10 Years Later, How The Murder Of Dr. George Tiller Still Impacts The Reproductive Rights Battle

By Caitlin R. Cruz


On May 31, 2009 a male walked into a church and shot Dr. George Tiller, an outspoken physician who specialized in third-trimester abortion care at his clinic in Wichita, Kansas. It wasn’t the initial time Dr. Tiller had been shot; a similar attempt on his life had been made in 1993 as a woman shot Tiller numerous times as he was leaving the clinic. (He survived gunshot wounds to each arm.) However in 2009, the perpetrator killed him.


His assassination, which occurred Whenever I was nearing the end of high school in nearby Nebraska, showed me that there was an entire movement of people fighting to protect for the politics I was only then just starting to articulate.


Tiller’s murder and also because the threats of violence and the particular harassment loom over an enormous collection of professionals and volunteers just attempting to complete their duties to patients. However for Julie Burkhart, a member of staff of Dr. Tiller who reopened his clinic immediately after his murder, cowing to threats could be an affront to her boss’s legacy.


“All the good work we’ve done makes me incredibly sad that this had to come out of his death,” she told MTV News. “Dr. Tiller was a very compassionate, kind person. He cared very deeply about the people who came into his clinic. He was invested in helping people. He was not this person who anti-choice people attempt to twist into a monster. He was a kind and compassionate person. He had a lot of love in his heart. Right after his assassination, it was quite apparent that there was a vast, gaping hole in the reproductive rights movement.”


It took almost four years to reopen Dr. Tiller’s clinic. In that time, Burkhart founded Trust Females — directly inspired by Tiller’s own motto — to open clinics and offer abortion access and contraception to underserved communities, largely in the Midwest.


Despite the work of Trust Females and numerous other corporations, abortion care is still fraught. The state of Missouri was in danger of becoming the initial state without abortion clinics since Roe. Legislators in numerous states have passed abortion bans that restrict the procedure to just weeks into pregnancy. It’s not a single-party supply, either: On May 30, Louisiana’s governor, Democrat John Bel Edwards, signed one of the strictest abortion bans in the country.


“This,” Dr. Diane Horvath, a OB/GYN in Maryland and also a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, mentioned while describing the recent wave of bans, “is a really dramatic worsening of a problem that’s been going on for decades. There really are already a lot of groups doing advocacy work, helping shelter patients, there really are groups of people who are helping people get to a clinic that might be far away.”


Still, the safety of abortion providers, support employees, activists, and patients remains in flux. According to a new report on violence against abortion providers from the National Abortion Federation, there has been an increase in online hate speech, and also in clinic obstruction, vandalism, and trespassing. While in general instances of stalking decreased last year, the stalking became “more targeted;” one abortion-care provider announced being followed at least four separate times. In 2018, providers announced 1,388 instances of hate mail or harassing phone calls. Dr. Horvath told MTV News that the idea of trespassing doesn’t habitually convey the seriousness of the offense. “People come on to the clinic property, up to the window or some days into the clinic with the express interest of causing a problem,” Horvath said.


Since Dr. Tiller’s death, those beyond the anti-choice movement have largely shifted their plan of action from winning a culture war to winning a legislative victory. Despite the 2016 Supreme Court ruling that states could not place undue restrictions on abortion providers in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, there has been an explosion of growth in anti-choice legislation, most often backed by conservative lawmakers, at the state level. Reproductive rights have transitioned into a period of legislative attrition additionally to the real threats facing patients and clinicians. In 2015, three people at a Recommended Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colorado, were killed by a perpetrator; there really are currently 24 legal abortion clinics in the state.


The pivot towards focusing on abortion in legislatures just means there’s although another frontier on which to focus. To that end, advocacy groups are meeting the voters where they’re at; according to Reuters, 58 percent of Residents of the United States believe abortion should be legal. Trust Ladies also does door-to-door canvassing to calculate pro-choice voters and contributor against anti-choice legislation. It’s an illuminating experience, Burkhart told MTV News: “Just because these states are hostile does not mean most of them of people in these states are anti-choice.”


It’s also never also late to get involved, Dr. Horvath adds. (Looking at you, cis men.) “The groups who have been most impacted by abortion restrictions have been involved because they have to be,” the Maryland-based physician told MTV News. “Abortion is already not obtainable in most places in this country.”


“Dr. Tiller’s death affirmed that [doctors] have to keep on, keeping on,” Jodi Magee, the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health, told MTV News. “He had a saying, ‘Don’t let the protesters live rent-free in your head.’ I think the physicians determined to be George.”