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Perhaps Tiller doesn’t realize that many mothers of fatally disabled late term fetuses are better able to process the grief of the baby’s passing if they allow their child to die naturally instead of killing it. Perhaps he doesn’t care. But in time, his patients will. Because the only thing worse than grief, is grief compounded by guilt.
Parental selfishness which motivates the abortion of a "disabled" child is difficult to distinguish from the selfishness of a father who kills his child to avoid the pain of losing custody to his former wife. Or as one behavioral psychologist recently observed, it is reminiscent of the killing of an abandoned wife by a man who suddenly decides he can't bear the thought of her as the object of an other man's affection. Spite-murder is so deeply embedded in the popular culture that in his 1954 rock classic Baby Let’s Play House, Elvis Presley warns his love-interest that "I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man." The line shows up again in a Beatles hit. Whether the victim is parent or progeny, fit or infirm, this is egotism of inexpressible immensity.
Is the current cost of care for "birth defective" infants unmanageable? Of course not. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine put the annual figure at $2 billion. That's less than the $2.3 billion Americans spend each year on chewing gum, according to the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers. In fact, the Agency for Healthcare Policy & Research says we spend about $50 billion annually on pediatric care for children of all ages. But could the economy also accommodate the cost of caring for the sick kids we currently kill? The Pet Industry Joint Council says we spend around $63 billion each year for pet acquisition, food, training, grooming and vet care, etc.
What, however, about the life-time costs of caring for a "disabled" child? The CDC estimates that care for people with Downs costs $1.8 billion per year. That is about half the $3.4 billion we spend each year on cookies, according to the Nielsen Marketing Group. Nachum Sicherman of the Columbia Business School doubles the estimated life-time cost for care of Americans with Downs to about $1 million each. That would be just under $4 billion annually or less than the $4.8 billion we spend to go to the movies each year, as reported by the Academy of Motion Pictures.
It would seem then that we have the money required to care for sick kids. But do we have the will? Do a majority of us still value a disabled baby as highly as we do a cute kitty?
The Associated Press reported on The Associated Press reported on March 30, 1997 that a Vicki Hill, of Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced to four months in jail for killing her cat and five kittens. Prosecutors said that the kitty killings generated more outraged calls and letters than most cases tried for the murders of human beings.
The September, 1994 issue of Runners’ World magazine reported that a Barbara Schoner was, while jogging, attacked and killed by a female mountain lion near Cool, California. The jogger was the mother of two young children and the cat, which was later destroyed, was found to have a cub. Trust funds were established for the human and feline offspring of the respective deceased and by the time of the article’s publication, the fund for the children had raised $9,000 and the fund for the cub, $21,000.
Perhaps more to the point, on May 11, 1997, the Associated Press reported that the San Francisco SPCA has announced that "no adoptable animal . . . with a treatable disease will be euthanized . . . and it will pay for medical care for an animal with a long-term health problem after it is adopted." Milwaukee, St. Louis and New York are also taking steps to become "no kill" cities. If only we treated humans with such humanity.
The euphemism Tiller uses to describe the actual killing of "disabled" children is "premature delivery of a stillborn." The baby is "born still," of course, because Tiller has injected his heart with a lethal dose of digoxin. He says this ensures that the child "will not experience any discomfort during the procedure." He then induces labor and in a few hours, the baby is born dead. But how long does it take for cardiac arrest to occur? Most people who have suffered a heart attack describe it as an excruciatingly painful experience. And with only ultrasound to guide the syringe toward the baby's beating heart, what if a misplaced needle delivers the poison to the wrong spot? Or what if the baby moves just before being stabbed, as late term, kicking babies often do? And does the child squirm and thrash after being impaled on the needle?
One is also left to wonder how much "discomfort" is experienced by the many thousands of younger, "healthy" fetuses Tiller routinely tears limb from limb before he kills them, without benefit of anesthesia. Because people tend to be squeamish at the thought of a fetus being tortured to death, most abortionists are understandably reluctant to acknowledge the problem of fetal pain. Tiller obviously believes that he can raise the issue with impunity. And since he's not killing kitties, perhaps he's right.
But Vincent J. Collins, M.D., professor of anesthesiology and author of the textbook, Principles of Anesthesiology (3rd Ed., Williams and Wilkins, 1992) remind us that the neurological structures necessary to feel pain, pain receptive nerve cells, neural pathways and the thalamus of the brain, begin to form 8 weeks after fertilization and become functional during the 13th week. The authors in The Development of the Brain (Reinis & Goldman) 1980, reveal that the first detectable brain activity in response to noxious (pain) stimuli occurs in the thalamus between the ninth and tenth weeks. This means that many of the first trimester babies which represent the vast majority of Tiller’s victims are responding to pain. Dr. Collins also teaches that the cerebral cortex is not necessary for pain sensation but even if it were, the New England Journal of Medicine (November 29, 1987) reports cortical function in both hemispheres of the brain by 20 weeks. That is much younger than the average "fetal indications" baby Tiller admits to killing.
The efficiency of the killing process is important to late term abortionists because they have been prosecuted criminally for killing babies outside uterus when these children inconveniently survive the abortion. Embarrassing cases of surviving aborted babies being left without care for purposes of causing death have lead to abortion procedures, such as Tiller’s, with improved lethality.
Tiller's website also notes the percentage of his "disabled" victims "on which special studies were performed" and describes them in some detail. As he refers to the "crematorium located at our center," it is difficult to avoid painfully obvious comparisons with professional colleague and kindred spirit Dr. Joseph Mengele. The latter, of course, directed the pathology laboratory at Auschwitz as a center for the study of developmental abnormalities. We don't know that either of these men ever violated any criminal statute but both rationalized crimes against humanity by casually denying the personhood of their victims.
In one of the more ghoulish sections of his macabre advertisement, Tiller recommends that "couples elect to view or hold the baby after the woman has recovered from the anesthesia." Of course, he concedes that "some couples initially find this a very frightening thought . . . ." Indeed.
He also said, in an April 19, 1991 "dear colleague" letter soliciting abortion business from referring physicians, that "[p]atients are encouraged to speak directly to their baby if they wish, and finally to say ‘good-by.’ (Not all patients choose to be involved in this process . . . .)" Not surprising. Stranger still, in a 1996 promotional video, Tiller offers patients an opportunity to obtain a "family photo" holding their dead baby. He also suggests that as a memento, they might wish to have a lock of the baby’s hair or a fetal footprint.
Nearly as bizarre is the fact that Rev. George Gardner, pastor of Wichita's College Hill United Methodist Church and an outspoken Tiller apologist, publicly admits to performing post-mortem baptisms on Tiller's victims. If the deceased aren't babies with souls, what do these parents think they're baptizing? If they are babies with souls, why isn't this infanticide? Perhaps parents who care about such things wouldn't need to salve their consciences with phony sacraments if they would consider the stern warning in Isaiah 45:9-11 before turning to Tiller:
9: Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'He has no hands?'
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