Weird People of History: George Tiller

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George-tiller.jpg: Nonameplayerderivative work: Wildhartlivie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I recently read A Death In Wichita, a biography of assassinated late-term abortion provider George Tiller.

George Tiller was not, on the face of it, destined to be a great hero. He was an ordinary man: a Republican, a devout Christian, a veteran, a father of four, a fan of sports and mystery novels, and by all accounts a teller of truly horrible jokes.

Tiller’s father was a doctor who had once refused help to a pregnant patient who later died from a botched abortion. Stricken with guilt, Tiller’s father performed illegal abortions. Tiller intended to become a dermatologist, a specialty known for work-life balance and absence of stress. However, when his father, mother, and sister died in an airplane accident in 1970, Tiller temporarily took over his father’s practice. The temporary takeover soon became permanent.

Tiller didn’t take over his father’s illegal abortion practice. In fact, in spite of many women begging him to give them abortions, he didn’t begin to perform abortions until 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided. In 1975, he renamed his clinic Women's Health Care Services and became a full-time abortionist.

Tiller was a dedicated doctor. He sometimes let patients recuperate in his home, sometimes for weeks. He charged a quarter of the price that other abortion doctors did ($250 rather than $1000, or in today's money $1500 rather than $6000). But his dedication had a dark side: he was demanding to his staff, and sometimes shouted at employees who wanted to work only forty hours a week.

At first, Tiller didn’t perform late-term abortions. But then he encountered a pregnant nine-year-old girl, and couldn’t bear to turn her down. Soon late-term abortion patients became much of his practice. Most of Tiller’s patients were women whose health was at risk if they carried to term or women whose babies were unlikely to survive long outside the womb. But it is clear from subpoenaed records that Tiller never turned anyone away, often diagnosing depression, anxiety, or adjustment disorder as the reason for an abortion. Still, most such cases were very sympathetic. Many of his patients were little girls.

Women’s Health Care Services accommodated all the women's preferences: photos of the child, baptism by the chaplain, burial, cremation. They even had a private adoption service for women who actually wanted to carry to term.

But what made Tiller special was his stubbornness.

Before I read A Death in Wichita, I knew that abortionists were protested. I didn’t quite realize that they were the single most cancelled group of people in America.

People protested outside Tiller’s offices, sometimes 24 hours a day. People carried pictures of aborted fetuses; a Truth Truck with side panels that displayed aborted fetuses was parked outside. People shouted at Tiller that he was a baby killer. People sent threats to him, his family, his staff. People disrupted services at his church. People mailed other members of his church pictures of aborted fetuses.

People publicly posted Tiller’s staff’s names, phone numbers, and addresses. People drove through the staff’s neighborhoods with bullhorns protesting them. People dug through his staff’s trash. Billboards and signs on telephone polls went up: with pictures of his staff, with pictures of aborted fetuses, with Wanted posters for Tiller’s arrest, with messages like “Is Tiller Above The Law?”

People followed his patients to their homes or hotel rooms to put anti-abortion pamphlets in front of their doors. People took pictures of patients and posted them online.

In 1986, Tiller’s office was pipebombed. (He responded by beginning to advertise nationally.) Protestors sent in undercover pregnant women looking for Tiller violating the law. (He didn't.) Any business that worked with Women’s Health Care Services was protested. (They were blacklisted by every pizza company and florist in town, and one garbage collector.) Someone repeatedly prayed in front of Dr. Tiller's car and then attempted to get Tiller arrested for attempted murder. (It didn’t take.)

Women’s Health Care Services had metal detectors, bulletproof glass, and floodlights. It hired armed guards. Tiller wore a bulletproof vest while at work. He had an armored SUV, which he always drove in the far-right lane to minimize the likelihood of an attack. He called the bonuses he gave out “combat pay.”

And the fear of violence wasn’t overblown: between 1983 and 1985, 319 abortion clinics were bombed. In 1993, an abortionist in Florida was shot and killed by an anti-abortion protestor. Anti-abortion protestors left a pamphlet at his successor's front door that was titled "What Would You Do If You Had Five Minutes To Live?"

In 1993, a woman shot Tiller six times as he left his office. The staff at Women’s Health Care Services treated his wounds and ordered him to take time to rest. Naturally, he was back at work the next day. The only change was that he was wearing a flak jacket and had put a sign outside saying WOMEN NEED ABORTIONS AND I'M GOING TO PROVIDE THEM. For the next six weeks, he hired an armored truck to take him to work at 7 and pick him up at 5. He wryly joked that this was the only time he’d ever managed to leave work on time.

In 2009, Tiller was shot again. This time he died.

When Tiller died, he was one of five late-term abortion providers in the United States, making “late-term abortion provider” very possibly the deadliest profession in the country.

A Death in Wichita is mostly silent about why George Tiller did what he did. He doesn’t seem to have been very articulate on the subject. Defending himself during a court case a few months before his death,¹ he said:

Quit is not something that I like to do. Why have we continued? First, the strong support of… my wife, the strong support of my daughters, the strong support of my son. I remember one time during one of the protests, we were under a lot of pressure and… two of my daughters came into my study… and they said to me, ‘Daddy, if not now, when? If not you, who?’ And that means who is going to stand up for women with unexpected or badly damaged babies? Who was going to be their protector—if you won’t—and when was that going to happen?

It’s always difficult to speculate about the motivations of people you have never met. Clearly, the support of his family was important. And Tiller strikes me as having a certain kind of stubbornness, almost spite. The spite that makes you respond to a pipe-bombing with a national advertising campaign, to an assassination attempt with a sign that says WOMEN NEED ABORTIONS AND I'M GOING TO PROVIDE THEM. The absolute refusal to respond to unjust punishment with anything other than “fuck you, now I’m doing it harder.”

But a lot of people have that trait and just wind up getting in stupid fights with street preachers. I think more good—and more evil—than we’d like to admit is just sort of an accident. You choose good or evil, without thinking it’s a big deal, maybe without thinking at all; and then you get a bit carried away, and things get out of hand, and next thing you know you’re a hero—or a villain.

Too, your friends matter. People who quit providing late-term abortions, no doubt, often have loved ones who beg them to stop; Tiller had loved ones who begged him to keep going. In your moment of weakness, will your friends, your spouse, your children strengthen you? Or will they urge you to give in? Many people choose their friends by happenstance; very few deliberately pick people who want them to be heroes.

The risk of death wasn’t enough to deter Tiller from giving abortions; a thriving dermatology career would have been. You make a choice: to marry someone who makes you a better person; to take over your father’s business; to perform abortions; not to turn away the desperate parents of nine-year-old girl; to pick yourself up after a pipe-bombing and keep going. Eventually, it becomes a habit. It becomes easier to put on your bulletproof vest in the morning and go to work than to abandon the woman crying in your office because her baby will die ninety minutes after he’s born.

No one is born brave. You become brave because you keep choosing bravery.

1. I told you! Most cancelled group of people alive.