Post-Tiller, Pro-Life Movement Lives On

It would be easy to assume that the murder last Sunday of Dr. George Tiller in the sanctuary of his Kansas church would slow the momentum of the pro-life movement, even in the short term. After all, one man had killed another in the name of defending life.

But Scott Roeder, the man charged in Tiller's murder, was never one of them, said Jim Sedlak, vice president of the American Life Network, a grassroots, Catholic pro-life organization. "The mainstream, pro-life movement does not condone this in any way whatsoever."

Just as they did last year, members of ALL will stand in front of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country tomorrow to protest the use of contraception. Just like last year, and next, they'll be wearing green T-shirts and carrying signs that read, "The Pill Kills."

Sedlak joined other speakers at a Washington press conference Thursday to highlight the weekend, which marks the 44th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Griswold decision that established the right to "marital privacy" for a Connecticut couple that wanted to use contraception.

Speaking at the National Press Club, they argued that contraception kills women, ruins families and costs taxpayers billions of dollars in health care expenses. At no point did any speaker note that the use of contraception is also against the teachings of the Catholic Church.

"The pill adds to women's health risks and kills them slowly," said Dr. Lynn Kerr, an internist and clinical professor at UCSF/ Fresno, standing before a power point presentation that said the conditions oral contraception can cause or exacerbate in women include heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, hypertension and suicide. "It ages their vessels. It kills women slowly and it can also kill them dramatically."

Dr. Paul Carpentier took the podium next. "The use of contraception leads to treating sexual partners as objects, and life as a commodity," he said. The pill also leads to poverty, child abuse, divorce and more abortion, he said, "So efforts to reduce abortion cannot possibly involve contraception."

Carpentier described his specialty of NaProTechnology in his practice, which the press packet listed as "In His Image Family Medicine, PC," in Gardner, Mass. Instead of "flooding the human body with artificial hormones," he said he tells his patients, "God's gift of human sexuality includes a natural window of fertility."

Marie Hahnrberg, a researcher for ALL, spoke next. "Especially in this economy, we do not need millions of dollars worth of taxpayer dollars going to programs that only hurt women." Hahnrberg detailed the plans for Protest the Pill Day 2009: "Peaceful protests will be held outside of Planned Parenthood clinics at 10 a.m. on Saturday."

Of the half-dozen people in the audience at the group's press conference, most seemed to be pro-life advocates. "Doctor, can you also describe how the pill kills babies in the womb by preventing implantation?" asked a man dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. A woman who identified herself as a nurse asked, "Of all of the Title Ten funding, does even one dollar go to natural family planning?" Dr. Kerr said she knew of at least one case where it did.

"Understand how long I've been in this," Sedlak told me when I asked about how Tiller's murder would impact his work. "I also went through the 1990s, when we unfortunately had the individuals who took the law into their own hands." He said the Tiller murder is "abhorrent," but unrelated to the mainstream pro-life movement and no reason for his group to change course. "We have never had any violence at any of our protests," he said. "We do this all the time, and I don't see any change at all."