Dozens of anti-abortion groups of varying sizes and philosophies were out to
shut down his clinic, Women's Health Care Services. While their tactics
constantly changed, they shared the same basic goal. "We wanted it to get to
the point where it was no longer feasible to stay open," Mr. Gietzen of the
Coalition for Life said.

Every vendor who showed up at the clinic was warned that if they continued
to do business with Dr. Tiller they would be boycotted. Those who ignored
the threat were listed on anti-abortion Web sites. "We had nobody in town
that would deliver pizza," said an employee, Linda Joslin.

Protesters confronted his employees, demanding that they quit. If they
refused, activists passed out fliers in their neighborhood accusing them of
working for a baby killer.

Patients would encounter a gantlet of protest.

They would see a "Truth Truck," its side panels displaying large color
photographs of dismembered fetuses. Over the clinic gate, strung between two
poles, they might see a banner, "Please Do Not Kill Your Baby." Planted in
the grass by the sidewalk were 167 white crosses, representing the average
number of abortions that protesters said were performed there each month.

Protesters approached patients' cars, offering them baby blankets and urging
them to visit an anti-abortion pregnancy clinic they had set up next door.
Sometimes they followed patients to their hotels and slipped pamphlets under
their doors. A few years ago anti-abortion campaigners spent weeks in a
hotel room with a view of the Tiller clinic entrance. Using a powerful
telephoto lens, they took photographs of patients, which were posted on a
Web site with their faces blurred.

Much of this activity was methodically tracked by Mr. Gietzen, who said he
presides over a network of 600 volunteers, some of whom drove hundreds of
miles for a protest "shift." Protesters counted cars entering the clinic
gate, and they tracked "saves" -- patients who changed their minds.
According to Mr. Gietzen's data, over the last five years they had 395
"saves" for an "overall save rate" of 3.77 percent.

They also kept detailed "incident reports" of unusual activity. It was a
bonanza if an ambulance was summoned; photographs were quickly posted as
evidence of another "botched" abortion.

There seemed an endless supply of fresh accusations.

"Wichita shoppers unknowingly sprinkled with the burnt ash of fetal
remains," declared one news release, referring to the clinic's crematorium.

"If I can't document it, I don't say it," Mr. Newman of Operation Rescue
said, moments before suggesting without any proof that Dr. Tiller had bought
off the local district attorney, Nola T. Foulston, by giving her a baby for
adoption. He referred a reporter to a Web site that vaguely asserted that
Dr. Tiller "may have delivered the ultimate bribe to Nola Foulston." A
spokeswoman for Ms. Foulston declined to discuss the accusation.

Anti-abortion activists routinely portrayed Dr. Tiller's campaign
contributions as "blood money" that co-opted politicians.
"He owned the
attorney general's office," Mr. Newman said. "He owned the governor's
office. He owned the district attorney's office."

They relished each confrontation, both for public relations value and for
the legal costs inevitably incurred by Dr. Tiller. He spent years, for
example, fighting a legal battle to stop them from planting the crosses, and
just about every inch of land outside his clinic was subject to litigation
or negotiation.

"We know what you can do on the blacktop," Mr. Gietzen said.
"We know what
you can do on the driveway. We know what you can do on the sidewalk."

In April 2006, though, a volunteer spotted an opportunity for confrontation
in one small strip of pavement that he thought had been overlooked: the
gutter running between the street and the clinic driveway. The volunteer
knelt in the gutter to pray, placing himself in the path of vehicles
entering the clinic.

According to the "incident report," a clinic nurse pulled up and
"laid on
her horn repeatedly." When the volunteer "acted as if he did not know that
she was there," the report continued, a clinic guard told him that he was
reporting him to the police.

The next day, Mr. Gietzen was standing in the gutter with his volunteer
discussing the new tactic when Dr. Tiller pulled up in his armored S.U.V. In
another "incident report," Mr. Gietzen wrote: "Tiller floored his
accelerator, and aimed his Jeep directly at us!"

Mr. Gietzen claimed that Dr. Tiller's vehicle hit him, causing bruising. He
promptly filed a police report, generating more news coverage. He then wrote
to Dr. Tiller demanding a $4,000 settlement. When that went nowhere, he
sued. He also demanded that Ms. Foulston prosecute Dr. Tiller for attempted
murder.

And when she refused, this became more proof of the public
"corruption" they
traced to Dr. Tiller.

Developing a Sense of Mission

Jacki G., 29, went to Dr. Tiller for an abortion in 1996 after she was
raped. She can still remember her trepidation when she and her mother pulled
up to the clinic a few weeks into her pregnancy.

In middle school in Wichita, she said, children chanted "Tiller, Tiller, the
baby killer." She recalled the gory Truth Trucks driving around town and the
1991 "Summer of Mercy" protests, when hundreds were arrested for blockading
Dr. Tiller's clinic.

"It makes an impression," she said.

Not only did she fear the protesters, she also worried about whether Dr.
Tiller would be gruff and cold, "only in it for the money," as his critics
alleged. It was almost a shock, she said, to instead meet a slightly nerdy
doctor who gently explained every step and kept asking, "Are you doing
O.K.?"

Employees said Dr. Tiller did not have moral qualms about his work, in part
because he defined it as saving women's lives and giving them freedom to
determine their futures.

"We have made higher education possible," he said in a speech.
"We have
helped correct some of the results of rape and incest. We have helped
battered women escape to a safer life. We have made recovery from chemical
dependency possible. We have helped women and families struggle to save
their unwell, unborn child a lifetime of pain."

Dr. Tiller recruited a staff that shared his outlook. Mostly women, several
used the same word to describe the clinic: "sisterhood."

They worked under intense pressure, caring for women in distress while
constantly confronting protesters eager to pounce on their every mistake.
Abortion protesters sent pregnant women into the clinic "under cover,"
hoping to catch the staff violating Kansas abortion regulations. One
employee, Ms. Joslin, 68, pulled out an anonymous letter she received a week
before Dr. Tiller's death. "Somebody should kill you, so you can't kill
anymore," it said.

As Wichita's three other abortion clinics closed under the pressure of
protesters, Dr. Tiller cultivated a sense of mission. Throughout the clinic
he hung hundreds of framed thank-you letters from patients. He posted a list
of "Tillerisms" -- his favorite axioms, including, "The only
requirement for
evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing."

He also paid well and gave bonuses to mark legal victories. In 2001, after
heavy protests, he held a party and gave each employee a dozen roses, a
medal engraved with the torch of liberty, a T-shirt depicting Rosie the
Riveter and the words, "We can do it Team Tiller," and an
American flag that
had flown over the clinic.

His defiance was as relentless as the protests. When his clinic was bombed,
he put up a sign that said "Hell, no. We won't go!" In a fit of anger, he
once told an anti-abortion leader, "Too bad your mother's abortion failed."
Employees and protesters alike said he even drove into his clinic "with
attitude," accelerating slightly as if to emphasize that protesters had no
right to block his gate. And when he drove by Mr. Gietzen, he sometimes
smiled and lifted an editorial cartoon depicting Mr. Gietzen as a lunatic.

In 2001, protesters began appearing at Dr. Tiller's church with Truth Trucks
and a demand that the church ex-communicate the Tiller family.

"They were abusively shouting at people not to take their children into the
church because there was a murderer there," recalled the Rev. Sally C.
Fahrenthold, then the interim pastor at the church, Reformation Lutheran.

For at least two years, protesters showed up each Sunday, sometimes
disrupting services from the pews. Protesters obtained a copy of the
membership address book and sent all members postcards showing aborted
fetuses.

Years earlier, friends said, the Tillers had been asked to leave another
church because of his abortion practice. Reformation Lutheran made no such
request. The Tillers were mainstays in the church. Jeanne Tiller sings in
the choir, and her husband was a regular in Bible study. Still, the Tillers
were saddened by the protests, Pastor Fahrenthold said, and a couple of
families left the church.

Eventually the Sunday protests petered out, although every so often
protesters returned. Last fall, when the church was recruiting a new pastor,
it listed abortion as one of the main challenges facing the membership.
"Everybody there was not on the same page on this issue," the new pastor,
Lowell Michelson, said in an interview.

Pastor Michelson said he and Dr. Tiller sometimes spoke about abortion.
This, he said, is how he learned of adoptions Dr. Tiller sometimes arranged
for his patients, in some cases even having women live with his family until
after childbirth. "He was giving women in the most desperate of situations
options when they had none," he said.

One lingering question in the church, though, was whether to improve
security, and there was talk about buying a camera for the church entrance.
Dr. Tiller did not perceive any significant threat. He did not, at least in
recent years, take his guards to church.

"The church was the one place he felt safe," Ms. Joslin said.


Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Download Center 4 Mac BBS Software & Christian Files.  We Use Hermes II


--- Hermes Web Tosser 1.1