The culture of death is fueled by cultural elites, particularly journalists and Big Hollywood, who often celebrate those who take human life under circumstances of which they approve. Witness the ghoul Jack Kevorkian–who wrote in Prescription Medicide about wanting to conduct human experimentation on those he euthanized–but who lived to see himself portrayed in a hagiographical biopic starring Al Pacino, with Dr. Death invited on the Red Carpet and treated like an A-List celebrity. Assisted suicide promotion documentaries are also frequent award winners, particularly if they show someone actually dying.
And now, a documentary on third trimester abortionists in America called After Tiller (for the murdered late-term abortion doctor) would seem to follow in that pattern. But life isn’t rosy for late-term fetus killers. Apparently, the doctors whine that they are not liked. From the Agence France-Presse story:
Aside from death threats, such doctors face “institutional barriers,” Dr. Susan Robinson, a former colleague of Tiller who still performs such procedures, told AFP following a screening of the documentary at Sundance, the annual independent film festival held in the western US state of Utah. “If you do abortions, it is very hard to get the privilege to work in a hospital, because they don’t like abortion providers. They are almost all done in outpatient clinics, free-standing clinics, in this country,” she says. “Being an abortion provider is very stigmatized. Other doctors look down on you and think of you as like the lowest of the low.”
There’s a reason for that. These doctors kill viable fetuses, many of whom could live if they were delivered instead of aborted.
And talk about terminal nonjudmentalism:
Robinson says she relies on the judgment of the women themselves. “If a woman comes to me, particularly if she struggles to get there, she’s come from Canada or California, Louisiana or France, because she feels so strongly that she needs an abortion,” she said. “This woman has struggled with this decision, herself. She’s not coming because she saw the clinic while she was on her way to the grocery store. “Underlying all of what I do is the belief that women are capable of having ethical struggles, working on ethical questions and arriving at the best decisions for themselves.”
Co-director Lana Wilson insists that Robinson “is a doctor. She’s not there to be a moral arbiter.”
Sorry. Not buying. Providing death-on-demand that kills viable babies is a morally consequential choice.
No one should receive death threats, of course, and as I wrote here in the wake of the Tiller killing, his murder was an odious act of vigilantism that could never be justified.
But as for the other matters: Cry me a river. These doctors deserve to be shunned. If they can’t stand the disdain, they should find something better to do with their medical talents.