George Tiller

All of us are pro-life, even suicides, even killers. We celebrate life in ways large and small simply by living.

Some take joy in love; others in hate; still others may never experience the full intensity of either. Life is something we do in one way or another.

And we use words, and glances, and gestures, and touches, to signal to others that we live--and that, no matter what, we cannot live without those others. At least, we cannot live well without those others.

The suicide wants to leave life behind by an act of supreme violence, but in that very act affirms life, makes us see for a moment what he or she has left behind. At the same time we resent the suicide for abandoning the life that the rest of us live. Condemned to live, the suicide might reply. No, it's not like that for most of us. We just live.

The killer wants to live without you. There are too many reasons. Like the suicide, the killer affirms life in the very act of taking it. Once again we become aware, we give our attention not to the killer but to what the killer has stolen.

The killer and the suicide are twins.

In our number there are those who make the very act of life a thing. How does one do that?

First steal the word, deny it to others. If you are "pro-life" then others are not.

Then attack those others with words. Contrive persons where none have come into being, reject the persons who are present. Call us killers for making difficult, sometimes agonizing choices. Call us killers when we support those who make the choices in anguish.

Post pictures of flesh and of blood, because you cannot accept the reality of flesh and blood, those lives not your own, those lives out of range that you rage to control.

Those women and the doctors and nurses and technicians who come to their aid are murderers, you say. A deep crazy anger wells up in you: you call it love. In the core of your movement you nurture a worm of hatred. Until it is ready to be born.

The ticking devices and the intricate metal weapons are your children. You gave them life. And now they speak in your name.