Readings...

From a recent NYT article chronicling the life of George R. Tiller M.D. - who used to specialize in late term abortions. On May 31, 2009, Tiller was shot - execution style in the head - and killed by an anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder...

Tiller’s clinic Web site boasted that he had more experience with late-term abortions “than anyone else currently practicing in the Western Hemisphere.” Since 1998, interviews and state statistics show, his clinic performed about 4,800 late-term abortions, at least 22 weeks into gestation, around the earliest point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. At 22 weeks, the average fetus is 11 inches long, weighs a pound and is starting to respond to noise. About 2,000 of these abortions involved fetuses that could not have survived outside the womb, either because they had catastrophic genetic defects or they were simply too small. But the other 2,800 abortions involved viable fetuses. Some had serious but survivable abnormalities, like Down syndrome. Many were perfectly healthy.