From the archives: The complex life of George Tiller

This story was originally published on June 7, 2009, one week after Wichita physician George Tiller was murdered in his church by a Kansas City-area anti-abortion extremist.

George Tiller planned to become a much lower-profile doctor — a dermatologist, in fact.

Instead, he became a Wichita late-term abortion doctor who enraged many conservatives nationwide. Yet he registered for decades as a Republican.

And he provided adoptions, not just abortions, to some women with unwanted pregnancies. But he only gave the babies to families who supported abortion rights.

It’s hard to find neutral opinions about late-term abortions or Tiller, whose funeral was held Saturday after he was shot to death a week ago.

But somewhere between the polar views about him, Tiller lived a life more complex than the harsh glare of his public history might suggest.

Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican and abortion opponent, discovered a different Tiller than she expected when she met him face to face during a tour of his clinic in 1997.

“You expect to see an individual with horns and a tail,” she told The Kansas City Star last week. “Here is a man that looks like any other man. He was a very polite, cordial, soft-spoken individual. He’s still a person.”

That didn’t change her mind, though, about what Tiller did at his clinic.

Early days: A discovery about his father

Tiller was born on Aug. 8, 1941, at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita. As a boy, he accompanied his father, physician Jack Dean Tiller, on house calls.

“I remember very vividly how the family doctor was treated,” he later said. “Here was someone important, someone who, if not placed on a pedestal, was treated with a great deal of respect. I wanted that.”

He graduated from Wichita East High School in 1959 and attended the University of Kansas on a swimming scholarship. He received a zoology degree in 1963 and graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 1967. After graduating from the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute Flight Surgeon School, he spent more than a year as a U.S. Navy flight surgeon.

Then his life took a series of unlikely turns.

In 1970, his father, mother, sister and brother-in-law were killed in a plane crash while on their way to a convention in British Columbia. Tiller’s father was flying the turboprop when it crashed into a mountain slope east of Yellowstone National Park.

Tiller received a humanitarian discharge from the Navy and returned to Wichita to take care of his ailing grandmother and his deceased sister’s 1-year-old son. He decided to close down his father’s clinic and begin a career as a dermatologist.

But after he began seeing some of his father’s patients, he decided he was needed because there weren’t enough doctors in the area to absorb them all. So he made plans to instead phase out his father’s practice over three years.

It was then that he learned his father had performed illegal abortions, a decision prompted by guilt over the death of a woman he had refused to help.

“Dad had suggested that he had done some terminations of pregnancy back in the ’50s and ’60s,” he said. “Then when I got the practice ... I began asking these women if my dad had done an abortion for them. And I find that he did more than one or two or a few.”

Tiller kept his father’s practice open. In 1973 — not long after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion — he performed his first procedures at Wesley Medical Center.

While abortion opponents focused on the lives lost, Tiller’s concern became the lives of the women.

He said he was bothered by the insensitive handling of abortion patients, who were wheeled past the newborn nursery on their way to surgery. He also realized that he could perform abortions cheaper than the hospital’s $1,000 fee, so he began offering private procedures at his clinic for $250. By 1985, he had phased out much of his family practice to focus on abortion.

When Tiller began performing more complicated late-term abortions in the mid-1980s, his clinic drew patients from across the country and abroad. Before long, he had gained a national reputation for performing elective abortions through the second trimester, up to about 26 weeks and four days into a 40-week pregnancy. He would perform them beyond that if the fetus had a severe abnormality -- well past the point at which a fetus is considered capable of surviving outside the womb.

Kansas law placed no restrictions on when abortions could be performed until 1992, and then they were minimal compared with many states.

A law passed in 1998 added more restrictions, forbidding abortions of viable fetuses after the 22nd week of pregnancy unless necessary to save the woman’s life or prevent severe and irreversible harm to her physical or mental health. Two independent physicians must also agree that a late-term abortion is necessary.

Abortion opponents have long contended that Tiller performed abortions on viable, healthy fetuses well beyond what the law allowed.

“There is no reason to abort a baby who can already live outside the womb,” said Mary Kay Culp, director of Kansans for Life.

But Tiller always said there were compelling reasons when he aborted late-term healthy fetuses.

And a Nebraska doctor who worked at Tiller’s clinic on a rotating basis said late-term abortions were a small part of the practice.

“Probably in consumption of time, yes, but for the number of patients, it was minuscule,” said LeRoy Carhart of the Abortion & Contraception Clinic of Nebraska. Carhart said that he personally saw five or six patients a week who were more than 24 weeks gestation, and 40 or 50 patients who were under 24 weeks. Most, he said, were under 12 weeks gestation.

According to Kansas Department of Health and Environment statistics, 323 abortions in the state were reported to have been performed at 22 weeks or later in 2008, most if not all of them at Tiller’s clinic. Of those, 192 were determined to be viable, and the reason for the abortion was listed as the woman’s health.

Flak jackets and an armor-plated Jeep

Tiller began drawing the wrath of abortion opponents, some referring to him as Tiller the Killer and his clinic an abortuary, but that only made him more defiant.

He struggled in the 1980s with drug and alcohol problems, but that wasn’t from the stress of his practice, he said.

Over the years, protesters picketed his house, as well as the homes of clinic employees. His clinic now resembles a fortress, and since the mid-1990s, he has driven an armor-plated Jeep that Carhart said cost $120,000 to fortify, and he wore a flak jacket for protection.

In 1986, a bomb caused $100,000 damage to the clinic. Three days later, Tiller placed a sign amid the debris proclaiming: “Hell, No. We Won’t Go!”

In June 1991, the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue hit Wichita, leading to 46 days of clinic blockades that resulted in more than 2,600 arrests of 1,700 protesters. The “Summer of Mercy” drew national attention when a federal judge stepped in and ordered U.S. marshal’s deputies to keep the clinic gates open.

“We have a higher cause,” said Wendy Wright, then the spokeswoman for Operation Rescue. “Morally, it’s no different than a fireman breaking into a house — which is normally legal — to save a life.”

In September 1991, after the protests ended, Tiller granted a rare interview, saying he was tired of the rumors circulating about his practice. He said that contrary to the contentions of abortion protesters, he did not perform elective abortions up to birth.

He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a three-ring notebook.

“These are the things we do,” he said, pointing to color snapshots of aborted fetuses. “Hydrocephalus, spina bifida, fused legs, open spine, lethal chromosome abnormality. Nature makes mistakes.”

He flipped the page. “This is the brain coming out of the back of the head. This is a baby that’s allergic to itself. Look at this. There’s all water; no brain whatsoever. The skull’s just completely collapsed. This is a foot coming off the hip. You tell me that if you had one of these, you wouldn’t be devastated.”

Dave Gittrich, state development director of Kansans for Life, said he had seen Tiller’s photos of abnormal fetuses.

“They all still look like babies to me,” he said. “And I think many of those children could have led healthy, productive lives if they were given a chance. Natural death is always a better choice than killing death.”

Tiller said his patients came from all 50 states and abroad. The walls in the clinic lobby were lined with letters from former patients.

One former patient, Miriam Kleiman, went to Tiller’s clinic several years ago after making an anguished decision. She was seven months pregnant with her first child — “a planned pregnancy, a longed-for, desired, wanted pregnancy,” she said — when doctors told her the fetus had severe and irreversible birth defects.

Kleiman, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, said she was told that she would either have to deliver a dead baby or one doomed to die immediately after birth.

Kleiman and her husband now have two healthy sons.

“He literally gave his life for the cause,” she said of Tiller. “I can’t imagine what we would have done without Dr. Tiller.”

Dozens of other women shared similar stories this past week on numerous Internet tribute sites for Tiller.

But Gittrich said the public doesn’t hear the stories of women who regret their abortions.

“There’s a huge amount of women who have now recognized that abortion was the worst thing they ever did, but you have to admit that you had an abortion in order to say anything publicly,” Gittrich said. “So only those who liked their abortion are going to say anything about it.”

An insult, a tirade, a provocative offer

Tiller usually ignored the shouts of protesters outside his clinic. But not always.

One day in 1991, he snapped at Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry.

“Too bad your mother’s abortion failed,” he recalled saying.

Indeed, Tiller could sometimes be as in-your-face as the protesters.

In August 1992, furious after four protesters chained themselves to his clinic gates, Tiller stormed out of the clinic dressed in a lab coat, walked to the gate and grabbed a microphone from a stunned TV camera operator. Then he lashed out at President George H.W. Bush and the Republican Party, saying they were controlled by “religious fanatics.”

“This right here represents what the Republican Party is all about right now,” said Tiller, a lifelong Republican at the time. “They have been taken over by religious fanatics like this man right here who wants to deprive the citizens of the United States ... of their religious freedoms.”

After he finished his tirade, Tiller marched back toward the clinic, followed by several protesters, one of whom shoved a poster in his face.

“Why don’t you stick that someplace where the sun doesn’t shine?” Tiller said.

A longtime colleague, Susan Hill of North Carolina, said some abortion rights advocates thought Tiller should have done a better job explaining the circumstances under which he performed late-term abortions.

“But he was a doctor,” she said. “He wasn’t a PR person.”

Yet Tiller wasn’t beyond making a public statement that he knew would infuriate opponents — in 2002, he marked the 29th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision by providing free abortions.

But some critics accused him of getting rich from abortions.

Tiller testified in a court case against him this year that he charged an average of $6,000 for late-term abortions and said that in 2003 he performed 250 to 300 of those abortions. Prosecutors said more than 35 percent of his gross income was profit.

Tiller did well enough to contribute a small fortune in campaign contributions, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to help defeat politicians who opposed abortion.

His political action committee — which accepted money from outside contributors — often ranked in the top 10 PACs in Kansas for money spent on political races.

Tiller’s Wichita home is appraised at $980,200, according to Sedgwick County records.

But Tiller’s friends and allies said he could have made more money in other medical fields and without any of the controversy or danger that came with providing abortions.

“I know he could have probably made five times the money in family practice and probably spent 1/100th of what he paid out in legal fees,” Carhart said.

Bullets and surprise adoptions

In March 1993, David Gunn, a doctor who performed abortions in Pensacola, Fla., was shot to death outside his clinic.

“Stopping one doctor who performs abortions will not decrease the number of abortions,” said Tiller, then traveling with an attack dog named Ivan.

Five months later, Tiller himself was the target.

Oregon homemaker Shelley Shannon shot Tiller in both arms as he drove out of his clinic. But it only angered Tiller.

“(I figured), you’re gonna shoot me, I’m gonna run you down,” he said. So he sped after Shannon as she ran down the street.

Tiller returned to work the next morning with bandages on both arms.

A few months after the shooting, Tiller went public with a story that surprised many — he also had an adoption service.

He said he had arranged dozens of adoptions for women with healthy pregnancies who were too far along for abortions. The adoption service began in the late 1970s, and Tiller said one of them was arranged for a state legislator’s teenage daughter.

In the earlier years of the adoption service, Tiller said, some of the pregnant women stayed with his family until their babies were born. He said they did so “because I wanted to see what it felt like to these women — to kind of have an experience with them — what it was like if you really had to have a baby that you did not want to have.”

Tiller himself had four children and 10 grandchildren.

But Tiller said he had strict criteria for the adoptions.

“You absolutely, unequivocally have to be pro-choice,” he said. “Anti-abortion folks never get the opportunity to adopt.”

Among other revelations, Tiller told an audience in 1993 that he had gone through a difficult period in the 1980s that he attributed to a lack of faith. He said he then began to realize “that there was indeed a higher power greater than myself, which was guiding and shaping my life.”

One of the difficulties he was referring to was an addiction to alcohol and drugs. In 1984, the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts restricted his medical license after he was charged with driving under the influence. He sought treatment, and the board lifted the restrictions in 1986.

In recent years, Tiller ran into other legal problems.

Last fall he was charged with performing 19 illegal late-term abortions in 2003. He was acquitted in March, but soon after, the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts announced that it was pursuing similar complaints against him.

A small fraternity grows smaller

Carhart, the Nebraska colleague, learned of Tiller’s death from a clinic nurse last Sunday.

“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And she said, ‘I can’t say it.’ I said, ‘Say what?’ And now I can’t say it either,” he said, his voice breaking.

Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado, received an urgent message at his home in Colorado and immediately called Jeanne, Tiller’s wife of nearly 45 years.

“She told me what happened,” he said. “I was horrified.”

Carhart, Hern and Tiller were members of a small, close-knit fraternity of abortion providers who kept in constant contact and occasionally even vacationed together.

“We were very good friends,” Hern said. “They invited me to their daughter’s wedding, George and I skied together, I stayed with them at their home in Colorado.”

Carhart said that he spent a week with Tiller in 1991 during the Operation Rescue protests and that they had become close over the years.

“After my wife and children and grandchild, George was the best friend I had in the world,” he said.

Hill, who operates four abortion clinics, described the alliance as “probably 10 or so of us old-timers.”

“We’ve all been around for years,” she said. “We know we can help each other.”

Because of the controversial nature of his practice, Hill said some abortion rights advocates saw Tiller’s work as a “necessary evil,” yet they didn’t want any connection with him.

“He was the last resort,” she said. “He took it on and he was willing to do it.”

Hill, who had known Tiller for 25 years, said she asked him just a couple of weeks ago why he didn’t retire, considering all the threats they had received over the years.

“I said to him, ‘Why are you still doing this? Get out and enjoy your family. You’re such an obvious target.’ He just said, ‘I have to. I can’t leave the women. There’s no one else to help them.’ “

Culp said Tiller was fervent but misguided.

“I think he convinced himself it was the right thing to do, that he was saving women,” she said. “He used to have something on his Web site about how he gave women back their dreams.”

Tiller’s death raises questions about the future of late-term abortions in the United States.

Carhart, 67, said he and two other doctors who worked at Tiller’s clinic are determined to continue performing them.

“The three of us are committed to the fact that we need to have another clinic in Kansas to continue this practice,” he said. “I don’t know how it will happen, but I will pray that it happens.”

Tiller’s family said Tuesday that the clinic would be closed indefinitely.

The family declined interview requests.

For now, Carhart said, Hern’s clinic in Colorado may be the only one left in the country performing late-term abortions.

“There’s possibly some people in their own private practice doing things, but as far as a clinic, he’s probably it,” he said.

In a 1991 interview, Tiller said he would perform abortions for as long as he was able. He insisted that despite the risks he constantly faced, he was not a victim.

“I am a willing participant in this conflict,” he said. “I choose to be here.”

He said he had never considered closing his practice. Indeed, he said, the adversity made him more determined than ever to keep going.

“I’m here for the long haul.”

To reach Judy L. Thomas, call 816-234-4334 or send e-mail to jthomas@kcstar.com.

The writer

Judy L. Thomas is co-author of “Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War.” Some of the interviews with George Tiller occurred while Thomas covered the abortion issue for The Wichita Eagle from 1988 to 1995. She conducted others after coming to The Kansas City Star.

This story was originally published May 30, 2019 at 1:48 PM.