The Tiller Tapes: "I Can't Take It, Can You Help Me?"

I can't take it, can you help me?

These words, according to Dr. George Tiller, were what led his father to begin providing abortions. And, many years later, the discovery of these same words moved Dr. Tiller to put his life on the line to provide women with safe, legal abortions. A decision that he was murdered for last year, in his church, by an anti-choice extremist (who has now been allowed to argue his case on the lesser charge of "voluntary manslaughter" rather than murder, which would yield him as little as five years jail time).

On the eve of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, two never-before seen video clips have been released by Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. In the first, moving clip, Dr. Tiller describes his journey from someone as anti-choice as any opponent of reproductive rights, considering anyone who offered the procedure a "scumbag-type physician," to becoming one of the most attacked abortion providers in the United States. He calls himself a "woman-educated physician," thanking the women who revealed to him that his late father had provided these procedures, even though they were illegal at the time; the women who helped him to realize that providing safe abortions was a cause worth devoting his life to.

It was those words -- I can't take it, can you help me? -- that brought his father around to helping women exercise their reproductive rights. Because when he said no, he couldn't help, that it would all work out after the mother of two had given birth to this third child, she sought an illegal abortion, and she died from it -- as many desperate women have, who weren't trusted with the control of their own bodies, to know what they needed.

And Dr. Tiller realized, reading those words, and that story, "Abortion is a matter of survival for women." He gave his life for their survival.