A born-again Christian who believes abortion is a sin failed yesterday to convince a judge that he need not stand trial for murder after he admitted shooting dead an abortion doctor. Scott Roeder, 51, told the court in Wichita, Kansas, that on 30 May 2009, the day before he shot George Tiller, he had bought a .22-calibre gun and bullets and then practised target shooting with his brother.
The fact Roeder was the killer, with a single shot to the head, was not in doubt, but the confession was an attempted defence that he felt forced to act to save the lives of unborn children. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, and yesterday was the first time in US legal history that an anti-abortionist was allowed to present the jury with his justification for murder.
Tiller had long been a target for anti-abortionists as he was one of few doctors prepared to ¬perform legal abortions after 21 weeks of gestation. In 1986 his clinic was bombed and in 1993 he was shot in both arms, but he carried on working.
''But I'll tell you this. Where's this idea that childbirth is a miracle
came from. Ha, I missed that fucking meeting, okay? It's a miracle,
childbirth is a miracle. No it's not. No more than a miracle than eating
food and a turd coming out of your ass. It's a chemical reaction,
that's all it fucking is. If, you you wanna know what a miracle is.
Raisin' a kid that doesn't talk in a movie theatre. Okay, there, there,
there’s a goddamn miracle. It's not a miracle if every nine months any
yin yang in the world can drop a litter of these mewling cabbages on our
planet. And just in case you haven't seen the single mom statistics
lately - the miracle is spreading like wildfire. Hallelujah! Trailer
parks and council flats all over the world just filling up with little
miracles. Thunk, thunk, thunk, like frogs laying eggs. Thunk, ‘look at
all my little miracles’, thunk, ‘filling up my trailer like a sardine
can’. Thunk. ‘You know what would be a real miracle, if I could remember
your daddy's name, aargh’, thunk.''