US : L'assassinat du Dr. Tiller provoque de vives réactions

[ErickMontreal]

Publié le 01 juin 2009 à 20h52 | Mis à jour le 01 juin 2009 à 21h00

L'assassinat du Dr. Tiller provoque de vives réactions

 

Nicolas Bérubé

La Presse

 

(Los Angeles) L'assassinat d'un médecin pratiquant des avortements tardifs dans une clinique du Kansas, dimanche, a déclenché les passions aux Etats-Unis. Lundi, les témoignages de sympathie ont été émis à travers le pays.

 

Le président Obama a vivement condamné le crime haineux. «Je suis choqué et dégoûté par le meurtre du Dr. George Tiller, survenu alors qu'il était à l'église dimanche matin. Peu importe les différences au sujet de l'avortement, on ne peut rien résoudre en ayant recours à des actes de violence.»

 

Les groupes anti-avortement ont dénoncé le meurtre, mais ont appelé du même souffle les militants pro-vie à ne pas cesser de dénoncer les médecins qui pratiquent les avortements.

 

Le fondateur du groupe Operation Rescue, Randall Terry, a dit que le tueur avait commis un «acte lâche et déplorable». Il a ajouté que le Dr. Tiller était «un meurtrier en série qui a récolté ce qu'il a semé».

 

Le Dr. Tiller distribuait des feuillets paroissiaux dans le hall de son église dimanche matin quand un homme a fait irruption et lui a tiré une balle dans la tête, avant de prendre la fuite.

 

Peu après, la police a arrêté Scott Roeder, 51 ans, qui sera accusé du meurtre de George Tiller. Roeder avait une attitude «oeil pour oeil, dent pour dent» envers les médecins qui pratiquent des avortements. Son frère a affirmé que le suspect avait de «profondes opinions anti-avortement et anti-gouvernement», et qu'il avait souffert de diverses maladies mentales dans sa vie.

 

Le docteur George Tiller était l'une des cibles favorites des militants pro-vie, qui se réunissait quotidiennement devant sa clinique, au centre-ville de Wichita, Kansas. En 1993, il a été atteints par balles dans les deux bras devant sa clinique.

 

Menaces de Fox News

 

Le Dr. Tiller, 67 ans, était propriétaire de l'une des trois cliniques aux Etats-Unis qui pratiquent des avortements sur des patientes enceintes de 20 semaines ou plus. Il se spécialisait dans l'interruption de la grossesse des femmes enceintes d'un bébé affreusement déformé, ou ayant des incapacités cérébrales majeures.

 

Le travail du Dr. Tiller a été dénoncé fréquemment sur le réseau conservateur Fox News, où l'animateur et commentateur Bill O'Reilly avait lancé une véritable croisade contre lui, le traitant de «nazi» et de «tueur de bébés» sur les ondes.

 

En 2005, M. O'Reilly a dit quiconque ne travaillait pas activement à stopper le Dr. Tiller «avait du sang sur les mains».

 

La clinique du Dr. Tiller était gardée 24 heures par jour par une auto patrouille. Des gardes armés se tenaient à l'entrée, et chaque visiteur devait franchir un détecteur de métal. Au fil des ans, plusieurs patients ont rapporté s'être fait harceler violemment par des militants pro-vie devant le terrain de la clinique.

 

Le procureur en chef des Etats-Unis, Eric Holder, a donné le mandat aux policiers fédéraux d'augmenter la sécurité de certaines cliniques d'avortement, et des médecins qui y travaillent.

 

Lundi, un médecin du Nebraska qui pratiquait quelques jours par semaine à la clinique du Dr. Tiller a dit avoir l'intention de poursuivre le travail de son collègue. La clinique devrait rouvrir ses portes lundi prochain, a-t-il assuré.

________________

 

Il y a encore beaucoup trop de fondamentalistes aux US et au Canada anglais, voila ce qui arrive avec ce type de personne.

[OursNoir]

Des gens pro-vie qui tue quelqu'un pour leur cause... C'est pas un peu ridicule?

[peluche]

Des intégristes chrétiens.

[Malek]

De passage au New Jersey, on voyait pleins de gens qui manifestaient vivement avec des croix et des messages assez intéressants... on a trouvé ça assez spécial merci. Pas habitué à ça ici

[Habsfan]

Religion is the root of all evil!

[etienne]

C'est dure d'approcher ce sujet... Personnellement je suis pro-choix. Je pense qu'un enfant qui nait dans une famille qui l'attendait est pas mal mieux servit que s'il arrive comme une surprise inattendue et souvent dans un milieu sans ressource ou on peine à pouvoir l'entretenir.

 

J'ai déja eut ce débat avec un américain qui se déclarait lui-même républicain modéré et ça l'a vite tourné au drame émotif. Lui et sa femme venaient de familles où ils avaient été adoptés. Donc, évidemment, sans l'adoption ils seraient pas là. Mais de là à assassiner les docteurs... Ça va ?

 

J'ai l'impression que la religion a gros à se reprocher, ce sont les églises qui ont exploiter ce filon depuis dix ans. et parler de "baby killers" ça fait aussi monter les côtes d'écoutes de FOX news.

 

Peut-être qu'ils vont maintenant se calmer le ponpon.

[etienne]

June 2, 2009

Seeking Clues on Suspect in Shooting of Doctor

By SUSAN SAULNY and MONICA DAVEY

 

Scott Roeder will be convicted with the death of Dr. Tiller

 

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — From the one-story house she once shared in this Kansas City suburb with her former husband, now suspected in the death of a doctor who performed late-term abortions, Lindsey Roeder recalled on Monday how he seemed to undergo a drastic personality shift more than a decade ago.

 

“The man I married disappeared into this other person,” Ms. Roeder, shaken and puffy eyed, said of Scott Roeder, who was being held in a Wichita jail in the death of Dr. George R. Tiller, who was fatally shot at his Wichita church on Sunday. The authorities said charges were expected soon against Mr. Roeder.

 

“He wanted a scapegoat,” Ms. Roeder said. “First it was taxes — he stopped paying. Then he turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion.”

 

But Mr. Roeder, 51, had not been among the people considered most worrisome to some abortion rights groups, some of which keep a close eye on anti-abortion groups and their Web sites to monitor what they consider threats, leaders here said. “Nobody recognizes his name,” said Marla Patrick, a state coordinator for the National Organization for Women in Kansas.

 

One frequent demonstrator, Eugene Frye, 64, said Mr. Roeder told him at a protest about two weeks ago outside a clinic in Kansas City, Kan., that he had attended the trial this year in which Dr. Tiller was acquitted of violating state abortion laws.

 

Mr. Roeder called the trial “a sham,” Mr. Frye said. “He felt the system had bitterly let down justice and let Tiller go free.”

 

A worker at the Kansas City clinic said that Mr. Roeder was suspected of gluing the clinic’s locks years ago and that he had been seen trying to do the same thing before dawn on Saturday, the day before Dr. Tiller’s death.

 

The worker, who would not give his name out of concern for his safety, said he called the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Saturday’s incident and about a similar incident involving Mr. Roeder a week earlier.

 

Law enforcement officials here and in Wichita, a conservative town that has been a focal point of tense abortion debate in large part because of Dr. Tiller’s clinic, gave little sense of whether they had previously viewed Mr. Roeder as a concern. After he was taken into custody, they indicated that they were only beginning to delve into his past and his associations.

 

Still, as Mr. Roeder’s relatives and others who had come into contact with him over the years began looking backward, they said they now saw some signs that might have hinted at more serious trouble ahead. For more than 10 years, Mr. Roeder had been linked, at various times and in varying degrees, to the Freemen, a group that rejected federal authority and the banking system, and to people who believe that the killing of abortion providers was justified by the abortions it prevented.

 

In 2007, someone identifying himself as Scott Roeder posted a message on the Web site of Operation Rescue, a group based in Wichita that had devoted much of its effort to blocking Dr. Tiller from performing late-term abortions. The posting read, in part: “Tiller is the concentration camp ‘Mengele’ of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation.”

 

The leader of Operation Rescue, who denounced the shooting of Dr. Tiller, said he had never met Mr. Roeder, who was not a contributor, volunteer or regular member. And the head of the Kansas Coalition for Life, whose volunteers spent hours outside Dr. Tiller’s clinic each week trying to sway patients from abortions, said he had never met Mr. Roeder, though he recalled receiving three phone calls out of the blue from him last August.

 

Years earlier, Mr. Roeder belonged to a Kansas group known as the Patriot Movement, a citizens’ militia which, according to a fellow member, Morris Wilson, 70, aimed to “kick Uncle Sam in the shins” by bucking rules like mounting license plates on cars. “He didn’t like taxation and overregulation,” Mr. Wilson recalled, adding that Mr. Roeder had outspoken views against abortion.

 

“He was trying to get people aware of what was going on, and put these guys out of business,” he said. “But I never seen a temper.”

 

Mr. Roeder also encountered Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines whose publication, Prayer and Action News, had received articles from Mr. Roeder. Mr. Leach said Mr. Roeder had presented strong anti-government views (he believed the government tracked money, Mr. Leach recalled, and offered his own method to “remove the magnetic strip from a five-dollar bill”) and views similar to Mr. Leach’s own on abortion. “To call this a crime is too simplistic,” Mr. Leach said of Dr. Tiller’s death.

 

As admirers of Dr. Tiller mourned his death on Monday, his clinic, in a beige, squat building in Wichita, was closed. Clusters of flowers had been left on a wall outside, and the police monitored the facility. The future of the center, one of about three in the country to provide abortions to women late in their second trimesters and into their third trimesters of pregnancy, appeared uncertain.

 

Some representatives of Dr. Tiller said they did not know if the clinic would reopen, given the skills required and the safety issues now clear. But a Nebraska doctor who had worked with Dr. Tiller at his clinic told a local newspaper that the place would reopen for patients on Monday — a notion anti-abortion forces said they were preparing for with the usual protesters.

 

At some other clinics around the country, federal authorities ordered increased security from the United States Marshals Service, which had provided protection for Dr. Tiller in 1991, 1994 and 2001. “In each instance the protective details ended once a decision had been made that the threat had been mitigated or was no longer present,” a spokesman for the Marshals Service said.

 

Dr. Tiller, who had previously been shot in both arms and had seen the clinic bombed and vandalized, was known for taking security precautions, his friends said Monday. At times, he wore a bulletproof vest and traveled with a burly, private guard. As recently as May, Dr. Tiller reported to the F.B.I. that wires to surveillance cameras had been cut at the clinic and that a hole had been sliced in the roof. The F.B.I. said Monday that the case was unsolved.

 

But Dr. Tiller had never been cowed by threats, said Lee Thompson, a lawyer who represented him. He always wore a pin that read, “Attitude Is Everything,” Mr. Thompson said.

 

In Overland Park, Ms. Roeder, a teacher, said Mr. Roeder had seemed ambivalent on matters of abortion, politics and religion when they first met and married in 1986. He had worked a steady manufacturing job at an envelope company, she said, until he seemed unable to pay the bills.

 

David Roeder, Mr. Roeder’s brother, issued a statement on behalf of the family expressing shock and sadness over Dr. Tiller’s death, and suggesting that Mr. Roeder had “suffered from mental illness at various times in his life.”

 

In 1996, the Roeders divorced, and Mr. Roeder worked odd jobs, moving from place to place and living most recently in Kansas City, Mo.

 

In April 1996, the police stopped Mr. Roeder near Topeka for a traffic violation. Inside the car, they found a pound of gunpowder and a homemade fuse, according to published reports. Mr. Roeder was found guilty of charges including one connected to the explosives and served jail time, though an appeals court later dismissed the explosives charges after Mr. Roeder’s lawyers argued that the search of his car had been improper.

 

At his sentencing in the case, The Topeka Capital-Journal noted, Judge James Buchele of Shawnee County District Court said Mr. Roeder presented a “threat of danger to the public.”

 

Mr. Roeder’s 22-year-old son has been tormented, his mother said, by all that has occurred. “He keeps asking,” she said, “ ‘Could I have seen something, stopped something?”

 

Susan Saulny reported from Overland Park, and Monica Davey from Chicago. Contributing reporting were Karen Ann Cullotta from Chicago; Neil A. Lewis from Washington; Eric Palmer from Kansas City, Mo.; Bud Norman and Joe Stumpe from Wichita, Kan.; and Mike Rice from Merriam, Kan.

[Malek]

C'est difficile de discuter avec quelqu'un pro-vie, je suis pro-choix moi-même.

 

J'ai un très bon ami qui est pro-vie, et on a eue une bonne discussion, je crois l'avoir convaincu de changer d'idée pour un cas précis (genre ton bébé est handicappé, etc)... sinon c'est très idéologique et les convictions religieuses sont difficiles à approcher.

[MTLskyline]

Personally, I am pro-life. IMO, killing a perfectly healthy fetus (not caused by rape or incest) is wrong. I believe that people should be responsible for their actions.

 

That said, I don't think it is the government's business (or anyone else's) if people get abortions or not. It shouldn't be made a crime to give or receive an abortion (as long as its done by a MD in a safe, clean environment). In other words, I support people's right to choose.

 

As for this case, the suspect should perhaps be given the death penalty for murder if he is proven guilty. Of course, in the states a murder isn't given a slap on the wrist.

[Habsfan]

Bill O'reily(animateur à Fox News) has his fair share of responsibility in this murder. I wonder what wil happen to him?