Ooh! It works! Friendly neighborhood possum!
Posted on 06/03/2009 4:20:26 AM PDT by stan_sipple
LeRoy Carhart wants to continue providing third-term abortions after the slaying of his friend George Tiller, but the Nebraska doctor doesn’t have anywhere to perform them — and he’s one of only a handful of providers who will.
Tiller’s Wichita, Kan., clinic was shuttered Sunday after the 67-year-old was gunned down at church. His family said Tuesday they were unsure when it would reopen, posing a problem for Carhart, who wants to carry on his friend’s mission.
Carhart, 67, is one of a handful of remaining doctors in the United States who perform third-trimester abortions, and it is uncertain if a new generation of providers will take over.
Schools and universities don’t offer many programs to train doctors how to perform the procedure, and Carhart said younger doctors who might be interested in stepping forward are afraid they or their families will be harmed.
Tiller’s slaying underlined that fear. On Tuesday, Kansas authorities charged 51-year-old Scott Roeder, a staunch abortion opponent, with first-degree murder in Tiller’s death.
“Dr. Tiller and I and all our friends know that tomorrow is never a given,” Carhart said. “I think what we have to do is not let this loss of his life affect our goals in life, No. 1, and we need to do things so he’s never forgotten.”
Carhart, who has been at the epicenter of the debate on what abortion foes call partial-birth abortions, first met Tiller more than 20 years ago and began working at the Wichita clinic a decade ago.
He said he regularly traveled to Kansas for a few days every third week. He only performs third-term abortions at Tiller’s clinic.
Carhart drew national protests from abortion opponents after he filed a lawsuit in 2003 challenging the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and his case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court three years later.
In 2007, the high court upheld the ban on the procedure, which generally was used to end pregnancies in the second and third trimester. Doctors called it “intact dilation and extraction,” or D&X, and opponents referred to it as partial-birth abortion.
At the time of the Supreme Court’s decision, Carhart said the ruling “opened the door to an all-out assault on” the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.
The former Air Force surgeon also operates his own clinic, Abortion & Contraception Clinic of Nebraska, in a nondescript building in Bellevue. But he said he doesn’t perform abortions past the 22nd week of pregnancy there.
“Nebraska state law is based on viability. Nobody has defined that,” he told the AP. “It’s much cheaper to go build a new clinic in Kansas than to try to define what viability means in Nebraska.”
The type of late-term abortions performed by Tiller, Carhart and the handful of others are rare.
More than 820,000 abortions were performed in the United States in 2005, according to the most recent available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Less than 2 percent of abortions occur at 21 weeks of pregnancy or later, according to Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health think tank.
It is unknown how many are done specifically in the third trimester, but Carhart said 75 to 100 of the “several thousand” abortions he performs annually are in the third trimester.
Abortion rights advocates also worry the group of physicians who can provide the service is dwindling.
“There are very, very few abortions that happen at that time,” said Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, who said she worries about a “severe shortage” of physicians who can perform the procedure.
“People who need those services need caring and compassionate and qualified doctors like Dr. Tiller who are able to provide those services.”
With Tiller’s death, there are fewer than 10 doctors who perform third-trimester abortions in the United States, Carhart estimated, and though he has worked with younger physicians before, he hasn’t trained any abortion providers in third-trimester techniques for at least five years.
Carhart, with his wife, Mary, by his side at a news conference Tuesday, said he’d be willing to train younger doctors but few want to put themselves or their families at risk.
“Young people starting families aren’t going to want to go into abortion practice,” Mary Carhart said. “If you were young with little kids, would you want abortion opponents outside your house?”
Another doctor who performs third-trimester abortions, 70-year-old Warren Hern of Boulder, Colo., said he’s also concerned there won’t be enough doctors trained to perform abortions in the future.
Hern, who is being protected by U.S. Marshals following Tiller’s killing, said many medical schools shy from teaching about abortion and doctors don’t want to learn about it.
“There are very few places that are teaching it,” he said.
A day after Tiller was shot, Carhart vowed to reopen his friend’s Kansas clinic and continue Tiller’s mission.
But on Tuesday, Tiller’s family said there were no plans to reopen. Carhart said he remains hopeful Tiller’s family will change their minds. If not, he hopes another abortion provider will open a clinic in Kansas where he can work part-time.
For Carhart, the dispute over abortion is personal. In 1991, his family’s rural home burned in a fire apparently started by an abortion foe.
But he said he’s determined to continue doing what he does.
“As long as you have a terrorist who is willing to walk into a church and kill one person, as long as that element is in society, this is the risk we take,” he said. “You can’t live your life based on fear. You have to live by your principles.”
Not a physician, but a butcher.
There should be a special disease that strikes only abortion doctors - something on the order of AIDS or Ebola would be nice.
This butchering doctor has chosen to operate in the wilderness.
Stay the hell out of Wichita, Carhart. We’ve had enough killers with Tiller, BTK and the Carr brothers.
Apparently Carhart, like Tiller, is a member in good standing of a church (Tiller was a Lutheran and Carhart is a Methodist). I am pretty sure the number of people praying for Carhart to continue to kill children may actually outnumber the ones who are praying that he stops.
Why would he stop when he has the support of his congregation?
IMO these men are demon possessed. They have a Jack Kervorkian complex. They love to watch people die and participate in their deaths. That is why they have no fear of assassins. They are like crack heads who will risk life and limb for another hit.
From Methodist bishop, Timothy Whitaker:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The 2008 General Conference of The United Methodist Church took a step toward greater moral seriousness when it amended the denomination’s Social Principles on abortion.
Paragraph 161 J in the 2008 Book of Discipline contains important additions: “The Church shall offer ministries to reduce unintended pregnancies,” and “We affirm and encourage the Church to assist the ministry of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers that compassionately help women find feasible alternatives to abortion.”
These additions give practical direction to congregations and members, and they also give more substance to the church’s commitment to the statement, “Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion.”
These additions in 2008 follow the addition in 2000, which states the church’s opposition to “late-term abortion known as dilation and extraction (partial-birth abortion) and call for the end of this practice except when the physical life of the mother is in danger and no other medical procedure is available, or in the case of severe fetal anomalies incompatible with life.”
Over the last eight years, the church has strengthened its teaching about abortion so that it is more compatible with historic and ecumenical Christian understanding and practice.
Ooh! It works! Friendly neighborhood possum!
God help us all!
Tiller is an enormity, a moral black hole.... I look at him and I see a human face; but simply do not know how to reconcile that with the stunningly horrific evil of his deeds. Lutheran or no, it would appear the man has been spiritually dead for quite a long time by now, to put it mildly.
It's been said that every human face bears the image of Christ, if we will but discern it. Yet in Dr. Tiller's case, I hardly know what to say, except: I don't see it.
And what of the madwoman who got her picture taken with her dead baby? Not so very long ago, such a person would have been regarded a lunatic. Now we just say she's exercising her "civil rights."
Again I pray: God help us all.
Oddly perhaps, I have the same sense about this as you P-Marlowe. I'd say he's a pitiless narcissist who may actually get his jollies from the physical act of killing, and takes lascivious pleasure in performing "ceremonial" acts of abomination in the sight of God. It's his way of giving God "the back of his hand," so to speak. Not to mention his fellow human beings.
As to why such men have no fear of assassins, maybe in their crazed mental world they believe they are under Satan's protection. But if so, in this case, Satan was not a deal-keeper. Whatta surprise.
You said you thought such men are "demon-possessed." I certainly agree with you there.
p.s.: I'm keeping Dr. Tiller in the present tense, as he is still very much with us in spirit.
Just for the record,....
Physician Friend of Slain Abortion Doctor Wants to Continue Mission
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2263483/posts
But the mods locked it last night for some reason so no one else can reply.
I hope that they’ll let this one go because the topic of the thread needs to be seen.
thanks, the article might have been reprinted in a different paper, i agree on the importance though
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.