National Public Radio’s reporting on the George Tiller murder was perfect on Monday – in shutting out pro-life voices wanting to express regret. Reports on Morning Edition and on All Things Considered from Kansas City-based reporter Frank Morris lined up Tiller’s friends, lawyers, and customers to praise him. Pro-lifers were dismissed in one sentence in the morning report: "Many of Tiller's most vociferous critics said of his death, only that they denounced the murder and were praying for his family." That doesn’t sound very vociferous.
The evening story blurred together peaceful protesters in Wichita with those who bombed the clinic and shot Tiller. The only anti-Tiller commentary was the Internet ravings of the accused murderer.
Here's a look at the Morning Edition transcript:
STEVE INSKEEP, host: Next we'll report on a personal tragedy that reflects a very public debate. On Sunday morning, George Tiller was serving as an usher in church in Wichita, Kansas. And it was in that church that he was shot to death. George Tiller was a doctor. He ran one of the nation's few clinics that offered late-term abortions. And we have more this morning from Frank Morris of member station KCUR.
FRANK MORRIS: George Tiller was probably Wichita's most controversial citizen. And that was evident last night when protestors turned up just before a vigil in his honor.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Then why do you have a sign that says "God Save the Shooter"?
MORRIS: But mourners here in the center of Wichita outnumbered protestors by about 100 to one. Jim Stanford, Connie Pace-Adair, and Deborah Bounds were among those moved to speak.
Mr. JIM STANFORD: I love George Tiller. George Tiller was a friend of mine. And I care about him and I'm sorry he is gone because he gave everything to do what is here now. (Applause)
Ms. CONNIE PACE-ADAIR: And he was a kind, compassionate, wonderful man, above and beyond the services he provided. And I just wanted to say something about his compassion and his kindness toward his patients. (Applause)
Ms. DEBORAH BOUNDS: I had been victimized and abused and Dr. Tiller helped me. Thank God. (Applause)
This vague reference to "services" provided is as close as NPR gets to explaining these women had abortions. Going any deeper into their need for abortion would only ruin the mood these applause-decorated tributes provide.
MORRIS: George Tiller went back a long way here. He took over his father's family medical practice in the early 1970s and began doing abortions not long after the Supreme Court ruled to protect them in 1973. He'd done thousands, maybe tens of thousands since then, and become a central figure in the abortion debate.
DAN MONNAT: He's a hero in the pro-choice movement. He's one of the few doctors in the United States who is willing to withstand the threats of physical violence and the threats of prosecution in order to afford women their constitutional right to choose a late-term abortion.
MORRIS: Dan Monnat, one of Tiller's lawyers, says Tiller paid a steep price for his stand. Anti-abortion activists bombed his clinic in 1986, once shot him in both arms seven years later. Anti-abortion protestors from across the country converged on his clinic in the summer of 1991 and triggered more than 2,000 arrests as they tried to stop women from going in. Another one of his attorneys, Laura Shaneyfelt, says the Wichita native didn't pick the fight.
LAURA SHANEYFELT: They targeted him and came here to protest him and to try and put him out of business.
MORRIS: Then, Shaneyfelt says, opponents seemed to take the fight from the street into the courtroom. Tiller's lawyers successfully fought back multiple criminal charges in recent years, including a case brought by a former Kansas attorney general [Phill Kline], who'd been elected on an anti-abortion platform. Many of Tiller's most vociferous critics said of his death, only that they denounced the murder and were praying for his family.
Tiller was killed by a single shot from a handgun. Police arrested a 51-year- old suburban Kansas City man named Scott Roeder. They picked up Roeder yesterday, about 180 miles up the interstate from Wichita. He was driving normally and pulled over right away, and then six officers leapt from their cars, guns drawn, to make the arrest.
Lieutenant Mike Pfannenstiel with the Johnson County Sheriff's Office says the suspect got out of the car silently.
MIKE PFANNENSTIEL: He didn't ask why, you know, several officers were at the scene trying to get him or anything. So, I think he knew what was going on, but we didn't interview him on that.
MORRIS: Roeder's in custody in Wichita now. The man he's accused of killing, George Tiller, leaves a wife of 45 years, four children, ten grandchildren and a controversial clinic struggling to find the way forward. For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Wichita, Kansas.
The evening report on All Things Considered blurred together violent and nonviolent protesters, and then focused sympathetically at the shocked community at Tiller's church:
MELISSA BLOCK, host: Family, friends and supporters are grieving today, after the murder of Dr. George Tiller. He was one of the most well-known doctors in the country to perform late-term abortions. A gunman killed Dr. Tiller yesterday, as he attended church in Wichita, Kansas. Frank Morris of member station KCUR begins our story, where Tiller started his career at a clinic he inherited from his father.
FRANK MORRIS: Standing in front of Dr. Tiller's clinic, it's a fairly large nondescript one-story building. This is where Dr. Tiller got started in 1970. After Roe v. Wade in '73, he began doing abortions here and did tens of thousands of them. Recently, this place was the only - one of only three in the country that did late-term abortions. And that attracted women from all over the country -- and anti-abortion activists.
In 1986, they bombed this building. Seven years later, Dr. Tiller was shot on these grounds. And in 1991, this site became ground zero of the abortion debate, when Operation Rescue set up its Summer of Mercy protests here.
Unidentified Group: (Singing) Hallelujah.
Ms. CONNIE PACE-ADAIR: I was disturbed by it.
MORRIS: Connie Pace-Adair never saw those protests 18 years ago. In fact, the last time she stood at this clinic before today was more than 30 years ago.
Ms. PACE-ADAIR: I was very frightened. I was alone. I was a single mother. I was in a abusive relationship.
Again, Morris was incredibly vague on the story of Pace-Adair's abortion. This reference was so tangential that a dimmer listener might not even understand an abortion took place. From there, it was straight to Tiller's church:
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I've even got two symbols.
MORRIS: This morning, the blanket-makers group, older women who meet on alternate Mondays, is busy sewing for charity in the Reformation Lutheran Church. This is the church where Dr. Tiller was killed by a single shot. Reverend Lowell Michelson says he heard it from the other end of the church, as he was starting the service.
Reverend LOWELL MICHELSON (Reformation Lutheran Church): Something that sounded like maybe a child dropping a hymnal on a tile floor, kind of a pop.
MORRIS: Now, sitting today in the foyer, where yesterday's shooting took place, Michelson says the congregation is stunned.
Rev. MICHELSON: So many of us here don't have words, almost don't even have emotions right now because of the shock of this moment.
MORRIS: Sheriff's deputies arrested Scott Roeder three hours after the shooting yesterday. He was driving toward his home in suburban Kansas City. Roeder's 51 years old and pretty well-known around Kansas, at least on the frontlines of the abortion issue. Some of his fellow anti-abortion activists say Roeder believes in justifiable homicide. The Wichita Eagle found a Web site posting where he called Tiller the concentration camp Mengele of our day, arguing that Tiller, quote, "needs to be stopped."
Back at the clinic, a car will drive by every so often and a woman will get out and put flowers up by the fence. There are a few dozen bouquets there now. A lot of people don't want to talk, but one who did says that while she didn't agree with Dr. Tiller's stance on abortion, she respected him for making a stand, and that no one should die the way he did. For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Wichita, Kansas.
—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.
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Another Lutheran church miles away.
June 2, 2009 - 13:46 ET by sevenFeb 28 2005
The man arrested for the BTK serial murders evaded detection for more than three decades by "hiding in plain sight" in his community -- as a city employee, a cub scout leader, and an active member of his church.
Dennis Rader, 59, who was arrested last week in connection with the investigation into the BTK serial killer murders, was employed as a compliance officer for animal control by nearby Park City, Kansas. Reports said he was a former cub scout leader and a leader in his local church.
In fact, Rader was listed as the president of the Christ Lutheran Church congregation,
We will never blame the Lutherans either. Don't even try. Pro life reach out to all people that are in grief.
George Tiller was a
June 2, 2009 - 13:52 ET byGeorge Tiller was a hellbound piece of waste all of his life. He did Satan's work for years by murdering innocent children. The world is a safer place for babies with him dead. If the gunman that shot him years ago had been successful, thousands of babies might have been spared. But apparently the "cup of his abominations" was not yet full.
And what is this punk assed "compassion" being shown by those in the Pro-Life movement? What is this "we're all in this together collegial bullcrap?" We are NOT all in this "together". And they NEVER show your side ANY compassion. No matter what happens. You are not taking the "moral high ground" you are being stupid idiots. The moral "High ground" is in opposing those who would kill babies. PERIOD. It is NOT in having compassion when one of these satanic freaks dies.
This misguided "compassion" comes from not really understanding the fight that you're in. Since most of their "Christianity" comes from false doctrine it's not surprising.
Riddle me this oh, Compassionate Christian who feels sorry when someone doing satan's work gets killed.... Who do you think motivated George Tiller's actions, God or the Devil? What spirit do you think breathed it's animation into this soulless husk? Do you think that a man, who even abortionists regarded as EXTREME was motivated by God? Perhaps you've forgotten how he loved to stick his thumb in the eye of those who believe in the sanctity of life. Perhaps you've forgotten the satanic half smile that played on his lips when opposition to his filth was discussed. Perhaps your religion is so politically correct and STUPID that you feel you must have compassion for EVERYONE no matter what.
First. Jesus told you to love your enemies. That means while they are alive people! That means that we would never KILL Tiller we would try to convince him that he's hellbound and wrong. It means that we wouldn't SPIT in his wife's face when she saunters into the choir stand like she's a "good person". Any church that let this piece of dung, be on the usher board, has already advertised it's false doctrine and predicted it's own outcome.
Apparently , conservatives haven't learned from being handed a mouth full of DUNG by kissing up to the democrats, (Who Hate Them). How is it you have "compassion" for a murderer? Your compassion, like your "righteousness" is nothing more than a FILTHY RAG ( ISA. 64:5)
Either you're not really "Pro-life" or you're lying. It can't be both. Maybe, as I come up with a third option, you view the Pro-life movement like a college sport, with two collegial teams working against each other in friendly spirit of controversy, until the bell rings and then it's Miller Time!
If so, you're an idiot.
There is NO FELLOWSHIP between the children of God and the children of Satan. Period.
2 Corinthians 6:14-15 (King James Version)
14Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
15And what concord hath Christ with Belial ( satan)? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
Apparently these New Wavey "christians" have found a "part" and developed a "communion" with the servants of darkness to such a degree that they would be "sad" when a servant of Satan falls in his masters employ. These are just sad people who only read the Cracker Jack version of the bible which only has one scripture in it and it's something about "love". That's all just a vague reference to Love. No understanding of the battle in which the children of God are engaged. What communion hath light with darkness? NONE.
I am GLAD that Tiller is DEAD. And so are the babies that won't fall at his knife. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Your are absolutely correct. I do not believe we need to show
June 3, 2009 - 14:16 ET by pahubercompassion to an evil person unless they repent.
Since NPR is a taxpayer
June 2, 2009 - 15:10 ET by mattmSince NPR is a taxpayer funded network, couldn't MRC or NB or anyone else file a formal complaint, or file a suit, or DO something to either get the culprits fired, get the stations canned or cut off the funding?
There's nothing you can do but complain about private concerns, but publicly funded organizations should be ripe for some kind of action.
The abortion movement
June 2, 2009 - 15:55 ET by sevenThe movement has all its self righteousness lined up. One poster on Jill Stanek board ranted about how dangerous natural child birth was. So many died giving birth. I looked it up. We are finding just suicide alone has a higher death rate 12 monts post abortion than child birth has death rate.
I feel sympathy for Tiller's relatives.
→ That's a tough one
June 2, 2009 - 16:04 ET by Cool ArrowAs a relative, I'm sure he was very generous.
Probably gave a new car to a nephew for graduation. Nephew probably said to himself, "I want to be an abortionist too, so I can be thought of so highly by the family".
"The only reason Clarence Thomas is on the court is because he's black". - Joe Biden
Re the family
June 2, 2009 - 18:03 ET by slickwillie2001I have to wonder about the his wife and four children. Clearly someone who can do the 'job' he did day after day, year after year, has something seriously wrong in his head. But what about his wife? What does she think about his barbaric profession? Is she like the wife of a mafia don, simply putting it out of her mind? Or did he stumble upon a mate with the same sick view of life as his?
What about their four children, and their ten children? Do the children know what gramps did for a living? Do the neighbors know that they are part of that Tiller family?
They all knew. His wife
June 2, 2009 - 18:34 ET by GrannyGrump42They all knew. His wife asserted that he was some sort of champion of "women's rights" -- assuming, of course, that all women share her distaste for live babies.
Big into church
June 2, 2009 - 22:18 ET by sevenPharisees make good church people. BTK was also into church.
It looks like there is backlash piling up by pro aborts.
Tiller killed, evoking
June 3, 2009 - 06:57 ET by GrannyGrump42Tiller killed, evoking Jesus. He brought "chaplains" in to his business to convince hesitant women that abortion was sanctioned by God.
Then he was shot dead in a church, one bullet.
It looks like God will not be mocked.