Updated 7:15 p.m. PT, May 31
George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performed partial-birth abortions, was shot to death Sunday as he arrived at his Lutheran church in Wichita, Kan.
Tiller, who in his Navy days had been stationed as a surgeon in Oakland, Calif., was a lightning rod for pro-life activists and was the target of violence when he was shot in 1993. More recently, he was tried and acquitted in March for consulting with a second physician in late-term abortions who did not meet legal standards established by Kansas.
Police have arrested a person of interest, Scott Roeder, in the shooting, but offered little insight into the motive behind the killing. Wichita police said they believed the shooting was “the act of an isolated individual” but that they were investigating “his history, his family, his associates.”
That hasn't stopped many people, from bloggers up to President Obama, from assuming Tiller was shot by pro-life activists, who opposed his practicing of partial-birth abortion, in which a viable baby is partially pulled from a mother's womb, has its brain sucked out, its skull collapsed and then is thrown away as medical waste.
In the end, the abortion doctor was as divisive in death as he was in life.
The White House issued the following statement from Obama:
I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.
The National Organization for Women also issued a statement similarly blaming pro-life activists.
Several pro-life groups issued statements of sympathy for Tiller's family.
Former Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry, however, did not mince words: "George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name, murder."
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