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Shocker! Tiller’s Murderer Going to Trial

Amie Newman

Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Dr. George Tiller inside of his church, is going to trial. Not a huge surprise. The court ruled that there was enough evidence to warrant a trial. Oh, you mean because Roeder brutally gunned down an innocent man inside of a church surrounded by friends and family of said innocent man?!

What gets me though is the refusal on the part of the media to truly call this like it is: a domestic terrorist incident. The New York Times reported that:

“Dr. Tiller’s family was not seen there, nor were the best-known leaders of Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups here, which have denounced the killing.”

Hmmm. As much the NYT would like to make it seem as if Operation Rescue is just a simple, sensitive group trying to make their way in the world, the terrorist activities they support do not bear that out. A commenter over at RH Reality Check was in attendance at the trial and was pretty clear:

I attended Roeder’s hearing yesterday, and while Operation Rescue was not officially in attendance, I can say people who support OR were. They talked casually about Troy (Newman, pres of OR) and Mark (Gietzen, Kansas Coalition for Life). And just as casually about knowing “Scott” for several years and reading “Paul’s” book (first names, no last). I was sitting amongst the groupies! One even shouted out for a wave from Roeder. At least one traveled from out of town, and they all seemed to have known each other for years. It was mortifying, to say the least.

Who’s “Paul”? That would be Paul Hill, the murderer of another doctor who provided abortions, back in 1994. Hill was sentenced to death by lethal injection, the first person executed for anti-abortion violence.

The situation is such that even if men like these are convicted – or even executed (which I personally do not agree with) – this doesn’t begin to effect the larger issue. If we continue to refuse to see these incidents as connected, under the umbrella of official anti-choice terrorism, we are doing virtually nothing to stop them from happening again.

7 thoughts on Shocker! Tiller’s Murderer Going to Trial

  1. Someone needs to FedEx a copy of the “Terry Randall determined to attack within US” memo to the press. The guy just held a press conference not a month ago where he was threatening random acts of domestic terrorism if the group’s demands wrt health care reform–to whit, there shouldn’t be any–weren’t met.

  2. The situation is such that even if men like these are convicted – or even executed (which I personally do not agree with) – this doesn’t begin to effect the larger issue.

    In all honesty, regardless of one’s stance on capital punishment, execution of these monsters is a really bad idea. All it does is make them martyrs to ‘the cause’. Executions (in my opinion) aren’t just punishment, and they aren’t deterrents, they just create new heroes for other terrorist to emulate.

  3. “All it does is make them martyrs to ‘the cause’.”

    I think it’s kind of a wash, from this standpoint. Being in prison doesn’t stop them from communicating with, encouraging, or justifying other radicals in the movement or lionizing their cause, and their imprisonment is regarded as just as much an injustice by the fringers as their execution would be. So you can either have someone who got a veneer of martyrdom slapped on them instead of just that of political prisoner or persecuted saint, or you can have a persecuted and imprisoned saint of the movement vocally advocating for others to keep up the fight.

  4. You’re right of course, they will be martyred either way. But the optimist in me can at least hope, if they are incarcerated, that they will receive punishment fitting their crime. (The one drawback to agnosticism – no Hell.)

  5. There’s enough information to classify this group as a terrorist organisation, just as there is for Hamas etc. We need to get the FBI to treat them as such, follow the money etc.

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