Margaret Wente on the murder of Dr. Tiller

Dr. Tiller was a Kansas-based late-term abortion provider who was murdered in church on May 31st.

Margaret Wente (who is generally fairly conservative/libertarian by Canadian standards) has an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail today about Dr. Tiller.

What I found interesting about the piece was the fact that she devotes a fair amount of column space to the issue of the conservative right "inciting" people to kill Tiller. There's a piece from the Wichita Eagle about it here, which deals specifically with Bill O'Reilly and his lovely habit of referring to Tiller as a "baby killer."

I tend not to agree with Ms. Wente on most things, and so I was surprised to find myself nodding along with a lot of the article. One reason why I enjoy reading her article so much is that she is rarely emotional about any of the topics she chooses to cover, so I was amazed at how compassionate she was about the issue of late-term abortions and the circumstances that often surround them.

I don't know how much the influence of extremist Christianity is on the decline. Sure, the President is no longer a right-wing nutjob, but it's the extremist Christians who are having a gazillion kids each and whose sheer numbers are growing. Their influence may no longer be federal, but I'm sure that in individual states and districts they continue to hold a lot of clout.

Be that as it may, Wente's final thought is a chilling one: if this kind of brutality continues, despite its condemnation by most pro-life groups, the religious right's ability to limit women's access to reproductive choice will continue to grow.




Also, on an unrelated note, PETA is apparently using the murder to promote their cause using billboards playing on both pro-life and pro-choice, featuring baby chicks. Seriously, fuck PETA.