Two Years After Tiller The Need To Secure Abortion Rights Continues On

This a guest post by Danielle Jackson, Online Outreach Associate at the National Women’s Law Center:

This Tuesday, May 31 marks the second anniversary of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor who was gunned down in his church in Wichita, Kansas. In many ways, Dr. Tiller’s death has shaped my professional life, as well as many of the women and men I work with every day. I heard of his murder the morning after he died, and just two days before I started my first job at a D.C.-headquartered abortion rights group.

In the two years that have passed, Dr. Tiller’s untimely death has been just one of many attacks on women’s ability to access abortion services. My colleague, Stephanie, laid out a number of examples of the extremist attacks on abortion in her reflection on Dr. Tiller’s murder last year. Following his murder, it was a disheartening time to work in the reproductive rights field — while still mourning the loss of one of our champions, we had new battles springing up across the country to contend with.

Unfortunately, the extremist path that was struck out in the first year following Dr. Tiller’s death has only continued. We’ve battled H.R. 3, which raises taxes on some individuals and employees whose health plans cover abortion. We rallied against attempts to defund Planned Parenthood. On Wednesday, the House passed a bill banning the use of federal funds for teaching doctors how to perform abortions. And just yesterday, we heard terrifying news from Wisconsin: that a 63-year-old man was arrested in Madison, where he was planning on “shooting the clinic’s doctor ‘right in the head.'” It scares me to think that two years after the murder of Dr. Tiller, we could have dealt with nearly the same situation over again — and that this continues to be something we fight on many levels. We face political attacks from our lawmakers. We face personal attacks when extremists protest outside of clinics, harass women in need of reproductive care, and when they go so far as to make threats — and sometimes carry out these threats — on the lives of members of our community. We have been dragged into this fight over ideology, but we will stand tall.

But all of this extremist hubbub helped to do something else: it has firmed the resolve of people like me that this is a fight we must continue. I came to D.C. as a fresh-from-college supporter of abortion rights, but over the past two years I’ve seen myself, my co-workers, and my friends become impassioned members of the reproductive rights community, willing to give our time, or money, our sweat, and sometimes our tears to this fight. We forge ahead. We celebrate our successes together. We remember that Dr. Tiller’s life was taken for the work he did to provide women with the legal medical care they sought, and we push forward so that women can make their own choices about their own bodies — just as Dr. Tiller believed.

Originally posted on Womenstake, the official blog of the National Women’s Law Center

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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