Doctors Who Offer Abortions

When I uploaded my previous entry about Obama speaking at Notre Dame, I had not yet learned of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor from Kansas. The term “abortion doctor” is unsettling. When you listen to people who knew George Tiller, it becomes clear he was first and foremost a doctor—in the best sense of the word. Is there any other doctor we refer to by their procedure? The “bypass doctor,” the “hip replacement doctor”? George Tiller was a doctor; regardless of the reservations one might have about late-term abortions, one cannot listen to those worked with him without sensing that Dr. Tiller saw his duty as providing care to the women who came to see him. His murder supports Obama’s request at Notre Dame and highlights that strand in the American tapestry of solving problems through violence, real or metaphorical (see my entry for March 16th).

Canada has had its own George Tiller, a Dr. Henry Morgentaler. The abortion debate does not, so far as I can tell, shift much in tone or content from north to south. While it is somewhat of a less strident exchange here simply as a reflection of Canadian conversation, Dr. Morgentaler has had his clinic bombed and he’s been attacked by a man wielding garden shears. The difference that I am aware of north to south is that Canada has the ability to publicly recognize pro-abortion activists. The country recently awarded Dr. Morgentaler its highest order: investiture into the Order of Canada, which is as significant as receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the U.S.. The choice to give the Order of Canada to Dr. Morgentaler was not without controversy: some members of the Order chose to resign their membership in protest. In any case, such a significant recognition south of the border for somebody like Morgentaler is difficult to imagine.