The Ashford Zone Blog

They've caught the guy who shot and killed Dr. Tiller. According to KWCH-TV:

Deputy Chief Tom Stolz w/ Wichita Police Dept. says Dr. Tiller died of a single gunshot wound. The Associated Press says the man detained in the Kansas City area is 51-year-old Scott Roeder of Merriam, Kansas, according to Law Enforcement authorities in the area. Roeder has not been formally charged with the killing at this time. Police say he was arrested without incident after a traffic stop.

July 7, [1997], Kansas: Scott Roeder is sentenced to sixteen months in state prison for parole violations following a 1996 conviction for having bomb components in his car trunk. Roeder, a sovereign citizen and tax protester, violated his parole by not filing tax returns or providing his social security number to his employer.

He was also an active member of Operation Rescue; in 2007 a "Scott Roeder" posted this on the Operation Rescue website (which has been down throughout the day, probably more as a result of increased traffic than any sense of collective shame):

[May 19th, 2007 at 4:34 pm] Bleass everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp. Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn’t seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.

The Lawrence Journal-World and News relays that Kansas City station KMBC reported a post-it note with a phone number for Operation Rescue in his car at the time of his arrest.

He was a bombmaker, tax protester, member of the "sovereignity" movement, anti-abortion zealot and Operation Rescue member: the arrested suspect manages to fit every stereotype of right-wing militia teabagger.

Surprised?

National Right To Life Committee:

WASHINGTON – The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation's largest pro-life group, today condemned the killing of Dr. George Tiller.  The following statement may be attributed to NRLC Executive Director, David N. O'Steen, Ph.D.:
 
National Right to Life extends its sympathies to Dr. Tiller's family over this loss of life.
 
Further, the National Right to Life Committee unequivocally condemns any such acts of violence regardless of motivation.  The pro-life movement works to protect the right to life and increase respect for human life.  The unlawful use of violence is directly contrary to that goal.
 
The National Right to Life Committee has always been involved in peaceful, legal activities to protect human lives threatened by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.  We always have and will continue to oppose any form of violence to fight the violence of abortion.  NRLC has had a policy of forbidding violence or illegal activity by its staff, directors, officers, affiliated state organizations and chapters.  NRLC's sole purpose is to protect innocent human life.
 
NRLC will continue to work through educational and legislative activities to ensure the right to life for unborn children, people with disabilities and older people.  NRLC will continue to work for peaceful solutions to aid pregnant women and their unborn children. These solutions involve helping women and their children and do not involve violence against anyone.

Operation Rescue:

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, led protests against George Tiller's late-term abortion clinic in Wichita in 1991.

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue states, "George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

"Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

Ann Friedman:

Dr. George Tiller, an outspoken advocate for abortion rights and one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country, was shot dead in church this morning.
Cara Kulwicki writes at Feministe:

This is the first time an abortion provider has been murdered in over a decade. I have friends who work in abortion clinics. This is terrorism. And right now, I just don't have the words.

The loss of Dr. Tiller is deeply upsetting, and Cara rightly identifies this as a terrorist act. It is the culmination of an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services. I've been paying attention to the more militant strains of the anti-choice movement, so this news shouldn't have shocked me as much as it did. But, like Cara, I have friends who work and volunteer in abortion clinics. When violence against abortion providers was hitting a fever pitch 10 years ago, I was not strongly pro-choice identified. I remember reading about the murder of an abortion provider, but it certainly did not affect me the way this news has. Whether it's rational or not, today I'm afraid for everyone who works in a reproductive health clinic. And not only those who provide abortion.

I am also worried about what Tiller's murder means for women in Kansas and elsewhere in the country who need the services that he provided. The simple fact is there are almost no doctors who provide late-term abortions, especially in rural parts of the country. I was in Nebraska several years ago to interview Dr. Leroy Carhart (whose challenges to abortion-restricting laws went all the way to the Supreme Court), and Carhart and Tiller were the only two late-term providers in their region. If one wanted to go on vacation or got sick, the other had to fill in. There was no one else. Perhaps it would be a fitting memorial to Dr. Tiller to contribute to Medical Students for Choice, and encourage more doctors with a deep commitment to reproductive rights to become abortion providers.

Publius has some thoughts:

This violent act also bears quite directly on the whole "empathy" debate.  What's interesting about Obama's comments is that the empathy argument doubles as both a populist argument and a high-level theoretical assault on conservative jurisprudence. 

One tenet of both originalism and textualism is that consequences of constitutional interpretation should be irrelevant.  If you take both theories seriously, then you can't really allow consequences to affect your reasoning.  What matters — the only thing that matters — is what the text says, or what the text was originally understood to mean.  And for now, let's assume that conservatives take these theories seriously (rather than merely using them as window-dressing for political preferences).

The Kansas terrorism illustrates why it's important to look at the real world when interpreting the constitution.  For instance, there's a First Amendment dispute about whether and to what extent the government can limit abortion protests outside of clinics. 

The argument for aggressive protection (and thus a relaxing of First Amendment scrutiny) is that abortion protests have proven to be historically dangerous.  Doctors and staffers and patients face truly dangerous risks — risks that were tragically reaffirmed today.  The law should recognize these concrete dangers and not pretend like these protests come straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting of a townhall meeting.  It's fun to argue about free speech in the abstract — but we don't really have that luxury.

The real world matters.  It should be relevant.  It's somewhat amazing to have to argue this.  But that's where we are.