George Tiller, slain artisan of the late-term abortion (of the abortion performed at so late a stage in pregnancy that his Wichita, Kansas clinic became a national Mecca for mothers who could legally alleviate their last-minute distress almost nowhere else in the country), details the following decorum in a promotional video his clinic disseminated to female-health centers across the nation: “About two to three hours after you deliver and after the twilight anesthesia has worn off, so that you will remember the process, we will bring the baby to you…. You may hold the baby. We can take pictures of you and the family holding the baby, if you wish, and that is not an uncommon request.” He notes you may even “have a baptism, if you wish. You may have a baptismal certificate. We can take a lock of hair, if you wish. You may have fetal footprints.” While called “Fetal Indication Termination of Pregnancy Program,” the film’s awkward titling is the last factor to impede its marketability in Blockbuster or on Netflix; in fact, this comedy of errors is far too heady and confused even to be nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. This is because the line of thought, following the spirit of the law, avails itself of the following contortionism: While the Thing is a living non-human life inside the womb, the Baby is a non-living human life outside the womb, and a family may therefore commemorate its stillborn without remarking its filicide.
Then tell us about it!
To be sure, the parent of a deeply deformed fetus would have been more attracted to these rites than the parent of a purely inconvenient fetus. (The parent of a life-threatening fetus is a rare discovery at a time when an abortion would be retroactive if it were performed any later. Consequently, since the law in Kansas, as in most states, demands a medical justification for an abortion so post-mature, the mental-health excuse was among Tiller’s most common tricks). After all, while a concern for the baby’s physical health grants the illusion of a selfless motivation in light of a fated tragedy, an exclusive concern for the mother’s mental health – that is, her last-minute, temporary mental health – yields no such comfort. (Neither does her failure to release her burden in any of the months that it was an ungainly curlicue of translucent cells.) This latter case was by far the most common, since Tiller himself noted that the deformed and unhealthy amounted to under a quarter of his total erasures; and it is seen in the woman known as “Kelly,” who, on 12 December 2006, appeared on the O’Reilly Factor to recount Tiller’s abortion of the young but viable tot she almost gave tit at the age of fourteen. “What happened to the body?” O’Reilly asked her. “I have no idea,” she said — “I left my baby dead in a toilet.” Like many of these Kansas getaways, Kelly’s holiday was no occasion for souvenirs.
As is an epiphany to many, what the mothers discovered is that a seven-, eight-, or nine-month-old inside the womb looks and acts exactly as it does outside the womb.
Among the cold-footed mommies at Women’s Health Care Services, Kelly, who chose to leave her preemie in a bedpan, was of the normal stock. Yet she was not the only type that Tiller deigned to accommodate for a five-thousand-dollar check. Like the person who stoops to the toilet after a bowel movement in hopes of making a discovery, another kind of matriarch occasioned the clinic who would pull her carrion from its commode and braid its hair into a memento. Not that her presence really matters. No different from the decision to collect hair and footprints, the decision not to collect them is a response unique to the abortion of a being with ten fingers, ten toes, five senses, infantile thoughts and feelings, and a recognition of its mother’s voice.
This Thing is not at all what a mournful mother finds during the first trimester, when she pees at least a little lingonberry and at most a jarful of jam. It is indeed not at all what Tiller found during his decades-long career, for it is common knowledge that the kicking joey often jumps from the needle in fear and then riots in agony as the oxygen ebbs from his heart and brain. As is an epiphany to many, what the mothers discovered is that a seven-, eight-, or nine-month-old inside the womb looks and acts exactly as it does outside the womb. So, without recourse to ideological backgrounds, the following thought should cause no cosmic helter-skelter in the minds of the reasonable: that to know a man is to know his deeds, and that to know the deeds of George Tiller is to wind your way through any hospital’s trove of cradles—where what cries, suckles, stares, and coos is what George Tiller dumped into a furnace sixty-thousand times over.
