Opinion

It was sometime during 1991 that I, as a photojournalist, traveled from Kansas City to Dr. George Tiller’s Women's Health Care Services clinic on Kellogg Ave. in Wichita, Kan., to document the spectacle that came to be known as Operation Rescue’s “Summer of Mercy”.

When I arrived the spectacle had been playing out in front of the anonymous brick building every day for almost six weeks. Thousands of true believers from around the state and beyond were bused in under the guise of trying to persuade young women to not have an abortion. More were to be arrested in non-violent “prayer-in” protests.

Gruesome giant signs of dead human fetuses held by old ladies along the road with groups harassing every single person who attempted to enter the building screaming “Don’t Kill Your Baby” and “God is Watching”. Visibly shaken and disturbed, these women would be spirited by volunteer security through the crowds of “pro-lifers” into Dr. Tiller’s clinic.

Filled with the power of prayer and the belief that they were saving the unborn, these folks were filled with a righteous hatred, screaming “baby killer” and holding photos of mangled baby body parts, screaming at passing traffic.

I had been quite familiar with Wichita and its Bible-based brow beating, as I had often visited my born again, Vietnam vet brother as an adolescent. We were raised Catholic in Shawnee, Kansas, and he even went to St. Thomas Aquinas High School. But sometime in the early 70’s I remember he switched to some Protestant sect, and started carrying and regularly quoting the Bible, explaining the he had been “born again”.

As a 12-year-old, I wasn’t quite sure what that meant but he seemed happy enough. What did I care? I loved my brother because he had become a gentle, kind and thoughtful person who turned to Christ and the Bible for answers. I was often inspired by his faith as a kid and even became an alter boy in our local church.

But sometime in summer of 1979, I had gone to visit the same brother and things were different. His mellow, laid back attitude about Jesus was gone. He had switched churches and had become fairly militant about his religious beliefs.

As part of my summer education, I was to attend a one-day “lock in” Sunday School class at a local Baptist Church in Southeast Wichita, in a poor and working class part of the city—filled with trailer parks and post WWII prefab ranch homes.

I remember thinking that it would be fine, having attended Sunday school in other Protestant churches where a family member was a member and having a good time, playing with the other children and learning about Christianity and the stories of the Bible.

So we drove across town on a bright Sunday morning to a small white wooden church outside of town and I was dropped into the hands of a friend of my brother’s, who was one of the people who would be leading the day’s activities.

I was welcomed by the pastor and the other children and was asked if I’d ever been to a “lock in”. I said no and I was reminded that once the service started no one could leave, not even to go to the bathroom.

I remember there being maybe 15 or 20 other children there and eventually we were asked to have a seat. Dressed in my Sunday best, I listened as the pastor began to explain why were being locked inside.

Today’s topic was not going to be about God but about his evil adversary, Satan, the devil, Beelzebub, the fallen one. “The Devil is real and lives in all of us,” the pastor explained. “Hell is a real place. And if you’re bad children, you will spend the rest of eternity burning in hell fire and damnation.”

Pretty soon afterwards, the lights in the church were dimmed and a film was projected on the wall in front of us. It frightened me and several other children as graphic depictions of the stages of hell—similar to Dante’s “Inferno”—were shown.

I didn’t feel good about this church experience. Kids were crying and screaming, scared stiff to their seats. I was afraid and just wanted to leave. I got up and headed towards the door.

“Where are you going, son?” my brother’s friend asked sternly.

“I’m leaving. I don’t like this movie.”

“Sorry son, no one can leave until we are finished. Go back to your seat.”

“But I’m scared,” I remember explaining. “We don’t do this at our church”.

“Son, you’re supposed to be afraid.” His face turned mean. “Afraid of going to hell”.

I sat back down, angry inside, and watched images of men and women sent to hell for any number of sins, deemed unforgivable. It was scary to a 12-year-old, and I still remember the sounds of the whimpering kids who were being forced to watch.

When I got back outside later that day, I was still angry. I was subjected to a barrage of some of the most graphic and disturbing images of my childhood, worse than any Hollywood film I’d seen, except for that scene with the flying monkey’s in the “Wizard of Oz”.

I never forgave my brother for subjecting me to that. It shook my faith to the core. How could anyone who believed in the “Prince of Peace” use fear to scare people into believing in God?

Just like another loony-toon Kansan, the so-called Rev. Fred Phelps--whose antics across the country have led governments to ban protests at funerals. I am sure his disgraceful and hateful caravan of inbred children will be in attendance at Dr. Tiller’s funeral to add insult to injury.

When I sat down at the coffee shop in Brooklyn to read that Dr. George Tiller had been murdered while handing out bulletins as an usher for his Lutheran Church in Wichita by a guy who lived in Merriam—I was ashamed of being from Kansas.

Add Scott Roeder to a long list of violent religious and political wing nuts that have passed through the so-called Free State. Obviously mentally unstable, Roeder, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, it seems was a one-man “pro-life” crime wave around Kansas City and Kansas. Or was he?

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, who moved his activist organization to Wichita in the 1990’s, was a carpetbagger from Texas who brought this brand of born-again, hell fire and damnation Christian Conservatism to a fertile ground. It was his group that sprouted the seeds of hatred that led to Dr. Tiller’s cold-blooded murder.

My first encounter with Randall Terry’s radical religious agenda and his righteous Army of God-fearing Americans was in Dallas, Texas the year before when hundreds blocked the entrance to an abortion clinic and were arrested. Unlike Kansas, which seems to allow any sort of strange incarnation of Christianity to fester, the powers-that-be in Texas gave Terry the heave-ho. Take your medicine show elsewhere, he was told. He moved up I-35 to Wichita, Kansas.

Shame on the Kansas politicians who took political donations and rhetoric from this fringe element of the Christian Coalition. These opportunists are also culpable in the murder of Dr. Tiller. Phill Kline, former Attorney General and malicious prosecutor, along with Terry, led a campaign of harassment, hate speech and dis-information that led to Tiller being shot twice by another Operation Rescue member in 1993, his clinic bombed and vandalized repeatedly and subsequently his murder just this week.

I believe that Operation Rescue is a terrorist organization whose political philosophy has given justification to the murder of several abortion doctors (i.e. justifiable homicide), inspired numerous acts of domestic terrorism (i.e. bombing abortion clinics) and given cover to over-zealous politicians and prosecutors bent on outlawing abortion in all circumstances.

According to an article in the New Republic, Troy Newman, a San Diego preacher, who moved to Wichita in 2002 to take control of Operation Rescue, and Cheryl Sullenger, his top lieutenant, share some culpability in Dr. Tiller’s murder. Sullenger was convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in California, and her cell phone number was found on Roeder’s phone, and it was reported that she regularly gave Roeder updates on the comings and goings of Dr. Tiller.

“Since taking control of Operation Rescue, Newman has organized countless protests against Tiller, whom the organization described as a "murderer" and a "killer." Newman organized a "Year of Rebuke" to expose anyone with personal or professional ties to Tiller.” –The New Republic

This was a determined and focused campaign by one radical religious organization to demonize one man who was performing a legal medical procedure. By the way, late term abortions in Kansas are only legal when the life of the mother is in danger! These carpetbaggers from out of state stirred the passions of a mentally ill man who is now complaining “that he’s being treated like a criminal”.

Surely Roeder thought that O’Reilly, Kline, Newman, Sullenger and Terry would be singing his praises for killing the “baby killer”. Typical schizophrenic thinking was filled with obsessional hatred and delusions of grandeur. But alas, these men are cowards. Cowards for egging people like Roeder along and not taking any responsibility for their actions.

When Roeder glued the doors shut to clinics in Kansas and Missouri, before murdering Dr. Tiller, he wasn’t helping to save babies, as Operation Rescue would have us believe. He was locking out mothers from necessary medical treatment: poor women needing to get their regular gynecological exams, pregnancy tests and pap smears from Planned Parenthood.

When I called back to my hometown to speak with a female friend about Dr. Tiller’s murder, she was just as disturbed. My friend lives only five blocks away from Roeder’s Merriam home and she had heard approval of the vigilante murder from her co-workers at her medical service job.

“They were saying he deserved it and I just kept my mouth shut,” she lamented. “I had just listened to an NPR interview of a woman who had a late term abortion because her baby had a fatal condition. Nobody is pro-abortion. They are pro-choice. Nobody wants to have an abortion or give birth to a baby that is just going to die.”