A Serious, Sad Event in Kansas…
There is an article in the SF Chronicle this morning on the killing of Dr. George Tiller, late term abortion provider in Wichita, KS one week ago. It deals with the impact of incendiary speech and is worthy of examination. Whether your views are from the Right, Left or Center, incendiary rhetoric does not help. It may sell soap, but it does not help.
What does help is sincere reflection, especially from those closest to the problem. My mother and I were discussing this on the phone a couple of days ago and she related to me a story that you really must read. It is very relevant, very powerful, very personal. It has a lot of heart. But, what it is not is an effort to sell soap and especially not to be incendiary. Her effort at reflective balance is laudable and moving and I give it to you unedited, in her words:
The year was 1945; springtime; I had just turned 14; and, had been a junior in high school until I refused to cut my hair so I could take swimming. My mother told me that if I didn’t go to school, I had to find some kind of job; so, I was baby sitting to pay for small necessities until I could convince someone that I was 16 so I could get a good job and earn maybe ten to twelve dollars a week…..woo-hoo! The war was starting to wind down and many of the soldiers and sailors were returning home to their families. Having learned so much the first semester of that year, or so I thought, and refusing to get my hair cut (my really FIRST REAL REVOLT) taught me many things. Some good and some really bad.
Being independent was always a failure of mine. Many things came to me very easily…..some things were lessons that were forced on an innocent kid and really hard to accept. As most of you are aware of, this has been a very bad time in Kansas as far as history is concerned. The killing of Doctor George Tiller was a heinous crime committed by a person that is mentally unstable (according to our news media back here) and should have been locked up for things he did many years ago. He had no reason to kill Dr. Tiller other than the fact that he ran an abortion clinic that performed late term abortions (something that is legal here). Dr. Tiller had just been cleared in court for 19 charges brought against him by an Anti-Abortion group. I’ll not name names but these people have been against Dr. Tiller for many years. Back in the 1990’s someone shot the doctor in both arms as he went to get into his car. After that, he would hire off duty police officers to escort him whenever he went out (to his clinic, church, etc.) but having been acquitted of any illegal activity he thought that escorts were no long necessary…..especially to church where he was an usher and where he was shot (as witnessed by two other ushers that were threatened with the weapon used to kill the doctor). I am not a fan of abortion and cannot fathom the idea of having one and I feel that the real leader of the group has blood on his hands (even though the nut case that committed the crime was not a true member of the group just a wannabee I guess). The man killed Tiller; got into his car; and, headed for his home which was a town close to Kansas City. He was arrested in Gardner, KS and offered no resistance. He is being held in the Wichita jail and his bail is very, very large……in the millions of dollars.
When I was 14 years old, I had no idea what an abortion was. We did not have subjects such as sex education in Health or even the notorious 5th grade Health classes that explained how little girls became women. What we learned, we learned from our mothers and mine did not choose to talk about sex except to say that it was not something that GOOD GIRLS DID until they were married……kinda’ like the Rusty Warren record where the mother is standing on the curb after the wedding yelling, "You can do it now." Times were different then but some girls, and women too, did it and got pregnant. Some girls, and women too, did not want to have a baby or marry the boy, or man, that had made them that way……..no matter, the law said that you either made the male marry the female; send the girl away to the mountains (or desert) for nine months for her health and put the baby up for adoption; or, maybe the girl and her mother would both go away for the mother’s health and come back with a "baby brother or sister" for the girl and it would be reared as a sibling for her. That way there would be no disgrace for the family and they could all go merrily on their way and be a supposedly happy family (even so, some of these families didn’t look very happy and many people whispered behind their backs). ABORTION WAS AGAINST THE LAW and the only way to have one was not very pleasant.
Now you are thinking, Good Lord, did she get pregnant and have an abortion? No, I didn’t but the woman that I baby sat for did. Her husband had been gone for some time (maybe doing the same things she had done, I don’t know) and was coming home so what was she to do but what she felt she had to do……break the law and have an illegal abortion (remember this was before the Roe Vs. Wade law was passed). She asked me if I would go with her to the doctor and sit in the car with her kids while she had a checkup. I said OK and did just that. I did make some remarks about the grungy part of town we were in and that he must not be a very rich doctor to have his office down there. It didn’t take him very long to do whatever he did to her and she came back out and told me that if she got sick that I should drive the car on home and make sure the kids were OK. I told her that I couldn’t drive and she said that she thought I wouldn’t have any problem because I was a smart girl and had surely watched while other people drove. I looked down at her car seat and it was turning red and I asked her what kind of checkup she had had (I knew that I had a problem on my hands but didn’t know what it was). She said just a female thing and it caused women to bleed sometimes and that she wanted me to be sure to see to the kids and make sure that they had their supper; baths; and, were put to bed before I went home. I assured her that I would and I did but after performing my chores I checked on her and she looked like she was going to die (which scared me a lot). We didn’t live very far apart so I took off for home and told the woman that I was staying with what had happened and why I was so late getting home. She went over to the other house and after walking up one side of the woman and down the other, took her to the hospital where she stayed for several days. I stayed with the kids during that time because she had no relatives in the area (when my mother found out what I was doing, she went ballistic as only she could and laid down some laws as to what I could and could not do as far as working was concerned). It is a period of my life that I would just as soon forget but it also shows what happens when laws are made that cannot be enforced. If they reverse the Roe vs. Wade law, this type of thing will happen more and more only some women and girls won’t even go to quack doctors for an abortion, they will rely on clothes hangers or turkey feathers like they did back in the good old days…..and a lot of them will die like they did in the good old days.
As I said before, I am for women’s choice. I do not think you can legislate morality and we have no place to treat the mentally ill (unless they have committed a criminal act such as rape or murder). My husband and I had no trouble getting me pregnant but I had one pregnancy that was easy and one that was hard from the night I conceived her (my husband had made a pact with a friend that if he found his wife to be pregnant to let him know and we would have kids the same time). We had our daughters two weeks apart so you can see that we had no trouble at that time. Troubles developed in the first trimester and I spent a lot of time in bed; threw up most of the time; and, took meds to keep me from aborting which has caused problems for our daughter but during that hard period, there was never a thought in our minds about not carrying that beautiful little baby to full term. In my opinion, it should be every woman’s choice because I could not have any more children after I had her and we would have missed out on a lot of joy (and headaches) had we not had her. Nobody has angels…..even in the good old days.
Corky
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