal abortions. It had not been a light decision, but was reached after one of his patients tragically died after seeking an abortion elsewhere. Now George had to decide what he would do.

Once abortion was legalized, some doctors realized that nothing would actually change (safety-wise) if physicians would not perform them. George Tiller felt he had a calling. Although he continued to see his regular patients in family practice, he began performing more and more abortions. He knew abortion was as a divisive a social issue as slavery or prohibition, but he believed "his 'gifts of understanding' helped him bring a service to women that aided them in making their dreams of a happy, healthy family a reality."

Like most young evangelicals, I was exposed to plenty of graphic pro-life propaganda. These led me to assume things about Dr. Tiller that I cannot find facts to back up. For example, he was anxious that the babies not feel pain. When Tiller spoke to desperate women, he knew they were not concerned about "tissue". He spoke to them about their BABIES. He wanted to help mothers, and couples, heal after a catastrophic loss. He recognized that the severing of the maternal relationship was devastating. Some of these babies were desperately wanted, even the results of fertility treatment. Women at his clinic were given the option to see and hold their stillborn babies, and he reported that about 50% did so. The infant was washed and the family could spend a few hours together--family photos with the baby were offered. I have worked for Christian ministries that were far less sensitive.

I hope to meet Dr. Tiller in heaven. I hope he is in the presence of Jesus. That's where my theology gets confused. Is he with the souls of the infants he prematurely removed from the womb? What would they say when introduced? What is Jesus telling him? George Tiller was certainly persecuted for his work--what he considered his "calling". Not many of us would have the inner strength to spend every day with distraught pregnant women. He saw the neediest--the poor, the abused, the incredibly young, the naive, the sick, the grieving, the exhausted, those who had lost hope--and he extended mercy and hope in the best way he knew. All despite constant threats and harassment to himself, his property, and his family, including being shot in both arms in an assassination attempt. Where did he find the strength to keep going? Dr. Tiller is an inspiration to me, even if I don't expect to meet him, or miscarried embryos, or my dear grandparents, anywhere again. His spirit lives on in the brave women and men now attempting to reopen an abortion clinic in Wichita.

Ultimately, Dr. George Tiller's defense of abortion stemmed from his belief in equality and freedom for women. He saw the tendency of male-dominated societies to subjugate women, and felt that allowing birth control--and abortion--prevented women from being controlled by men and being overwhelmed by child-rearing responsibilities they did not choose. Tiller's words: "We believe that women have more worth and more value beyond their biological reproductive support function for a fertilized egg, embryo, fetus, child, baby, call it whatever you have - - call it whatever you wish. Women have more value beyond their biological reproductive support capacity." I wish I'd understood this sooner. I wish the whole world could understand this!

"Dr. Tiller always used to say that women are under the most stress at two times in their lives: when they are pregnant and don't want to be, and when they want to be and can't." He spent his life trying to help women by ending the lives of their unborn offspring. The women themselves had a variety of motives for seeking him out. Some look back on him gratefully, others with regret. But his own motivation appears consistent through the decades, sincere, and even. . . good. A wise man.

When I was 15, I won $50 for articulating the anti-abortion position in a 5-minute speech. Growing up in a Quiverfull household, I looked forward to my motherhood role and looked down my teenage nose at couples with fewer than 4 children. In my single 20's, I found some comfort in the ticking of my biological clock. Despite a deplorable ignorance of family planning, I still hoped to avoid exploring the limits of my reproductive capacity. (Ah, seeds of disintegration!)

Now I wrestle with these issues again. When does a human life form, distinct from its mother? Does the well-being of a woman take priority over that of her unborn baby? Is a human embryo, with its unique qualities that are very different from those of a developed person, simply an undeveloped person? Who should make choices for unborn children? Should mothers be trusted? Should fathers?? Does nature make mistakes? Who is Nature??

The more deeply I explore this subject, the greater my respect for the minds that chose the words Barack Obama has repeated often: "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."

"You have heard that it was said to the people in the old days,'Thou shalt not murder', and anyone who does so must stand his trial. But I say to you that anyone who is angry with his brother must stand his trial; anyone who contemptuously calls his brother a fool must face the supreme court; and anyone who looks down on his brother as a lost soul is himself heading straight for the fire of destruction." --Jesus (Matthew 5:21-22)

"Happy are the merciful, for they will have mercy shown to them."