I had no idea until today that Dr. Tiller of the Women’s Clinic in Wichita, Kansas had been murdered. I always feel sick to the stomach when I hear about things of this nature, but this one is especially personal.

I was a patient of his. I arrived to the Women’s Clinic in February of 2000, terrified and broke. My friend Brian had decided to go with me, and our first night in Kansas we spent freezing in my car, unable to afford a hotel room. The next morning when we arrived, a hysterical woman ran up to Brian’s car in an ankle-length fur coat screaming “YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS!” Even at 7 am, there were several other protesters milling around across street, as they were legally not allowed on the premises. Brian had the sense to tell them to leave us alone, while I, caught off guard, just sat there.

I walked through a metal detector through a double set of privacy doors. A security guard checked me and Brian in- I thought it excessive at the time, but it obviously wasn’t excessive enough. Smack in the middle of Kansas, this clinic has been the recipient of vandalism, gunfire, and bombs. There was an orientation, some doctor visits, packets of information, numbers, and advice, etc. I got to meet several other girls and hear heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story. No one, not a single person there deserves any wrath of any kind. Several stories literally brought me to tears- a woman with a braindead baby growing in her womb, an autistic girl who had been raped, a homeless woman who had been abandoned by her husband, and another very young girl from South America whose stepfather had abused her.

I remember how kind he was. He walked up to our group and asked us what we thought the pro-life movement was about. He said his answer was CONTROL. Other people wanted to control our lives, men wanted to control our decisions, and religion wanted to control our laws.

He made several speeches that impacted me greatly, and honestly still stick with me to this day. Of these, the most hard-hitting was telling us that we had all made a sacrifice for freedom. “What are YOU going to do with this freedom?” he asked. He told us statistically, we were likely to end up back in the same spot if we didn’t understand our sacrifice. He even made a point of making us write out essays during our group sessions. He gave us strength and never once blamed us or made us feel we were terrible people. And we needed that, because no matter what pro-life people want to believe, making that choice is probably one of the hardest choices you’ll ever have to make. And it lends itself to a cycle of internal guilt and self-destruction because we come from a society that would rather point fingers than listen and educate.

I wonder how things turned out for the other women that went through. I hope they remained strong and I hope they learned to understand their sacrifice. I did, and I wonder if somehow Dr. Tiller did as well.