Columnist Katha Pollitt (Nation, 6/10/09) has examined the extent to which, "in the immediate aftermath of Dr. Tiller's murder, it was astonishing how many men were called upon to weigh in on abortion on national television":

CNN featured William Schneider, Sanjay Gupta and Bill Press. On Fox, Bill O'Reilly defended his use of "baby killer" and "death mill" to describe Dr. Tiller and his clinic. On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann--who the last time I checked in spent a whole segment making fun of Miss Anti-Gay Marriage California's breast implants with waspish misogynist Michael Musto--had only men: Slate's Will Saletan, who thinks we can "end" abortion by stigmatizing women with unwanted pregnancies, because right now everyone is just too kind....

In the more than three decades since Roe v. Wade, "the fetus" gradually became the star of the abortion drama, and the voices of women who had abortions, aka "the woman," leached out of the public discussion. How many embryos can dance on the head of a pin--now that's interesting! Off-the-cuff judgments about how late is too late and what kinds of health problems count as serious--everyone's a doctor!

Noticing that "the murder of Dr. Tiller has gotten more women telling their stories," Pollitt calls that "a crucial, good thing"--but "not so that panels of pundits can approve or disapprove but so that society can hear, firsthand, what girls and women go through." Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Fred Clarkson on Tiller Murder" (6/5/09).

There's almost too much to say about this recent column Joe Klein wrote in Time magazine. But let's start by parsing this:

In the good old days of the last century, the years before the collapse of the economy and the World Trade Center towers, political discourse in the U.S. was, too often, rutted in issues that didn't affect the lives of most people. They were important moral and symbolic issues, to be sure. And they were difficult issues, although their subtleties were obscured by extremists, who tended to dominate the debate. Still, the people directly affected by the so-called social issues--abortion, gay marriage, racial preferences--pale in comparison with the tens of millions who have lost their jobs and fortunes in the past year and with the global, life-and-death impact of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Didn't affect the lives of most people"? The people who are "directly affected" by abortion, gay marriage and "racial preferences" are women (roughly half of whom experience an unintended pregnancy at least once in their life), people of color and gay people--i.e., just about everyone except straight white males like Klein.

(I'm still trying to figure out what an "extremist" pro-gay position on gay marriage would be. Is that the one where gay rights advocates "want to change the way *I* live"?)

Then Klein writes this:

Late-term abortions--no more than a few percent of the total performed in the U.S.--were Tiller's specialty. These are usually hard cases, sometimes the result of rape or incest or the discovery of severe birth defects. But they are, without question, the taking of a life. At the same time, the pro-life community should concede that sex education and the widespread availability of morning-after pills and condoms are necessary if we're going to prevent these tragedies.

First of all, abortions performed after 19 weeks actually account for only 1.1 percent of all abortions. Viability usually starts around 24 weeks, so what are usually termed "late-term" abortions surely account for well under 1 percent. More importantly, that they are "without question, the taking of a life" is just kinder, gentler baby-killer language. And how are "sex education and the widespread availability of morning-after pills and condoms" going to prevent "the discovery of severe birth defects"?

Finally, Klein launches into an attack on affirmative action:

The Sotomayor debate has been polluted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who claim, ridiculously, that the judge is a racist. That sort of rant is so-o-o 20th century. Beneath the pollution, however, is a serious policy question that needs to be resolved: With an African-American president and a polychromatic society moving toward racial (if not economic) equity, why do we still need preferences enshrined in law?

Klein's assertion that we're "moving toward racial...equity" is a little hard to figure; the fact that a biracial man was elected president doesn't change the reality for people of color that racial disparities in the United States are still very much with us.

Klein went on to say that Judge Sonia Sotomayor crossed a line

when she agreed in 2008 to toss the results of a promotion exam for the New Haven, Conn., fire department because an insufficient number of minorities passed it. That seems inherently unfair to those who succeeded--including the dyslexic firefighter Frank Ricci, who hired tutors to help him pass and whose name adorns the case. The lack of minority success does not necessarily signify the presence of racial prejudice. The best way to rectify such a situation is to make sure the next test is truer. An appropriate 21st century standard should be proof of actual discrimination against specific individuals.

What, exactly, does he mean by "make sure the next test is truer"? If the test was flawed, the logical thing to do would be to throw out the results. But then, logic doesn't seem to be Klein's strong suit.

In Tuesday's New York Times online edition, the paper's neo-neo-con columnist Ross Douthat laid out a sprawling argument that seemed to conclude that pro-choice activists and the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling were responsible for violence against women's healthcare providers, including the murder of Dr. George Tiller last week.

"If anything, by enshrining a near-absolute right to abortion in the Constitution, the pro-choice side has ensured that the hard cases are more controversial than they otherwise would be," wrote Douthat, who argued that

One reason there's so much fierce argument about the latest of late-term abortions--Should there be a health exemption? A fetal deformity exemption? How broad should those exemptions be? --is that Americans aren't permitted to debate anything else.

Douthat elaborated on what seemed to be a plan for conciliation: "If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically," because "arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester--as many advanced democracies already do--would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions."

It is true that if you take away constitutional protections, people opposed to those protections will be happier. For instance, those rightists who called for jailing reporters who reported secret aspects of the Bush White House's warrantless wiretapping and black sites programs would probably be happier if the First Amendment were suspended to make such jailing possible. But what about the Constitution? And what about those who lost their protections? One begins to sense that Douthat's plan for reconciliation would only make one side happier.

It's also worth noting that, as much as Douthat may think they are all powerful,  pro-choice advocates are incapable of making concessions regarding the Constitution. Roe was "enshrined " by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will also be in charge of future decisions regarding its disposition.

But just when you thought Douthat's plan might be somewhat was lopsided, he explains how there really is something in it for the pro-choice people:

The result would be laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases--and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller’s murder.

As Village Voice blogger Roy Edroso summed up the Times columnist's reconciliation plan, “So, see, Douthat gets the end of abortion on demand, and you heathens get killed less often by right-wing nuts; he's meeting you halfway.”

Megan, a blogger at Jezebel.com, put it slightly differently: “To sum up: If we just roll over, accept the end of abortion access and let them teach us about respect for human life, they won't kill any more abortion providers. Good to know whose hands Douthat thinks Tiller's blood is really on.”

Writing at Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) on the murder of "Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife," Gabriel Winant wants us to know that

there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on the Factor on February 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

Winant provides some choice quotes amply demonstrating how the Fox star has never been one to let any politically correct fear of hypocrisy stand in the way his righteous bombast: "He's guilty of 'Nazi stuff,' said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005" and "'This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union,' said O'Reilly on November 9, 2006."

For another example of corporate media promotion of attacks on abortion providers, see Extra! Update: Koppel's 'Tough Question': Should Doctors Be Killed (2/94).

Attempting to add appropriate context to mainstream reportage of Sunday's murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller, the Media Justice Fund blog has reprinted (6/1/09) an October 8, 2006, Women In Media & News post by Jennifer Pozner titled "The Terrorists Who Aren't in the News: Anti-Abortion Fanatics Spread Fear by Bombings, Murders and Assaults, but the Media Take Little Notice." In it, Pozner recounts how, "on September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire." Yet

no national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) was silent about this latest act of terrorism in America.

Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women's Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism--even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they're fighting a holy war.

Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation.

Abortion providers and activists received 77 letters threatening anthrax attacks before 9/11, yet the media never considered anthrax threats as terrorism until after 9/11, when such letters were delivered to journalists’ offices and members of Congress.

Rueing the fact that "every fresh incident of anti-abortion terrorism is a reminder that women’s health supporters are not safe," Pozner asks if we think of each anti-choice attacker as "a lone nutcase, or a member of that network of violent extremists?" Alas, "we don’t know, because journalists haven’t investigated. Nor," Pozner adds, "have they reported that just [in 2005], nearly one in five abortion clinics experienced gunfire, arson, bombings, chemical attacks, assaults, stalking, death threats and blockades." Her conclusion: "As we continue national debates on how to keep America safe from terrorism, journalists do us--and especially women--no good pretending that the threats come only from radical Muslims outside our borders."