Sherry Chandler

George Tiller

I haven’t said anything about the murder of George Tiller. I am shocked, outraged, and speechless before this senseless act of domestic terrorism. Such acts should not be possible in our “land of the free.”

Mostly I am just very, very sad. And disappointed that some things never seem to change.

I will let this statement speak for me. It is a letter to the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal from three organizations I support: The ACLU of Kentucky, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and Planned Parenthood of Kentucky:

We honor Dr. George Tiller’s legacy of compassion and care throughout his life. Dr. Tiller devoted his life to ensuring that all women have access to comprehensive reproductive health including safe and legal abortion. As a highly qualified health care provider, his life’s work was dedicated to helping women facing problem pregnancies and difficult decisions. Those of us who support quality health care for all women admire his dedication and courage. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to his family, friends, staff, and colleagues.

Sunday’s murder of Dr. George Tiller serves as a shocking and tragic reminder of the risks health care professionals face providing legal reproductive services to women in our country today. Regardless of how one feels about the subject of abortion, we can all agree that women have a right to health care free from harassment and intimidation and that health care professionals have a right to provide services free from violence.

Dr. Tiller believed women deserved kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect. He believed in the emotional and spiritual heart of each woman. Because of these beliefs he faced years of harassment and violence. He continued to serve women even after he was shot in 1993. He refused to cave into the relentless harassment and threats that he faced at his home, his clinic, and finally even his place of worship.

Dr. Tiller wore a button bearing his motto…”Attitude is everything.” It is time for every person, no matter their political or ideological beliefs, to seek the common ground of kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect.

Derek Selznick
Reproductive Freedom Project Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky

Judi Jennings
Executive Director, Kentucky Foundation for Women

Shirley Jones
President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Kentucky

Read this if you want to know what it was that George Tiller did.

Our understanding of what late abortion is like has been almost entirely shaped in public discourse by the opponents of abortion rights. In recent years, discussions of the issue have been filled with the gory details of so-called partial-birth abortion; the grim miseries that drive some women and girls to end their pregnancies after the first trimester have somehow been elided.

�Late abortion is not a failure of contraception. It�s for medical reasons,� Eleanor Smeal, the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who has worked to defend abortion providers like Tiller against harassment and violence since the mid-1980s, told me this week. �We�ve made pregnancy a fairy tale where there are no fetal complications, there�s no cancer, no terrible abuse of girls, no cases where to make a girl go all the way through a pregnancy is to destroy her. These are the realities of the story. That�s what Dr. Tiller worked with � the realities.�

I See Invisible People is all over this here and here. See also.

__________
And it turns out there’s a down-side to killing off all you enemies. Leaves you with no reason to exist.

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Read this one too.

More on NILAS

I have been talking to Patricia Monaghan, editor of the current NILAS Newsletter. Patricia says:

NILAS is an interesting and important organization, one that breaks down the barriers between academic and non-academic intellectual work. Storytellers, poets, and other creative types are as much part of NILAS as those with academic appointments (the current president is a storyteller).

I was pleased with the femininity of the [current newsletter] collection … that more women seemed to be writing (and writing VERY well) about plants. Also the underlying theme of sensuality–it was all a bit like having the literary equivalent of Georgia O’Keeffe coming into my mailbox.

I give you one more poem from the Fall 2004 Newsletter, this one from Frankfort poet Normandi Ellis. Normandi is the president-elect of the National Association of Poetry Therapy Foundation and works with elders and youth at risk. While Ann Lederer’s poem dealt with harvest and the season’s end, Normandi’s gives us the season’s beginning. These last few sunny lengthening days – some of them warm – remind me that the earth is turning and soon, none too soon to suit me, it will be –

Late April, John’s Branch

This morning on yesterday’s shorn lawn –
dandelion tufts
and rain-drenched violets.
Redbuds recede into green leafing
trees. Bluebells bloom their last
among the tall creek bank grass.
Blues and pinks fade fast –
now comes the season of white dogwood and locusts,
a season of yellow wood poppies.
Underneath the green umbrella of leaves
white mayapples flower.
Rain drips into the red
upturned lips of trillium.

Handing down and trading plants is, it seems to me, a tradition with women so writing about them should come natural to us. The white trillium pictured here has bloomed against the north side of our house for thirty plus years, surviving drought and flood. My late mother-in-law brought it here from the Red River Gorge during a time when the river was going to be dammed and folk were allowed to take what they could find. Fortunately, that damming did not happen, and I consider the trillium a legacy that I guard with care.

The theme of the next NILAS Newsletter (Winter 2005) will be “Experiencing Animal Presence: Totemism, Shapeshifting, Story” – nonfiction and fiction, poetry and artworks that evoke cross-species empathy and communication through what NILAS refers to as totemic expression. Submissions should be e-mailed to Marion W. Copeland, guest editor, or mailed to her at

128 Amherst Road
Pelham, MA 01002

Deadline for submission: Monday March 14, 2005

Addendum: I highly recommend Patricia Monaghan’s two latest collections of poems: Dancing with Chaos (Salmon, 2003) and Homefront (FootHills, 2004).