Well, this is unexpected:
The clinic where slain Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller worked will be "permanently closed," his family’s attorneys said Tuesday.
Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat, attorneys for Tiller’s family, said in a statement that "effective immediately, Women’s Health Care Services, Inc., will be permanently closed.
"We are proud of the service and courage shown by our husband and father and know that women’s health care needs have been met because of his dedication and service," the statement read. "That is a legacy that will never die."
The family said it plans to honor Tiller’s memory through work at private charities.
Well, isn’t that odd? If Tiller was the “hero” and the “Martyr” why aren’t they naming the clinic after him? Why aren’t they commissioning statues in his likeness?
Sounds like the family just wants it all to go away. Could it be because of the bad memories of all the protest that happened near the clinic or could it be that the memories of all those lives that died are just too much for them.
Remember the words of Tiller’s son: "I struggle with the manner he was welcomed into heaven."
Those few words say so much as to how Tiller’s family may have felt about his job.
Val, I hate what he did as much as anyone, but that’s not how I read what his son said. His son regrets that his dad was murdered, not that his dad was an abortionist.
I agree with you Helen.
So does this mean there won’t be anymore late-term abortions in our country? I thought his was the only clinic that did them supposedly?
Oh, good, Helen, I’m not the only one who interpreted it that way.
When a friend of mine died in an unexpected and violent way, his mom said basically the same thing. “While I struggle with my own emotions about the manner in which Joe was taken from us, I am happy to think of him in a better place.” (Joe, ftr, did not perform abortions, late-term or otherwise. While he did die at work, and while people felt upset about the way he died, no one meant that they struggled with his life when they said that they struggled with his death.)
Elizabeth,
No, there are boatloads of hospitals that will do late term abortions. Tiller was one of a few clinics that specialized in them. Jill did a piece on this…let me see if I can find the link…
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99924
It is falsely claimed Tiller was one of only three late-term abortionists in the U.S., for instance, in the New York Times:
Actually, the delusion grows grander. According to the Los Angeles Times:
But Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and close friend of Tiller … said he was now “the only doctor in the world” who performed very late-term abortions. …
Well, no. The fact is second and third trimester abortions are committed rampantly in hospitals and abortion clinics across the country on a daily basis.
Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life pointed on his blog yesterday to a June 1 Los Angeles Times article on late-term abortions that included Centers for Disease Control 2005 statistics:
Nationally, only 1.3 percent of all reported legal abortions occurred at 21 weeks or more gestation. …
Included is a state-by-state look at those abortions. Of legal abortions occurring at 21 weeks or more gestation, most appear to be in New York. That state reported 2,956, followed by Georgia with 1,094 and New Jersey at 950. California doesn’t tell.
The CDC reported 8,482 babies 21 weeks or older were aborted in 2005, and the CDC’s numbers are low, since only 40 states reported. The Guttmacher Institute (research arm of Planned Parenthood) reported approximately 13,000 babies 21 weeks or older were aborted that year.
Nevertheless, of the 40 states reporting to the CDC, 32 reported abortions of babies 21 weeks or older. So if it were true only three doctors nationwide committed them, they did a lot of flying. Kansas, where Tiller practiced, accounted for “only” 459.
Some described Dr. Tiller as one of about only three doctors in the country who had, under certain circumstances, provided abortions to women in their third trimester of pregnancy, and said his death would mean that women, particularly in the central United States, would have few if any options in such cases.
Apparently, it was Tiller himself who started it. According to The Guardian:
Tiller testified … that he owns one of only three clinics in the U.S. that perform late-term abortions, which are performed on foetuses that could survive outside the mother’s womb.
Helen, Elizabeth and Alexandra –
“I struggle with the manner he was welcomed into heaven.”
Do I need to put up the definition of the word “welcomed”?
Alexandra – re read what you wrote: “While I struggle with my own emotions about the manner in which Joe was taken from us, I am happy to think of him in a better place.”
How does that compare?
His son worries in the way he was welcomed into heaven, not the way he went to heaven.
HUGE difference between the two.
Valerie, I respect you. I hope you know that. But there is no way that a young man who just lost his father is contemplating semantics like that. He is a boy mourning his dad, not a politician who knows each word, including “is” will be subjected to hair splitting.
Val,
Your interpretation is correct I believe.
The family wants the death mill to be shut down, they are not proud of it I’ll bet. This was Tillers obsession.
I agree with Helen and Alexandra. The son seems confident that Tiller was indeed “welcomed” into heaven, which indicates that he doesn’t believe Tiller’s blood stained hands may have precluded him. I think his struggle, at least now, in the midst of grief, is with the murder (rightly so, it is his father) and not whether or not his dad made it. Perhaps, in time his family may struggle with the possibility of never seeing Tiller in heaven. This, of course would necessitate them recognizing Tiller’s work as the evil it is, which would mean they would need to break through that deeply held error, that he had devoted his life to “helping women”.
Helen –
You are forgetting something very important. They are Church going people. They went to Church every weekend. They are members of the Lutheran Churches of the Reformation – This is not your average Lutheran faith.
They believe that the bible is the word of God and it is to be taken literally in all contexts. They also follow the Book of Concord (which I believe can be called the Lutheran Confessions – could be wrong on that one though…..)
You can go here to read some more on their belief’s: http://www.lcrusa.org/brief_statement.htm
Yes, he is a young man. Yes, he is mourning. and Yes, he knew the words he chose and chose them wisely.
Another aspect of Reformed Lutheran is that they believe women must be submissive to men and never question them. They follow 1 Timothy 2:12 “12But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
Anyone wanna guess why his wife stayed with him? Only now can she “speak up” and I believe she is doing it by not allowing anymore deaths under her husbands name.
I’m really sorry – Upon reflection, I should have put all that in the post to. This is my curse of “thinking inside out” (as my sister claim I do) – I sometimes forget that not everyone researches everything to the umpth degree in an attempt to understand everything. When I learned that Tiller was a Church goer and what Church he went to (this was about a year ago) I looked it up to see how he could be welcomed in a Lutheran Church considering how close Lutherans can be to Catholicism. Well…..this faith left many aspects of the Lutheran Teachings and they have signed onto the doctrine that the “Pope is the very AntiChrist. “
I’m kind of surprised they even think he was “welcomed” into Heaven at all.
MK,
Yeah I kind of figured that was the case. Being the optimistic I am (most of the time) I was hoping that would mean no more brains being sucked out of babies skulls.
Not so much I guess.
On the upside of things in my day, I just finished my 2nd and last anatomy test for THIS week…and they were both surprisingly easy! Hopefully I did okay! (At least they’re over with!!!)
and in case anyone was wondering, my Captcha words are: puberty and Toothers…feel free to make an interesting haiku out of THAT.
The sign the family placed near Tiller’s coffin said “Trust Women” not “Trust God”. They are defending his abortion practices, not condemning them. They believe he was doing God’s work and that his dedication to abortion is his ticket to heaven. May God open all of their eyes.
DeeL –
“The son seems confident that Tiller was indeed “welcomed” into heaven, which indicates that he doesn’t believe Tiller’s blood stained hands may have precluded him.”
I know you wrote this before my comment on Reformation Lutheran……..
Their religion teaches that everyone goes to Heaven.
This is from the link I posted above:
“Furthermore, by election of grace, Scripture does not mean that one part of God’s counsel of salvation according to which He will receive into heaven those who persevere in faith unto the end, but, on the contrary, Scripture means this, that God, before the foundation of the world, from Pure grace, because of the redemption of Christ, has chosen for His own a definite number of persons Out of the corrupt mass and has determined to bring them, through Word and Sacrament. to faith and salvation.”
As long as you believe Christ is our Salvation and follow the teachings outlined in the reformation of the Lutheran Faith then you get into Heaven.
However, it is the manner in which you are welcomed into Heaven is at question.
If you read the section titled “of the election of Grace” in the link…..the belief in the afterlife is there…….
That was his “motto”. There were signs in the clinic that said that too. In almost every interview he would say that over and over again.
There is also this on the closing:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jaLZyHUZ2vWSrE1Go3eZ1qUW47GgD98NE4784
George Tiller’s slaying has accomplished what anti-abortion activists had tried to do for decades: The doors to his Kansas clinic will shut forever. The announcement Tuesday from Tiller’s family was a tainted victory for the nation’s anti-abortion movement. For years, it had focused on Tiller, making him the target of protests, legislation and legal attacks.
The family knows that closing the clinic means we “win” in that long battle. If they were strong pro-choicers, they wouldn’t have allowed that. Especially since there was already one doctor wanting to buy it off of them……
Wishful thinking on my part – but wouldn’t it be awesome if his family comes out as pro-life???
Val,
Thanks for the information on the Reformation Lutherans. I did not know that. Those are some interesting tenents.
Nothing wrong with wishful thinking.
FWIW, a reporter on the scene supports Helen et al.’s view that Tiller’s son was expressing sadness about his father’s murder:
Tiller’s son, Maury, was the only member of the family to refer to the shooting.
“I struggle with the manner in which he was welcomed into heaven,” he said.
But he was comforted by memories of the last weekend, when Tiller spent time with his children.
kansas.com/news/tiller/story/842781.html
“Alexandra – re read what you wrote: “While I struggle with my own emotions about the manner in which Joe was taken from us, I am happy to think of him in a better place.”
How does that compare?”
People often euphemize death. I have heard people use phrases like ‘welcomed into heaven’ or ‘called home’ or whatever — all the time. I actually can’t recall ever hearing a person describe a deceased loved one WITHOUT using cushioned euphemisms, at least not in the days immediately following the death. “In heaven,” “called home,” “welcomed home,” etc are basically all nicey-sounding synonyms for “dead.” I even more often than not hear people who don’t believe in a god say things like, “She’s in a better place now.” It’s something of an emotional necessity in the aftermath of such a sad and shocking event: the reassurance that your loved one still exists somewhere, that he is happier, that you’ll see her again someday.
“His son worries in the way he was welcomed into heaven, not the way he went to heaven.”
He didn’t say, “I struggle with the likelihood that my father may not have been welcomed into heaven,” or something similar. The way in which it happened, not the chances of it happening etc were his focus. He said something that indicates he believes his father has been welcomed into heaven, but he struggles with the manner in which that occurred — the manner in which he died.
“Yes, he is a young man. Yes, he is mourning. and Yes, he knew the words he chose and chose them wisely. ”
How do you know that he knew the words and chose them wisely? Did the son even go to the church, or just Tiller?
“Another aspect of Reformed Lutheran is that they believe women must be submissive to men and never question them. They follow 1 Timothy 2:12 “12But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Anyone wanna guess why his wife stayed with him? ”
I think that’s an unnecessary thing to say, especially because aren’t you sick of people saying similar things about Catholicism? Misreading verses or doctrines about a wife submitting to her husband, and ignoring the reciprocal nature of the relationship etc? And how do you know that his church followed this? Any of this? How do you know that Tiller followed this? Didn’t he get basically excommunicated from of another Lutheran church, and that’s why he was even attending this one in the first place? That sounds like he probably wasn’t too attached to the theology of it — it wasn’t even his “first choice” denomination. It seems like a big jump to find a description of the denomination and then filter all of the statements through that lens, when you don’t know how fervently Tiller himself, much less his son, even obeyed the doctrine of his own church, and you don’t even know how much his church obeyed the doctrine of its own denomination.
When I was in high school, lots of people who went to my church didn’t even really believe in God, when you got down to it. (Surprisingly, not including me, at the time! lol) It was an Evangelical church but the things we did and talked about rarely had much to do with the doctrine of the denomination. It was your usual suburban Protestant stuff. Fairly uncontroversial sermons on things like being nice or forgiving people who hurt you or trusting God even when you don’t want to. The occasional God-themed band playing a song. A skit every now and then to keep the kids interested. If you were to ask me how my church differed from any other on ANY doctrinal issue, the only thing I could have thought to tell you was that Catholics went to confession and we had a “personal relationship with God” so we “didn’t need” confession. (though even then I thought that was bull.)
I wouldn’t necessarily assume that every church is as faithful to its denominational doctrine as yours is — even some Catholic churches aren’t. And I wouldn’t assume that every church member is as faithful to their congregation’s doctrine as you would be.
Lastly, how do you know that his church was a member of this denomination, and not just named “Reformation Lutheran Church?” I’m honestly curious, here, not accusing — I haven’t done much research on it myself, just looked around the websites right now, but I saw no mention of the LCotR organization on what appears to be Tiller’s church’s site. The church was chartered and the first building that it was in was built before the Lutheran Churches of the Reformation were formally incorporated; granted, it could have changed its name and even its denomination, especially when it was re-built, but the website doesn’t mention anything about that and it seems odd to me that a church would pass off the history of another denomination’s chartering as its own.
But the Churches of the Reformation website doesn’t list anything in Kansas as a member congregation, and the wiki for the LCotR doesn’t mention them being a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Association, which Tiller’s church says it is. (It doesn’t say they’re not, either, but the page for the ELCA doesn’t mention the Lutheran Church of the Reformation; maybe it’s just too small or maybe it’s not part of it, I don’t know.) The ELCA ordains women as pastors, so that alone makes me question whether a church that was part of the ELCA would have as its doctrine that women are supposed to suffer in silence and not usurp the authority of men.
Did some searching – and although I don’t believe I am wrong considering his suggested religious belief’s, I did find the rest of his quote….
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/131167248
Tiller’s son, Maury, was the only member of the family to refer to the shooting. “I struggle with the manner in which he was welcomed into heaven,” he said. But he was comforted by memories of the last weekend, when Tiller spent time with his children. After that, he said, “I believe that God decided, ‘You have done everything I asked a person to do here on Earth. Now I will show the world what a loving, compassionate, courageous, selfless man you are.’ And so it happened.”
One of the reasons I don’t think I am wrong is because they don’t believe he could be anywhere but Heaven because he followed the doctrine of their Church. So what else would you think? His last statement actually says more than I think …… I’m doing more research on that religion though to see what I dig up…..I’ll let everyone know if I find anything interesting…..
“One of the reasons I don’t think I am wrong is because they don’t believe he could be anywhere but Heaven because he followed the doctrine of their Church.”
Where does it say that? I haven’t really been following the Tiller funeral news because it depresses me. From the quote above, it seems to me like his son felt that he had done everything he could, most likely everything he could to better the world around them since that’s most often what people imply when they say things like that (presuming, of course, that abortion is morally neutral and that providing abortions is thus good). So God saw that Tiller had proved himself so devoted to the noble cause of providing women “access to choice” or whatever, that his death would only further speak to the world about the strength of his selflessness, his morals, and his convictions.
When a friend’s mom died, her eulogy said roughly the same thing. She lived a pretty normal life and just died of a heart attack, but her sister said something like, “That Felicia did everything the Lord wanted her to do by such a young age, and He called her home so soon, is not a tragedy; it is a joy. Because it speaks to the depth of her love and the ferocity with which she was devoted to her religion.”
But anyway, don’t most churches think that if you follow the doctrine of your church, you’ll go to heaven? I mean as much as any man can claim to know how to go to heaven? What is the purpose of doctrine if not to explain God’s will for man and consequently help man get to heaven? I’m not a religious person so maybe that’s a dumb and really obvious question, but I’ll ask it anyway.
Alexandra –
Since most of this is speculation – I’ll leave you the last word….
However….where did you read that he was excommunicated from somewhere else? I’ve never read that…….then again, I can’t say i was looking for it either.
As for the Church –
If you go to the Church Tiller went to and go to the “about” page you will see that the link I provided is very similar and goes right along with what they say. http://www.reformation-lutheran.org/aboutus/mission.html
You are also looking at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Association – and forgetting the word “reformation” before that. They say ELCA on their website, but the word reformation makes those initials a bit out of place. There is no way they could be both. Something tells me ELCA means something other than what one would assume.
The comment about women is from the Reformation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches who do not ordain women (obviously). So – since the word “reformation” is a part of the name of the Church – the only assumption anyone can make is that they are part of that reformation that began in the Lutheran Church in 1917 and completed sometime in the 1960′s. I don’t know how anyone could think otherwise considering the word “reformation” is the dominate focus on the Church’s sign. They are quite proud of that reformation.
As for the family – all accounts of Tiller and his family stated that they all went to church together. He was an Usher and the wife was in the Choir and the kids went with them.
Could I be wrong on my assumptions – yes. I’ve never known my opinions to be fact. When I am stating a fact there is no question that it is a fact and not my opinion and Vice-versa.
I still stand by my opinions, just as you will more than likely stand by yours…..only time will tell whose assumptions are right.
Also, you are more than welcome to spout your opinions in any article that you may want to write for us and we can post for you. (don’t you love how I just twisted that to try to get you to write something for us?)
Not a dumb question at all – and the answer can get very confusing because there is no black and white answer.
I’ll do my best – Following the doctrine of your Church is just the beginning. It’s not the end. As you said – it helps them get to heaven, but it doesn’t guarantee them Heaven. That is my belief…..
However there are other religions that believe no matter what – you belong to one belief system then you are automatically going to Heaven. Mass murderer – who cares, you followed X belief……. (that is a huge generalization………but I don’t have the words and MK seems to have gone MIA on us!!!!!!)
“If you go to the Church Tiller went to and go to the “about” page you will see that the link I provided is very similar and goes right along with what they say. http://www.reformation-lutheran.org/aboutus/mission.html ”
It looks pretty similar to almost every Christian denomination I’ve ever heard of, to be honest.
“They say ELCA on their website, but the word reformation makes those initials a bit out of place.”
“I don’t know how anyone could think otherwise considering the word “reformation” is the dominate focus on the Church’s sign. They are quite proud of that reformation.”
The word “reformation” is somewhat common in Protestant church names, I’m pretty sure. This is something I just pulled up on the first Google page, but it’s an ELCA congregation called St. Paul – Reformation Lutheran Church. I found a number of ‘[Blank] Reformation Church’s, or ‘Reformation [Blank] Church’s, and a lot of ‘Reformation Lutheran Church’s, many stating that they’re part of the ELCA.
The first church I attended (which rocked btw) was called the First Reformed Church of [Town]. Reformed is a kind of umbrella denomination, though maybe denomination is the wrong word; I think generally Calvinist (Presbyterian, Episcopalian maybe, that sort of thing)? Lutheran churches are obviously not Calvinist but they still spring from the Reformation, so it makes sense that the word would be pretty important and would feature prominently in names. It’s central to the religion.
“Also, you are more than welcome to spout your opinions in any article that you may want to write for us and we can post for you. (don’t you love how I just twisted that to try to get you to write something for us?) ”
Yeah, I’m sure it’d kill your site.
Bad! Alexandra! BAD!
Our site is much improved with your insights!
Just look above at all the work you put into your responses! You would make an excellent blogger for us!