Kansas judge will allow "necessity defense" in Dr. Tiller's murder

Here's your WTF of the day: the judge presiding over the murder trial of domestic terrorist Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. George Tiller execution-style in his church on a Sunday morning as services began, will allow the defendant to proceed with the necessity defense. That is, Roeder will be allowed to present his case in a way that will allow the jury to consider convicting him of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder.

Kansas defines voluntary manslaughter as "the intentional killing of a human being committed [ ... ] upon an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force." Kan. Stat. Ann. § 21-3403 (2008). The defendant here wants to justify his use of deadly force to save unborn children.

"Unborn children"? Dr. Tiller's clinic served women whose pregnancies had gone horribly, horribly wrong and who desperately needed late-term care. He saved the lives of mothers whose pregnancies were life-threatening. He terminated pregnancies where a fetus was so tragically malformed or damaged that any post-birth "life" would be meaningless, or where a normal delivery would likely kill the mother. Examples include hydrocephaly, which generally can't be diagnosed until the second trimester, or irreparable spina bifida.

(You know who else gets late-term abortions? Women who have been forced to jump through hoops that delay their seeking care -- whether from anti-choice legislation or a shortage of physicians since the vast majority of medical schools don't teach abortion procedures. When you make it harder for women to get abortions, they still get them; they just get them later, and with more risk. In a 1987 study, nearly half of the respondents who had a late-term abortion explained that the delay was caused by legal and logistical roadblocks. 20 Family Planning Perspectives 169-176 (Jul/Aug 1988).)

As for the facts of Dr. Tiller's murder, you know that photo by Eddie Adams, of Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong officer in 1968? That's pretty much how Roeder murdered Dr. Tiller. Only Dr. Tiller hadn't been handcuffed in a street after taking out a couple of American soldiers during a war; rather, Dr. Tiller was standing in the foyer of his church after having performed his ushering duties before the day's service.

Roeder's execution-style murder of Dr. Tiller, in front of Dr. Tiller's fellow parishioners and in view of the congregation (including born children), did not do and will not do anything to save "unborn children." Instead, his actions will put at risk of death, injury, or permanent infertility the couple of thousand women every year who will continue to need late-term abortions in America.