Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio

The shocking assassination of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller on May 31 has brought back the volatile issue of abortion on to the national landscape.

Of course, it’s never gone away. But the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama to the Supreme Court — and her relatively scant record on abortion issues — has elicited analysis that, perhaps unlike every previous Supreme Court nomination over the past few decades, her nomination won’t be heavily focused by her thoughts on Roe v. Wade.

Pro-choice advocates were stunned when Gallup reported last month that for the first time since it began asking the question, a majority of Americans now call themselves pro-life vs. pro-choice (although a review of other similar polls taken over the past year continue to reflect a majority pro-choice America.)

If that wasn’t at least a soft blow to those reproductive rights advocates, Tiller’s death by the hands of 51-year-old Scott P. Roeder absolutely was.

And for a portion of the public, upon learning of Tiller’s death, thoughts immediately turned to Bill O’Reilly, who focused relentlessly on the controversial doctor’s status as one of just a handful of M.D.’s in the country who continued to perform late term abortions.

Some liberal commentators and bloggers immediately blamed the cable news analyst for inciting Roeder to commit murder.  O’Reilly, predictably, pushed back, and used the opening moments of his show last week to argue that his foils, NBC News and company, were just as responsible for the murder of U.S. soldier William Long in Arkansas by a Muslim convert.

For many in the abortion rights movement, Tiller’s death brought back the dark days of the 1990’s, when doctors David Gunn, Bernard Slepian and John Britton were killed for their work as abortion providers.

Sarasota resident Sherry Svekis received a late-term abortion from Tiller in 1985. Not being a regular Fox News viewer, she was unaware of the very public campaign O’Reilly had wrought against Tiller over the years until his death.

But after hearing the denunciations of Tiller,  Svekis penned a letter to the Tampa Tribune last week, describing her encounter with Tiller, and her very fond memories of him.

Intrigued by her acknowledging the abortion with the late doctor, I spoke with her last week.

In 1985 there were only a few places Svekis knew where she could get an abortion after being 20 weeks pregnant (she says she was at 24 weeks into gestation).

She says her mother, a Unitarian minister, had learned through a contact about Tiller, and after her ob-gyn physician contacted the medical examiner in Kansas, she felt confident that she would be in good hands.

But unlike the Frankenstein depicted by his critics, Svekis says that Tiller was a compassionate man. She says nearly a year after her abortion, Tiller contacted her to see if she was interested in adopting a baby — after diagnosing that a woman patient he had was too far along in her pregnancy to abort.

“It was reminiscent of John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules, the doctor who says he can give you an abortion or give you an orphan…. I don’t know what his guidelines were, but she was too far along for him to give her and adoption, and would we like to accept?”

She respectfully declined. But she was touched by his thoughtfulness. (She subsequently had two children of her own.)

“He spent the time to understand what a woman’s position was. Why she was there. What her physical and emotional situation was … he’d try to work with her and whomever came with that person to support her.”

Svetkis says she’s aware it’s a bit unconventional to want to tell the world about a surgical procedure from more than 20 years ago. She says her family and friends were aware of her abortion.

But, she says, when she heard of Tiller’s death, “It was like I needed to make my experience as public as possible as to what an incredible, compassionate man this was, and how important this service was.”

She continued, “There are so few people who can do it. And those that are and the people that can do this procedure are being intimidated out of their rights, and I view it as terrorism.”

Sherry Svetkis says she hopes that with the considerable skills that Barack Obama posses, that perhaps a discussion can be renewed in America about the issue of reproductive rights.

She says, “We need many more voices from the women, and families in this country who have made these choices, so we can have an understanding to what these situations are, and why its important to have services. It’s a woman’s right to her body, and Dr. Tiller was a firm believer in that. We need to support women so they don’t have to be in this situation.”

The Justice Department announced late last week that it was launching an investigation into whether anyone else was involved in Tiller’s death and investigating for potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.

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