A controversial doctor who provided late-term abortions has been fatally shot in his Kansas church, and authorities said they have arrested a suspect in the case.
About 500 people filled a downtown Wichita square during a candlelight vigil for George Tiller, who was slain just after 10am on Sunday in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church.
US President Barack Obama, who just two weeks ago sought an end to the “demonization” of opponents in the bitter culture war over abortion right, decried the killing.
“I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr George Tiller as he attended church services this morning,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House. “However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.”
Wichita officials said the 51-year-old man suspected of shooting Tiller was arrested some three hours after the killing.
Long a lightning rod for anti-abortion activists, Tiller, 67, had already been picketed, bombed and shot in both arms.
“We’ve been terrified for him for years,” said Jean Spurney of Belleville, Kansas, who drove over two hours to attend the vigil.
“I was sick through and through,” she said after hearing the news.
Many at the vigil blamed radical anti-abortion groups for fostering an atmosphere of hate.
“I’m upset at the anti-abortion people who have allowed the atmosphere to get to this point where someone feels it’s alright to walk into a church and shoot an unarmed man,” said Diane Wahto, who volunteered at Tiller’s clinic.
Several anti-abortion groups released statements condemning the killing.
Tiller’s clinic was one of only three in the US that perform late-term abortions, which are performed on fetuses that could be viable outside the mother’s womb.
Late-term abortions are legal in Kansas if two independent physicians agree that the mother could suffer irreparable harm by giving birth.
The shooting occurred just two weeks after Obama sought “common ground” in the divisive abortion debate during a controversial speech at Notre Dame, a the top Catholic university in the US.
Tiller was labeled a mass murder by abortion opponents who regularly protested outside his clinic and set up several Web sites decrying and detailing his activities.
In 1986, someone placed a bomb on the roof of his Wichita clinic, seriously damaging the building. In 1993, Tiller was shot in both arms outside the clinic. He recovered, and his assailant received an 11-year prison term.
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