The killing of George Tiller on Sunday is a reminder, as if we needed one, of why so few doctors dare to become abortion providers outside big cities, why even fewer perform late-term abortions, and of the bravery it takes to be a member of these small bands. Tiller, 67, performed late-term abortions in the rare cases in which his state, Kansas, allows it. (Two doctors have to say independently that a woman would be irreparably harmed by giving birth.) For his willingness, Tiller was hounded throughout his career. In 1986, his clinic was bombed. In 1993, he was shot in both arms. This photo gallery from the Wichita Eagle chronicles those travails and more; the video below shows Dr. Tiller describing these unfortunate incidents. The Kansas attorney general's office went after Tiller almost as often as anti-abortion protesters did.

Each time, Tiller was exonerated. In 2005, after a patient died after having an abortion at the clinic, the medical board in Kansas cleared him of any wrongdoing, as did a grand jury. A former Kansas attorney general then tried to subpoena the medical records of Tiller's patients in an effort to indict him for performing late-term abortions illegally. The Kansas Supreme Court said no, because the attorney general had no "reasonable suspicion" that Tiller was breaking the law. The group Kansans for Life tried to get Tiller's records by turning to an 1887 state law that gives citizens the power to convene a grand jury. The point, of course, was to scare women out of going to Tiller's clinic out of fear that their privacy would be violated. The grand jury subpoenas, too, got thrown out of court. The next state attorney general filed 19 new misdemeanor trials against Tiller, alleging that he'd taken referrals from a doctor to whom he had financial ties. He stood trial in March. As the New York Times put it after the jury deliberations, "After years of investigations and four days of testimony, jurors here took 45 minutes on Friday to acquit a controversial abortion doctor."

In a 2006 editorial about the lack of availability of abortion in large swathes of the country, the New England Journal of Medicine wrote, "Each year, 1.3 million women in the United States undergo an abortion, but in 2000 only 3 percent of rural areas in the United States had an abortion provider, and 87 percent of U.S. counties had none. Eighteen states had fewer than 10 doctors willing to perform abortions." George Tiller was killed inside his church today. What does it take to live in legal and physical peril because of the work you do, and then to lose your life in your house of worship? Much more than almost all of us have to give. Or should be asked for.

Photograph of pro-choice protesters by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Tags: George Tiller

The murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church this Sunday sent a special chill down my spine; not the kind one gets when someone young, or important, or defenseless is gunned down in cold blood, but the kind one gets when domestic terror strikes. I don't mean to be too alarmist about the first killing of an abortion provider since 1998. Of course, any such assassination is illegal and wrong. But the lawlessness and vigilantism of this particular murder—or, as the anti-abortion zealout who allegedly shot him might put it, judgment—is very worrisome. Is total anarchy just around the corner?

Michelle Goldberg finds a reason to be worried. At The Daily Beast, she narrates how a strengthening pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-progress consensus (otherwise known as a Democratic president) has left anti-abortion and religious groups embittered at the loss of political power. Goldberg flags the infamous Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing fringe groups, and speaks with a hate crimes specialist who sees the far right becoming, as it had been under the last Democratic administration, "restless, apocalyptic, and ready for action."

Earlier this spring, conservatives went into paroxysms of outrage after a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security warned of the possibility of right-wing violence. “Paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members,” the report said. “Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’s opposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly those with Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage.”

Tiller's slaughter may thus be seen as the result of growing radicalism combined with growing political impotence. Goldberg continues:

That’s especially true with regard to abortion. “They see the mainstream anti-abortion leadership as being traitorous or emasculated at best,” Levin says of the radical anti-abortion movement. After all, Rick Warren gave the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Notre Dame gave him an honorary degree and invited him to speak at commencement. A recent Gallup poll showed that, for the first time ever, more Americans identify as “pro-life” than “pro-choice,” but the anti-abortion movement still can’t find momentum. “They feel like their leadership is not carrying the ball on this and has basically become patsies or traitors,” says Levin.

Jonathan Chait thinks he's found "a unified theory of Obama"—which is that, while negotiating touchy issues both foreign and domestic, Obama likes to assume good faith, and thereby alienate individuals who are obviously pissing in the legislative or diplomatic soup. This may be true (Mark Schmitt has written persuasively on this subject as well); but warring over reproductive rights is something different entirely. If true villians exist, they create a moral space in which they must be stopped. And anti-abortion activists, including prominent hit men like Bill O'Reilly, had made Tiller, who performed therapeutic late term abortions and saved many women's lives, a villain.

We saw the seeds of this entropic, extralegal movement in the Republican men and women who yelled "terrorist!" at then-candidate Obama during campaign rallies. So while Obama has tried conciliation (the Notre Dame speech is a great example), the "common ground" he seeks may not exist—Tiller was the latest victim of this Manichean world view. What's worse, the search for common ground, however clever and symbol-laden, may actually encourage murder.

So, I'm sad to say, domestic terror is back.

UPDATE: Adam Serwer at TAPPED offers a working defintion of terrorism. Ann Friedman lays out Obama's policy options.

Tags: abortion, Bill O'Reilly, George Tiller, Notre Dame, Obama, Terrorism

The murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church this Sunday sent a special chill down my spine; not the kind one gets when someone young, or important, or defenseless is gunned down in cold blood, but the kind one gets when domestic terror strikes. I don't mean to be too alarmist about the first killing of an abortion provider since 1998. Of course, any such assassination is illegal and wrong. But the lawlessness and vigilantism of this particular murder—or, as the anti-abortion zealout who allegedly shot him might put it, judgment—is very worrisome. Is total anarchy just around the corner?

Michelle Goldberg finds a reason to be worried. At The Daily Beast, she narrates how a strengthening pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-progress consensus (otherwise known as a Democratic president) has left anti-abortion and religious groups embittered at the loss of political power. Goldberg flags the infamous Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing fringe groups, and speaks with a hate crimes specialist who sees the far right becoming, as it had been under the last Democratic administration, "restless, apocalyptic, and ready for action."

Earlier this spring, conservatives went into paroxysms of outrage after a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security warned of the possibility of right-wing violence. “Paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members,” the report said. “Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’s opposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly those with Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage.”

Tiller's slaughter may thus be seen as the result of growing radicalism combined with growing political impotence. Goldberg continues:

That’s especially true with regard to abortion. “They see the mainstream anti-abortion leadership as being traitorous or emasculated at best,” Levin says of the radical anti-abortion movement. After all, Rick Warren gave the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Notre Dame gave him an honorary degree and invited him to speak at commencement. A recent Gallup poll showed that, for the first time ever, more Americans identify as “pro-life” than “pro-choice,” but the anti-abortion movement still can’t find momentum. “They feel like their leadership is not carrying the ball on this and has basically become patsies or traitors,” says Levin.

Jonathan Chait thinks he's found "a unified theory of Obama"—which is that, while negotiating touchy issues both foreign and domestic, Obama likes to assume good faith, and thereby alienate individuals who are obviously pissing in the legislative or diplomatic soup. This may be true (Mark Schmitt has written persuasively on this subject as well); but warring over reproductive rights is something different entirely. If true villians exist, they create a moral space in which they must be stopped. And anti-abortion activists, including prominent hit men like Bill O'Reilly, had made Tiller, who performed therapeutic late term abortions and saved many women's lives, a villain.

We saw the seeds of this entropic, extralegal movement in the Republican men and women who yelled "terrorist!" at then-candidate Obama during campaign rallies. So while Obama has tried conciliation (the Notre Dame speech is a great example), the "common ground" he seeks may not exist—Tiller was the latest victim of this Manichean world view. What's worse, the search for common ground, however clever and symbol-laden, may actually encourage murder.

So, I'm sad to say, domestic terror is back.

UPDATE: Adam Serwer at TAPPED offers a working defintion of terrorism. Ann Friedman lays out Obama's policy options.

Tags: abortion, Bill O'Reilly, George Tiller, Notre Dame, Obama, Terrorism

A friend recalls her visit to Dr. George Tiller's clinic. You can read another memory of Dr. Tiller here:

It was horrible. We were driving onto the grounds and the protesters were there with their ugly pictures yelling at us. Just yelling. Then we got inside and it was calm, very professional. Those people are miracle workers, every last one of them, from the littlest nurse to the admin guys. They had to know their lives were in danger, and there was security everywhere, but they just wanted to reassure us.

The baby had contracted a virus and you could see on the MRI that its organs were all messed up. It looked like there were bubbles in them, instead of solid masses like they were supposed to be. Then they figured out that the baby had been exposed to Fifth disease. All sorts of researchers contacted us, because they wanted to study it.

That was at about 20 weeks. I got a blood transfusion and I thought everything was cool. We went on vacation. But then we came back, and the doctor realized everything wasn't cool. His brain had a hemorrhage. The MRI reminded me of my other son's. He's autistic, and when he was three he'd had an MRI that also showed abnormalities. At a minimum, they said the baby would have developmental delays. But the doctor also used the words: "This child could not make it into childhood." I was six months along then, and I was already showing. But we couldn't handle having another special needs kid. Psychically, we just couldn't handle it.

It was definitely not a threat to my life. My doctor sort of indicated that there were other options but he didn't give us any contact info. He basically said we had to go to Wichita, Kan., and we'd be in good hands. It was an unusual environment. There were about 10 of us, with our husbands. We stayed in a hotel with all-night security. They were parents from all over the country, and racially mixed. Some of them definitely could have been Republicans, and Christians. Some wanted to give the fetus a name, and bury it, but I didn't want that. Most of them had babies with Down's Syndrome. They wanted us to go through this together, and in therapy sessions they let us talk about it.

After they injected us with something to kill the fetus, they used some kind of seaweed stick, to make the process more organic, so the body would naturally start to abort the fetus. The whole thing took two or three days. We were all pulling for each other.

There were elections going on at the time, and in my hotel room I remember seeing Sam Brownback, a senator from Kansas, on T.V. giving some big speech, and he kept saying this is a message for Americans and for the "unborn children." And I thought, "this is just horrible." This is a very difficult decision, a very personal decision, and it shouldn't be up for debate in this kind of forum. It seemed totally inappropriate.

I cry all the time, and that will be for the rest of my life. Because I really, really wanted that baby. It's so sad, that no matter what was wrong with it, it was trying to grow, that my body was still trying to make that body grow. It could even have looked like a perfect baby—it probably did look like a perfect baby. So it's just weird and sad that nature is trying to do this thing, and everything is working against it.

You can read other tales from inside Tiller's clinic here and here.

Tags: George Tiller, murder, third trimester abortion

A friend recalls her visit to Dr. George Tiller's clinic. You can read another memory of Dr. Tiller here:

It was horrible. We were driving onto the grounds and the protesters were there with their ugly pictures yelling at us. Just yelling. Then we got inside and it was calm, very professional. Those people are miracle workers, every last one of them, from the littlest nurse to the admin guys. They had to know their lives were in danger, and there was security everywhere, but they just wanted to reassure us.

The baby had contracted a virus and you could see on the MRI that its organs were all messed up. It looked like there were bubbles in them, instead of solid masses like they were supposed to be. Then they figured out that the baby had been exposed to Fifth disease. All sorts of researchers contacted us, because they wanted to study it.

That was at about 20 weeks. I got a blood transfusion and I thought everything was cool. We went on vacation. But then we came back, and the doctor realized everything wasn't cool. His brain had a hemorrhage. The MRI reminded me of my other son's. He's autistic, and when he was three he'd had an MRI that also showed abnormalities. At a minimum, they said the baby would have developmental delays. But the doctor also used the words: "This child could not make it into childhood." I was six months along then, and I was already showing. But we couldn't handle having another special needs kid. Psychically, we just couldn't handle it.

It was definitely not a threat to my life. My doctor sort of indicated that there were other options but he didn't give us any contact info. He basically said we had to go to Wichita, Kan., and we'd be in good hands. It was an unusual environment. There were about 10 of us, with our husbands. We stayed in a hotel with all-night security. They were parents from all over the country, and racially mixed. Some of them definitely could have been Republicans, and Christians. Some wanted to give the fetus a name, and bury it, but I didn't want that. Most of them had babies with Down's Syndrome. They wanted us to go through this together, and in therapy sessions they let us talk about it.

After they injected us with something to kill the fetus, they used some kind of seaweed stick, to make the process more organic, so the body would naturally start to abort the fetus. The whole thing took two or three days. We were all pulling for each other.

There were elections going on at the time, and in my hotel room I remember seeing Sam Brownback, a senator from Kansas, on T.V. giving some big speech, and he kept saying this is a message for Americans and for the "unborn children." And I thought, "this is just horrible." This is a very difficult decision, a very personal decision, and it shouldn't be up for debate in this kind of forum. It seemed totally inappropriate.

I cry all the time, and that will be for the rest of my life. Because I really, really wanted that baby. It's so sad, that no matter what was wrong with it, it was trying to grow, that my body was still trying to make that body grow. It could even have looked like a perfect baby—it probably did look like a perfect baby. So it's just weird and sad that nature is trying to do this thing, and everything is working against it.

You can read other tales from inside Tiller's clinic here and here.

Tags: George Tiller, murder, third trimester abortion

A second friend recalls her visit to Dr. George Tiller's clinic:

In July 1993, my husband and I received the worst news about our son's impending birth: He suffered from multiple, severe fetal anomalies, both internal and external, thought to be the result of a rare blood disorder. If he could survive his early birth at 24 weeks he most likely would not survive his blood cancer beyond the age of 9.

After several years of trying to conceive our second child, the news could not have been more devastating. When we heard the news, I had been in Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC for more than two weeks, hooked up to a subcutaneous pump delivering a medication to stop contractions. While still reeling from the shock, we were told we could take our chances and let the baby be born, but that the state would be forced to intervene if we did not then take every measure to keep our son alive. Or, we could consider two late-term abortion clinics—one in Wichita, Kan., the other in Holland! Our initial thoughts were "how could we be in a major NYC hospital in the United States and be told these are our only choices?" To say it was surreal is an understatement.

We made the very painful decision to travel to Wichita after many sleepless, tear-filled hours of discussion. The "quality" of life our son would have had, and the effects this birth could have had on our family for years to come, brought us to that difficult road. I could never explain to anyone how it felt to travel six hours with my baby kicking, knowing that I was about to end the life we tried so lovingly to create. While my husband lived this nightmare with me, even he could not understand or experience the depths of despair that I felt. The scars are still there.

My husband and I found Dr. George Tiller to be a caring, sensitive, and compassionate man who truly believed he was helping those of us who were desperate and had nowhere else to go. While we were at his clinic, he was very concerned about an 11-year-old child raped by her stepfather. And, when we were tormented by Operation Rescue protesters outside his clinic, he put on a bullet proof vest and personally drove us out of there while we hid in his van.

You can read other tales from inside Tiller's clinic here and here.

Another friend describes his wife's late-term abortion. Read testimonials from Tiller's patients here.

I did not know Dr. Tiller, but his assassination vividly reminds me of events in 1983, when my wife and I had a devasting experience with a late-term pregnancy gone wrong at 38 weeks. We had a daughter (I will call her that—in our case, the distinction between fetus and child was not relevant) who developed hydrocephalus (water on the brain) late in the pregnancy, which was discovered at the last ultrasound. Her head was huge with fluid, and therefore would not fit through the birth canal. Actually, it was called hydroencephaly, meaning that she essentially had no brain, because it had been substantially dissolved by the neural fluid from a spinal cord that had not properly closed. Because of the head size, we learned that my wife would have to have a caesarian to deliver the baby—although common, a major surgery. My wife had had an ectopic pregnancy, with major surgery that devasted her, but we very much wanted the baby. Yet we learned that even with the caesarian, the baby would either die shortly after birth, or would live somewhat longer, and very, very badly—likely paralyzed, blind, and without significant mental faculties. My brother is a neonatologist, an expert in premature babies and other problems, and he consulted with specialists around the country. Nothing could be done to improve the predicted outcome. We decided to terminate the pregnancy and avoid the caesarian, to preserve my wife's health and increase her chances for another child, and so we wouldn't simultaneously be grieving the child and coping with recovery from surgery. We made that wrenching decision and the pregnancy was terminated at Stanford University, with the baby delivered vaginally after the evacuation of the spinal fluid from her head. This is what was much later termed "partial birth abortion" and villified by politicians and ideologues who have no idea of the reality we experienced. We buried our daughter in a cemetary in Santa Cruz, Calif. We continue to grieve her loss, and we are also grateful to the caring doctors who assisted us in our time of need.

Would that Dr. Tiller's killer, and his allies, had any idea of the nature of the medical disasters for which he offered his help. Would that they cared.

Photograph of pregnant woman by Anna Jurkovska/Shutterstock Images LLC.

Tags: abortion, late-term abortion, Tiller

Sunday night was when I first found out abortionist Dr. George Tiller had been murdered. But unlike Elizabeth Weil, I knew exactly who he was. I grew up in a conservative Christian family: loving my dad's lapel pin of tiny baby feet, dropping change in baby bottles to raise money for crisis pregnancy centers, and keeping up with relevant legislation. My family and I are probably a pretty good representation of 99 percent of the pro-life movement—people who wouldn't sabotage a clinic or use violence to stop abortion, but do our best with community involvement, prayer, and our votes. So I knew who Tiller was. I've prayed for him before.

I was following the lead-up to his trial for 19 misdemeanor counts all through March. Updates hit my inbox in a bizarre parallel track to another set of breathless updates from friends. Their baby daughter was born by emergency cesarean-section three entire months early and whose survival was an open question. Everyone was pulling for her to make it—doctors, nurses, friends, relatives, co-workers. It's a strange world we live in, to get those updates and then to read about tiny babies just about the same age that hadn't had that kind of cheerleading, who had first been held in Dr. Tiller's arms instead of their parents'.

To me, all the stories of Dr. Tiller's work raise one big question, "What's life for?" Is it just to be happy and have a good quality of life? And if it is, then who gets to set that bar for us—our parents, our laws, or our faith?

I came across one answer this week from my friend Erin, just back on Monday from a trip to Uganda. You can read the whole story here, but Erin writes,

I have to tell you about a brother and sister named Kevin and Catherine. He is 24. She is 21. Their parents died and left them as orphans. Kevin received a full scholarship to attend Liberty University in Virginia and has just graduated and is coming back to Uganda on Monday. Three years ago, Kevin looked around and realized that there were other orphans that needed care, so he and his sister began to take them in. At age 18, Catherine had become a mother to these children and their head caretaker, as Kevin returned to Liberty to study. Over the past three years, the number of orphans has reached a total of 68. The ages range from 3 months up to the lower teens. Catherine, a child herself, is now mother to 68! The only income they receive is from the part-time job that Kevin has at school, which he balances with being a full-time student. This brother and sister decided together that they would give their lives to these 68 children until they are grown and can provide for themselves. Their courage is a great challenge to me.

The children only get to eat once a day, around 3 or 4 p.m. Catherine serves them tea in the morning to hold them over until then, and then lets them play in the afternoon until bed, in hopes that they will fall asleep before they realize their hunger pains and ask her for more.

For $100 we were able to buy a wide variety of food for all of the children and give them a meal that would nourish their little bodies. Catherine, knowing each child intimately, cried throughout the meal because she couldn’t remember the last time she saw them enjoy eating so much."

So I don't know what defines happiness for you, or for a baby with serious medical problems, or for the parents of those kids. But for me, I know that whatever my definition of happiness is now, I hope it can grow someday to be as life-changing and life-giving as Kevin and Catherine's.

Tags: abortion, George Tiller, late-term abortion, pro-life

I’ve been thinking a lot since yesterday when Ayelet Waldman, in her dialogue here on Double X with Elizabeth Weill, asked, “Is there room to reach out to the less crazy part of the right wing and say, ‘OK, that woman in your imaginings, the one who goes to Wichita to have her third 36th-week abortion just because she keeps hysterically shrieking she has a migraine? Okay, we'll give you that. We'll accept limitations of abortions under certain strictest of circumstances.’ ” Granted, “less crazy” is not exactly how I normally think of myself, but close enough for the sake of conversation.

I’ve been reading the accounts here and elsewhere, in the wake of George Tiller’s murder, from women who’ve had late-term abortions because their unborn children were diagnosed with fatal or life-threatening conditions. The stories are heartbreaking, and I find it hard to get through them without weeping. But the accounts create the perception that women with doomed pregnancies are the only ones seeking late-term abortions, and that it’s only in our imagination that healthy women with healthy babies seek them out.

However, Peggy Jarman, a spokeswoman for Tiller, was quoted years ago in the Kansas City Star (referenced here and other anti-abortion sites, though the original article is not freely available online) as saying that “About three-fourths of Tiller's late-term patients … are teen-agers who have denied to themselves or their families they were pregnant until it was too late to hide it.” Even though the numbers are small, elective late-term abortions are real, and they are a tragedy, too. I admit my judgment is clouded by the fact that I spend a good chunk of my days right now cuddling my newborn, but I look at him and imagine the fate of those children, and that makes me weep, too.

So to answer Waldman’s question: I’d take that trade in a heartbeat. In his excellent article in Slate on Tiller, Will Saletan wrote:

You think you're pro-life. You tell yourself that abortion is murder. Maybe you even say that when a pollster calls. But like most of the other people who say such things in polls, you don't mean it literally. There's you, and then there are the people who lock arms outside the clinics. And then there are the people who bomb them. And at the end of the line, there's the guy who killed George Tiller.

Yes, I’ve always considered myself pro-life, and considered abortion to be, well, if not murder, then at least ending a life. But Saletan is right, I probably don’t mean it literally. I would never want a ban on abortion that DIDN’T have exceptions for rape and incest, and to save the mother’s life. Having had my heart broken by enough stories this week of women terminating pregnancies that they desperately wanted, I can support an exception for pregnancies in which the child wouldn’t survive outside the womb. Though, like Weill and Waldman, I don’t know where I would draw the line. If I may borrow Ayelet’s phrasing, it would probably be less restrictive than many conservatives would tolerate and far more restrictive than some liberals would accept.

To answer Ayelet’s question from earlier today, about abortion opponents who support exceptions, as I do. I can’t speak for others, just myself. I’m not anti-abortion for religious reasons, or because it’s part of the Republican Party platform. I’m against abortion because I value the unborn, and because I don’t know where or how to draw a line between a fertilized egg and a baby. (Though I do agree with Ayelet that passing out condoms to teenagers is a better way to reduce abortions than chaining myself to a clinic.) Yes, it’s a contradiction to be against abortion but support exceptions. Still, it’s a contradiction that would leave us with a lot fewer aborted babies.

Tags: abortion, Ayelet Waldman, George Tiller, late-term abortion, pro-choice, pro-life

I’ve been thinking a lot since yesterday when Ayelet Waldman, in her dialogue here on Double X with Elizabeth Weill, asked, “Is there room to reach out to the less crazy part of the right wing and say, ‘OK, that woman in your imaginings, the one who goes to Wichita to have her third 36th-week abortion just because she keeps hysterically shrieking she has a migraine? Okay, we'll give you that. We'll accept limitations of abortions under certain strictest of circumstances.’ ” Granted, “less crazy” is not exactly how I normally think of myself, but close enough for the sake of conversation.

I’ve been reading the accounts here and elsewhere, in the wake of George Tiller’s murder, from women who’ve had late-term abortions because their unborn children were diagnosed with fatal or life-threatening conditions. The stories are heartbreaking, and I find it hard to get through them without weeping. But the accounts create the perception that women with doomed pregnancies are the only ones seeking late-term abortions, and that it’s only in our imagination that healthy women with healthy babies seek them out.

However, Peggy Jarman, a spokeswoman for Tiller, was quoted years ago in the Kansas City Star (referenced here and other anti-abortion sites, though the original article is not freely available online) as saying that “About three-fourths of Tiller's late-term patients … are teen-agers who have denied to themselves or their families they were pregnant until it was too late to hide it.” Even though the numbers are small, elective late-term abortions are real, and they are a tragedy, too. I admit my judgment is clouded by the fact that I spend a good chunk of my days right now cuddling my newborn, but I look at him and imagine the fate of those children, and that makes me weep, too.

So to answer Waldman’s question: I’d take that trade in a heartbeat. In his excellent article in Slate on Tiller, Will Saletan wrote:

You think you're pro-life. You tell yourself that abortion is murder. Maybe you even say that when a pollster calls. But like most of the other people who say such things in polls, you don't mean it literally. There's you, and then there are the people who lock arms outside the clinics. And then there are the people who bomb them. And at the end of the line, there's the guy who killed George Tiller.

Yes, I’ve always considered myself pro-life, and considered abortion to be, well, if not murder, then at least ending a life. But Saletan is right, I probably don’t mean it literally. I would never want a ban on abortion that DIDN’T have exceptions for rape and incest, and to save the mother’s life. Having had my heart broken by enough stories this week of women terminating pregnancies that they desperately wanted, I can support an exception for pregnancies in which the child wouldn’t survive outside the womb. Though, like Weill and Waldman, I don’t know where I would draw the line. If I may borrow Ayelet’s phrasing, it would probably be less restrictive than many conservatives would tolerate and far more restrictive than some liberals would accept.

To answer Ayelet’s question from earlier today, about abortion opponents who support exceptions, as I do. I can’t speak for others, just myself. I’m not anti-abortion for religious reasons, or because it’s part of the Republican Party platform. I’m against abortion because I value the unborn, and because I don’t know where or how to draw a line between a fertilized egg and a baby. (Though I do agree with Ayelet that passing out condoms to teenagers is a better way to reduce abortions than chaining myself to a clinic.) Yes, it’s a contradiction to be against abortion but support exceptions. Still, it’s a contradiction that would leave us with a lot fewer aborted babies.

Tags: abortion, Ayelet Waldman, George Tiller, late-term abortion, pro-choice, pro-life