• One month before late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered by an anti-choice extremist, the FBI in Kansas City received an anonymous letter warning them that Scott Roeder posed a physical threat to abortion providers. The FBI said they didn’t heed the letter as a credible threat, apparently because the letter writer was involved in a custody battle with Roeder. [The Wichita Eagle]

• Out of concern for their safety, young OB/GYN students admit to reconsidering whether or not they’ll do abortions after the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller, a physician in Kansas who terminated pregnancies. “Our doctors are graying and are not being replaced,” the president of the National Women’s Health Foundation has said. [Washington Post]
• Ex-schoolteacher Tiffany Sheperd, 31, has turned to porno after bikini pics got her fired from Port St. Lucie High School in Florida. Shepherd alleged she sent out 2,500 resumes after getting canned last April and has not been hired for a teaching position anywhere. In her new career, Shepherd’s stage name is Leah Lust and she has filmed five flicks, including one called “My First Sex Teacher.” [NY Daily News]
• The attorney for Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old who ran away from home in Ohio to Florida because she fears her Muslim parents will kill her for converting to Christianity, filed a court memorandum requesting that the girl not be forced to go home. Bary has said her father threatened to kill her and her mother threatened to send her back to her home country of Sri Lanka after they discovered she is a Christian, although both her parents have denied the claims. Presently, the girl is living in foster care. [Fox News]

No reporter happened to be standing at abortion provider George Tiller‘s side on the Sunday morning in May when he was murdered at gunpoint, allegedly by an anti-choice extremist. But, like the famous newspaper article by journalist Jimmy Breslin that covered JFK’s assassination from the point of view of his grave digger, sometimes a reporter discovers the best way to tell a story lies someplace other than the obvious.

In “The Last Abortion Doctor, Esquire focuses on the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado and Dr. Warren Hern, the last physician in the United States who can perform late-term abortions.

Over the weekend The New York Times ran a lengthy, in-depth report about recently murdered abortion practitioner Dr. George R. Tiller. The doctor, who was called “Tiller the Killer” by some and praised as an American hero by others, lived a life defined by his controversial career. Like a real life version of “The Cider House Rules,” Dr. Tiller was one of three doctors in the United States who regularly performed late-term abortions. To some, he saved the lives of thousands of woman; to others, he killed thousands of babies. As glamorous as anti-abortion groups tried to paint Tiller’s life by pointing to his 8,500 square foot home and more than million dollar business profits from performing abortions, his life was far from desirable.

In high school I read John Irving’s excellent book, The Cider House Rules, in which the protagonist, a young man named Homer, is raised in an orphanage under the care of a kindly physician, Dr. Larch, who he is shadowing and learning medicine from. Dr. Larch eventually reveals to him that he’s been performed illegal abortions all along and he’d like to teach Homer how to do the procedure, too. Homer balked at the suggestion, imagining that he could have been aborted instead of growing up happily in the orphanage. The response Dr. Larch gave him has always stuck in my mind: “You may disapprove, but you may not be ignorant or look away.”

That quote popped in my mind when I read Kate Harding’s piece on Salon.com, “Is There A Next Generation Of Abortion Providers?”, a frightening piece about how the ranks of abortion providers are thinning and pro-choicers worry they won’t be replaced.

Abortion unexpectedly plunged back into the news in recent weeks with the murder of Dr. George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions in Wichita, Kansas.

Everyone but the most far right extremists has condemned the killing and much of the media has focused on how this act of domestic terrorism is truly deplorable.  But clinic violence, awful as it is, occurs rarely compared to the legislative assaults against reproductive rights. So in response, Maureen Tkacik (formerly Moe of Jezebel and Gawker) has written a piece for Lemondrop about the things we never mention about when we discuss about abortion—but probably should.

A Kansas-based anti-abortion group called Operation Rescue has dreamed up a new way to stop abortions: they’re buying clinics. Their headquarters in Wichita, Kansas are in a former abortion clinic, but because they’re finding the place is a little small, they’re thinking about offering to buy the clinic that was recently shut down after Dr. George Tiller was murdered. This is beyond tacky, since Dr. Tiller was shot at church, and the main suspect is crazed lunatic Scott Roeder, who had been known to post on Operation Rescue’s blog. Plus, Operation Rescue had been targeting this clinic for years now, staging massive, sometimes violent, protests going as far back as 1991.

Operation Rescue’s prez Troy Newman likes the symobolism of taking over the space and “establishing [it] as a center for life, one that nurtures and cares for babies, rather than taking their lives.” We say, there has to be another building available in Wichita that would work. [AP]

The Wichita clinic formerly run by Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered by anti-choice crusader Scott Roeder on May 31, has closed permanently. As a result, the closest abortion provider for Tiller’s patients will be a three hour drive both ways to Overland Park. It is unclear if that clinic, the Center For Women’s Health, can provide late-term third-trimester abortions like Tiller’s did.

Good job, crazies. [Wichita Eagle]

A 51-year-old anti-abortion activist is in custody in Wichita, KS, after he allegedly shot and killed Dr. George Tiller, 67. Tiller, who had provided abortions to women for over 30 years, was gunned down in the foyer of his church while he passed out the church bulletin. [NY Times]

Some anti-choice extremists think all doctors who perform any abortions should be killed. But Dr. Tiller, in particular, was a lightening rod for controversy because he was one of only three doctors in the country who performed abortions on women in the third trimester, also referred to as “partial birth abortions.” But why are abortions in the second or third trimesters so controversial? Here are five things you’re probably asking yourself right now.

Dr. George Tiller, who, among other things, administered abortions at his Wichita, Kansas women’s clinic, was shot and killed today in front of his church. He was one of the few doctors who stilled performed late-term abortions, and his clinic was the target of many anti-choice protests over the years, including a previous attempt on his life in 1993. He was 67-years-old. A suspect is in custody. [CNN]

Some anti-choices groups have condemned the killing, while others have taken the opportunity to continue to condemn him, saying, “George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.”