Valuing Life

Floor Speech

Mr. REID. Madam President, a community in Kansas still shakes 1 year after the brazen murder of one of its own. This weekend will mark the first anniversary of Dr. George Tiller's death. He was gunned down in front of his Wichita church the day before the last Memorial Day.

Dr. Tiller was killed at point-blank range at his place of worship in the middle of a Sunday morning, while his wife sang in the church choir just a few yards away.

He was murdered by an unrepentant assassin who took his life in the name of protecting life. It was an indefensible crime and an incomprehensible excuse.

Just as despicable as Dr. Tiller's death was the fact that his murder wasn't an isolated incident. It wasn't even the first time someone tried to kill him. His clinic was bombed in 1985. He was shot twice in 1993. Over the next 16 years, 7 clinic workers would be killed before Dr. Tiller would become the eighth murder victim. More than 6,000 other acts of violence have been launched at clinics and their workers--bombings, arsons, assaults, and other attacks. One of the things they do is go into one of these clinics and throw acid all over and make the building not habitable.

The last doctor killed before Dr. Tiller was a husband and father from Buffalo named Barnett Slepian. He was an OB/GYN, who also helped poor women access safe, legal abortions. Because of that, he was murdered in his home, in his kitchen--standing in his kitchen, he was shot through the window with a high-powered rifle and murdered. I didn't personally know Dr. Slepian, but I knew his niece. She came from Reno, NV, and she once worked in my office. She worked as a legislative assistant and a speechwriter. Her name is Amanda Robb. She is now an accomplished writer living in the Presiding Officer's State of New York. As life is so unpredictable and so unusual, I worked on the speech last night, and to the person helping me, Stephen Krupin, I said, ``We are going to talk about Dr. Slepian, whose niece worked for me. And she is here in Washington today--just out of nowhere. I have a gathering every Thursday morning, and I will be darned, Amanda Robb showed up, which is so unusual. I was so glad to see her. She was a great personality and someone I will always remember having worked for me.

The tragedy of Dr. Tiller's death and of Dr. Slepian's death--and of every atrocity like it--is independent of the issue of abortion. It is not about the legality of abortion or the funding of it. These are emotional debates, and ones on which people of good faith can disagree.

What so shook that Kansas town was rather an act of terrorism. What reverberated out to our borders and coasts from the center of our country was the violation of our founding principle--that we are a nation of laws, not of men.

Everyone in America has the right to disagree with its laws. Everyone has the right to dispute and protest its laws. But no American has a right to disobey the laws.

Not all of us would choose Dr. Tiller's profession or seek his services or agree with his philosophy or that of Dr. Slepian, but it is the responsibility of every American to respect another's right to practice his profession legally.

Those who believe in the sanctity of life cannot be selective. We must value every life--not just those with which we agree.

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