Wichita, KS — Late-term abortionist George Tiller marked the 29th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision by offering free abortions Saturday [Jan. 19], a move that drew protest from pro-life advocates around Kansas.
George Tiller spoke to 65 abortion advocates Saturday morning and warned them that unlimited abortion is at a fragile point.
“This is an alert. It is a wakeup call,” Tiller said. “We are sort of a huddled mass here together, a few of us arrayed against a vast enemy. We are armed with our attitude and our conviction that men and women are reproductively equal.”
“We're going to spit in their eye,” Tiller said of pro-life advocates. “A free abortion does that.”
However, there's no such thing as a free abortion, said the director of a crisis pregnancy center that operates next door to Tiller.
“It may be free now, but you'll pay for it later on,” Tim Wiesner, director of Choices Medical Clinic, which offers pregnant women alternatives to abortion.
“That's the thing about abortion,” Wiesner said. “It's a quick fix, and then it tends to dawn on them later on what they've done, and it's something they have to live with.”
Among those joining Tiller on Saturday was LeRoy Carhart, who successfully challenged a Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortion. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to strike down the pro-life measure in 2000. More than half the states have passed similar bans.
“This clinic has weathered the opposition probably more than any other place in the United States, and they have done it so well,” Carhart said.
Tiller, one of the few abortion practitioners in the country to perform late-term abortions, has been a continued focus of opposition from Kansas pro-life advocates.
“Any time the sanctity of life is being shown such complete disregard, we are going to come out in force – and exemplify that the majority of Kansans really do believe abortion should be rare and it shouldn't be taken lightly,” said Joan Hawkins, director of Kansans for Life.
Tiller said Saturday at least 32 “low-income” women had signed up for the free first-trimester abortions. Many labeled the move a publicity stunt.
“This is a publicity stunt, pure and simple, performed at the expense of women and their babies, merely for the profit of one individual – George Tiller,” Hawkins explained. “What he is losing in revenue on Saturday he has more than made up for in the attention the media has given to this stunt.”
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
