O'Reilly on Tiller: 60,000 Abortions (TPM)

[struggle4progress]

June 1, 2009, 10:59PM

On the 6/1/2009 "O'Reilly Report" on FoxNews, Bill O'Reilly repeated the claim that recently-murdered Dr. George Tiller had performed 60,000 abortions in his career. But is that possible?

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, so if Dr. Tiller's abortions were all legal, they would have been performed in the last 36 years. Sixty thousand divided by 36 is about 1,667 per year. If Dr. Tiller took 4 weeks of vacation, sick leave, or other non-working days each year, that means he performed about 35 abortions a week, or about one an hour (assuming a 9-to-5 day with an hour off for lunch).

Performing an abortion an hour every working day for 36 years is a pace that would have taxed Lou Gehrig. I don't believe it happened. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/ecclesiastes/2009/06/oreilly-on-tiller-60000-aborti.php?ref=reccafe

[MichaelHarris]

1. absolutely

no way of knowing without violating the law and HIPAA privacy. They toss a number out there without any way to verify it, just like McCarthy did with his list.

[Tess I Guess]

2. Rightwads and proloofas are ridiculous

The rightwads and proloofas are ridiculous. There's another doctor out there made famous for "murdering over 50,000 babies,"
Dr. Bernard Nathanson. But the antichoicers laud and celebrate him. He was smart enough to apologize before they could shoot him.

[zbdent]

3. don't forget the legislation signed into law by Governor George W. Bush in Texas

which allowed an abortion at any time (after birth) if the accountant in the financial department of a hospital finds that a family can't pay their bills for life support, and rules that they can pull the plug, despite all the pleadings of the family, including the parents (unlike the Schiavo case, where the parents had for years not been responsible for their adult daughter's decisions, but got the "Right to Lifers" to be able to get air time to score political points) ...

[Somawas]

4. Abortion was legal in a number of states before 1973. eom

[struggle4progress]

5. Tiller's own discussion of his history indicates he did not think much about abortions

until taking over his late father's clinic in 1970. And if he actually performed any abortions between 1970 and 1973, he performed very few because he had a general practice and abortion was illegal in Kansas. So the calculation and argument in the OP seem to be unaffected

see:
George R. Tiller, MD
http://www.prch.org/george-r-tiller-md